It’s the carrot that’s been in front of the Gophers women’s hockey team since the first day of fall practice: Earn one of the top four seeds in the NCAA tournament, and with it the guarantee that every postseason game it plays will be on home ice. All these months later, the Gophers are enjoying the sweet taste of success — and are hungry for more. As the fourth seed, they will host the fifth-seeded Colgate Raiders on Saturday afternoon, with the winner advancing to the Frozen Four. “I think for our team there is a lot of confidence, because this is what we’ve been working towards,” Gophers coach Brad Frost said. “Our goal was to be hosting the quarterfinal matchup to get to the Frozen Four at Ridder Arena. You can’t hide from the fact that it’s here, and that we want to be in it. “So, we’ve just kind of embraced that, and now it’s finally here. We’ve done the work to put ourselves in a great position, and now we have a great opportunity.” Ranked in the top five all season, the Gophers (28-11-1) know having home ice could prove to be the difference in games featuring two high-caliber teams. “It’s an incredible opportunity for us,” said Abbey Murphy, who leads the Gophers with 31 goals and 63 points. “We’ve got the best fans in the country, so hopefully we have a really good crowd here. But you don’t get this opportunity much. I think we’ve set ourselves up well to play home games the rest of the way. We’ve got to use that to our advantage.” Colgate (30-8-0) finished second to Cornell in the ECAC regular season and lost to the Big Red in the conference championship game. The Raiders are led by Elyssa Biederman, who led the team in scoring with 18 goals and 32 assists, and leading goal scorer Kristýna Kaltounkova (26 goals, 22 assists). Senior goaltender Hannah Murphy has a goals-against average of 1.82 and a save percentage of .940. “Colgate is a great team,” Frost said. “If they would have won their conference tournament instead of Cornell, they would have been the 3 seed. Very strong goaltending. They’re a team that loves to possess the puck and get up and down the rink. “It is going to be important for us to not get into a track meet but to say above pucks, play the right way and make it a lot tougher than they want it to be.” The Gophers were the No. 5 seed in last season’s tournament and lost to Clarkson, 3-2, in four overtimes. They are expecting another stiff challenge on Saturday. “A 4-5 matchup, you can’t take it lightly,” Murphy said. “They’re a great team, we’re a great team. When you put together teams like that, it’s going to be everything.” The Gophers feel they are playing their best hockey of the season, buoyed by a strong performance in the WCHA Final Faceoff last weekend in Duluth. They beat second-ranked Ohio State 6-2 in the semifinals before going down to the wire against No. 1 Wisconsin before losing 4-3 on a late goal. The win over Ohio State was the second of the season for the Gophers. “We took a lot of positives out of that game,” Murphy said. “They scored the first two and we scored the last six. Our team took that one to heart. It wasn’t fun being down two, but we never gave up. There was belief every bit of the way.” And while the Gophers fell to Wisconsin for the fifth time this season, they feel they gained some momentum from that game, as well. “It’s put so much belief in our team,” Murphy said. “I think we always had the belief; obviously getting whupped by them in the past wasn’t on our bucket list. But to play them in a tight game like that and have it get away from us in the last couple seconds isn’t fun. “But I think we know where we’re at with them. When we’re playing our best hockey, we can stick with them.” The Gophers would like nothing better than to get another crack at either one of those teams — on home ice.