Rested or rusty? For the University of Minnesota’s men’s hockey team, it was maybe a little bit of both on Thursday night.

After 18 days off, the Gophers jumped to a 2-1 first-period lead, and took a 3-1 advantage into the third period before Massachusetts made it a new game with three unanswered third-period goals and won it on Aydar Suniev’s second goal in overtime, 5-4, at Scheels Arena in Fargo, N.D.

The winning goal was contentious.

Minnesota’s Ryan Chesley was carrying the puck into the UMass end when it appeared he was tripped. Chelsey lost the puck, and the Minutemen turned play the other way and scored the winner. Dans Locmelis corralled the puck and took it into the Gophers’ zone before backhanding it toward the net. Suniev, charging the net, tapped it in.

Suniev added a third-period goal, and the Minutemen (21-13-0) got goals from Larry Keenan, Daniel Jenčko and Francesco Dell’Elce to advance to face Western Michigan (31-7-1), the NCHC’s regular-season and tournament champion, in the regional final Sunday at Scheels Arena.

Puck drop is to be determined.

Jimmy Snuggerud forced overtime with the second of his goals, making it 4-4 with 3:36 remaining after Dell’Elce had given UMass a lead.

Connor Kurth and Brody Lamb also scored for Minnesota (25-11-4), which hadn’t played a game since getting upset by Notre Dame in the first round of the Big Ten Conference tournament on March 9. That spurred concerns that the Gophers might be rusty for their NCAA tournament opener

Dell’Elce scored an even-strength goal to give the Minutemen a 4-3 lead with 4 minutes, 53 seconds remaining in regulation, but Snuggerud answered with his second goal to tie it and ultimately send the game to overtime.

Snuggerud scored a power-play goal at 14:14 of the first period to give the Gophers a 1-0 lead.

Keenan scored for UMass (20-13) just 20 seconds later to tie the score 1-1, but Lamb scored an even-strength goal with 1:11 left in the first period for a 2-1 lead.

Kurth made it 3-1 with an even-strength goal on assists by Jimmy Clark and Matthew Wood with six minutes left in the second period.

It stayed that way until Suniev scored an even-strength goal for the Minutemen to make it 3-2, and 1:35 later, Daniel Jenčko scored to tie the game, 3-3.

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