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While it took until just a week before the official start of the season, we now know the Minnesota Golden Gophers hockey TV schedule for the 2019-20 season. Minnesota will have at least 29 of their 34 regular season games on tv this year, once again leading the nation. Nineteen games will air on either Fox Sports North or Fox Sports North Plus with the season opener next Friday night at Colorado College being the first game. FSN will carry most of the big Gopher matchups this season including all four games against Wisconsin, the Thanksgiving weekend series against North Dakota, both games of the Mariucci Classic featuring four Minnesota teams, and the Friday night home game against Minnesota-Duluth.
An additional nine games will air on the Big Ten Network this season including the road series at Michigan State and Penn State.
Minnesota’s game at UMD will be carried by MY9 in Duluth and will be simulcast back to the Twin Cities on Fox9+.
As of today, the only five Gopher Hockey games that will not be on local TV in the Twin Cities are the Saturday night game at Colorado College, the Saturday night game at Michigan, the Saturday night game at Ohio State, and the pair of games at Notre Dame. One or both of the Notre Dame games will most likely be broadcast on NBCSN once the Notre Dame TV schedule is announced. If not on tv, NBCSN has at bare minimum had a good quality free stream of all Notre Dame games in past years.
The Gophers will also have a new broadcast crew on Fox Sports North this season. Doug McLeod was not brought back for another season and Katie Emmer left FSN to go work for CSN Philadelphia doing pre and postgame for the Flyers.
The new Gopher play-by-play man for FSN will be St. Paul native Charlie Beattie. Beatlie has done play by play for the Minnesota State High School tournament in the past. You can learn more about him here from FSN. Ben Clymer will return as the color commentator for Gophers games for his eighth season in the role. Joining FSN and reporting from rinkside will be Bobbie Bohlig. You may recognize her if you have been to any Gopher Football games this season as the new TCF Bank Stadium in-game host. She is a St. Cloud native, and you can learn more about her from FSN here.
The Gophers will play their first exhibition game of the season Sunday evening when this host Mount Royal at 5PM. The game will air on BTN+ for those who subscribe. They kick off the regular season next Friday in Colorado Springs against Colorado College at 8:30 PM. We will have a full Gopher Hockey preview next week here at TDG.