Minnesota Women’s Hockey: 2023-24 Season Schedule Released

The Minnesota Gophers released the full 2023-24 schedule for the Gopher women’s hockey team on Monday afternoon. Minnesota will look to get back to the Frozen Four after losing to Wisconsin in overtime in the NCAA Semifinals this past March. It will be a much different looking Gophers team this fall after the graduation of several of their 5th year stars including Taylor Heise, Abigail Boreen, Graze Zumwinkle, and others. The new group will be weary road warriers to start the season as well as Minnesota plays just two of their first 13 regular season games at Ridder Arena.

Minnesota will open the season at home in their annual exhibition game, this time against something called Durham West on September 23rd at Ridder Arena. Apparently they are a junior hockey team from Ontario.

The Gophers will begin on the road to kick off both the non-conference and WCHA portions of their season. Minnesota will head to RIT for a series against the Tigers on October 6-7 before returning back to Minnesota but opening the WCHA season on the road at St. Thomas. The Friday game in the series between the Gophers and Tommies will be the opening game of a women’s/men’s doubleheader between Minnesota and St. Thomas at the Xcel Energy Center.

Minnesota then hosts St. Cloud State at Ridder to open the official home portion of their schedule, but it is a one-off Tuesday night face-off. After taking the following weekend off the Gophers return to play October 27-28 in Columbus against the NCAA runner-up Ohio State Buckeyes who have absolutely reloaded in the transfer portal this off-season. A home and home against Minnesota State, a week off and a trip to Duluth gets the Gophers to Thanksgiving weekend.

It has been something of a tradition the last few seasons for the Gophers to play in a showcase event over Thanksgiving against top talent from the east. Previous stops have included Nashville, Las Vegas, and this year a trip to Washington DC. Minnesota will play a pair of top ECAC teams in Cornell on Friday and Harvard on Saturday. St. Thomas will be the other WCHA team in the field.

The Gophers close out 2023 with a home series against Bemidji State, the return of the weird Tuesday night game at St. Cloud and a visit from the defending NCAA Champion Badgers.

Minnesota reopens play in 2024 with their lone home non-conference series of the season hosting UCONN. They then finish the WCHA schedule with seven series in seven weeks hosting Ohio State, at Bemidji, a pair of home and homes against Minnesota State and St. Cloud State split around a home series against St. Thomas and then finish with a pair of tough series at Wisconsin and with UMD coming down I-35 to end the regular season.

The WCHA First Round Playoffs will open March with the WCHA Final Faceoff back at Ridder Arena once again March 8th and 9th. The NCAA Tournament begins the following week with first round games and Quarterfinals, and the 2024 Frozen Four is headed to Durham, New Hampshire March 21-23.

The full schedule is below:

Hockey season begins again in just three and a half short months...