Ex-Gophers star says playing at Minnesota was 'closest thing' to NHL

Former Gophers winger Matthew Knies looks back at his time at the University of Minnesota fondly and said the teams he played on helped prepare him for the NHL.

"Practicing against those guys and with those guys, it was the closest thing you could get to the NHL. We had a hell of a team, hell of a group. [We're] extremely close," said Knies in a recent interview on the Spittin' Chiclets podcast.

Knies was an integral part of a pair of Gophers squads that won back-to-back Big Ten titles in 2021-22 and 2022-23, while making it to the Frozen Four each season. Knies totaled 33 points (15 goals, 18 assists) as a freshman, followed by 42 points (21 goals, 21 assists) as a sophomore while the Gophers reached the national championship game.

With a roster that was stacked with future NHL talent like Logan Cooley, Brock Faber, Jackson LaCombe, and Jimmy Snuggerud, the Gophers ran away with the Big Ten during the 2022-23 season, winning the regular season title with a 19-4-1 record.

Unfortunately, that Minnesota team tripped up twice in title games during the postseason. First losing to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament championship game and then, heartbreaking fashion, to Quinnipiac in the national championship several weeks later.

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Despite the heartbreaking way it ended for them, Knies says he remains close with a lot of the guys. In fact, he lives with LaCombe and Snuggerud during the summer.

"We all kind of train together too now," continued Knies. "It sucks that [we lost] that year, but we had a pretty incredible lineup."

That lineup was a big reason why Knies, an Arizona native, committed to Minnesota instead of staying home to play for Arizona State.

"I loved the coaches there. They were going to build a great team. You kind of look at their lineup when I was committing and it was a lot of great names and I just put a lot of faith into those coaches to make a great team, and they did," said Knies.

"Once I started visiting some other schools in North Dakota and Penn State and Minnesota, I was like, I just thought these schools had a lot to offer right away. Unreal campuses, unreal experiences. And then I kind of wanted to play in the Big Ten," he explained. "I wanted to play in a conference, and so that kind of came down to it. And just loved Minnesota."

The day after the national championship loss, Knies signed a three-year, entry-level contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs, who drafted him with the 57th overall pick in the 2021 NHL Draft. He played three games at the end of the 2022-23 season and was part of the Maple Leafs' playoff team that year.

During his two full seasons in the league, Knies has tallied 94 points (44 goals, 50 assists), helping Toronto make the playoffs each year he has been on the team. In June, Knies put pen to paper on a six-year, $46.5 million contract with an AAV of $7.75 million.

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