Gophers stumble to open 2026 at No. 9 Penn State, what’s next?

Minnesota has quite a hole to pull itself out of this winter.

A play at the net from Minnesota's 5-2 loss at Penn State on Saturday. | Photo credt: Brad Rempel

After getting hot in the final part of 2025, Gophers men's hockey has stumbled to open 2026 with a pair of losses at No. 9 Penn State in its first series of the year. Now 8-12-1, where does Minnesota go from here?

In the short term, Minnesota will welcome No. 1 Michigan to 3M Arena at Mariucci this weekend. Any sort of success against the top-ranked Wolverines would be a huge step in regaining confidence heading into the Big Ten gauntlet.

In the long term, the Gophers are currently No. 36 in the National Collegiate Percentage (NPI) Index, which is the main tool used by the NCAA to select at-large teams for the NCAA Tournament. The road to climb into the top-16 seems treacherous with only 14 regular-season games remaining, but all but two of those games are against teams that rank higher than 36.

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Minnesota has proven it can hang with some of the top teams in the country with an OT win at No. 4 Denver, a win over No. 5 Penn State at home, and a win over No. 8 North Dakota on the road, among others.

They're currently in fourth place in the Big Ten standings with 13 points at 4-6 in conference play. If they're able to get hot at the right time, they can always make a run in the Big Ten tournament at the end of the year and claim the conference's automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

The Gophers haven't missed the NCAA Tournament since Bob Motzko's first season with the program in 2018-19. If they want to avoid that fate this season, they will have to start turning things around fast.

For example, this was about the time in the year when Penn State made a run last season, winning 10 of its last 14 regular-season games. The Nittany Lions climbed out of the bottom of the Big Ten standings and made it all the way to the Frozen Four before losing to Boston U. They were 8-10-2 before that run, which compares to the Gophers' current 8-12-1 record.

The Gophers are a young team, but we're now more than three months into the season. We'll probably know if they have any chance to make noise in the postseason in the next few weeks. They've proven they can hang with some of the nation's best teams; now it's time to start rattling off some wins.