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The No. 9/10 Pioneers rallied Saturday night after an embarrassing 4-3 loss on Friday to No. 12/14 North Dakota, winning 5-3 and clinching home ice for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association tournament for the ninth consecutive season.
The Pioneers came out Saturday fired up after Friday and used it as motivation to prove themselves.
“It was an embarrassing effort [Friday], an embarrassing performance, and I don’t think the score indicated how poorly we played. Certainly that locker room from last night to the start of today’s game was quiet; it was sour. I don’t want to say angry, but maybe just as close to anger as you can get, about how we played,” said head coach George Gwozdecky after Saturday’s win. “Certainly, I thought we responded in a good way tonight. I don’t think we played a great game, but we responded very well against a very good opponent.”
After the series, the Pioneers improve to 19-11-4, 14-8-4 WCHA, maintaining their position at No. 3 in the WCHA and currently sitting at No. 11 in the Pairwise rankings. Denver will continue their hunt for the NCAA tournament, needing to maintain a position in the top 16 in the Pairwise rankings to clinch a spot.
Denver honored their seniors in their last regular season home game Saturday. The seniors included forward co-captain Dustin Jackson, forwards Nate Dewhurst and Luke Salazar and defensemen John Lee and John Ryder.
Since the Pioneers won Saturday, they will have home ice advantage when the tournament begins on March 9, and Denver could face a combination of teams including Colorado College vs. Nebraska Omaha or Michigan Tech vs. Minnesota State in the second round.
“The first round series is such a difficult series; it’s a short series,” said Gwozdecky. “You want to be able to use any edge you can. That first round is really tough. It’s mentally draining, it’s physically challenging and it’s certainly good to be able to play at home, in front of our crowd, be in our locker room and all the things that home ice allows you to have. I’m proud of our team and how they’ve played this year, especially considering some of the issues we’ve dealt with, and I’m glad that we’ve earned that reward.”
The series with North Dakota was expected to be heated, as Denver lost to the Fighting Sioux last season in the NCAA tournament.
The rivalry was apparent this weekend, as four players were ejected from the games during the weekend with game misconduct penalties. On Friday, UND defenseman Andrew MacWilliam was ejected after a contact to the head penalty in the first period. On Saturday, Pioneer freshman forward Matt Tabrum was ejected after a checking from behind penalty and freshman defenseman Joey LaLeggia was ejected on a questionable call of contact to the head, following freshman defenseman Scott Mayfield’s goal in the second period. UND’s Michael Parks was also ejected in the third period after a contact to the head penalty.
“When you get two teams like this together, there’s always that extra spark, there’s that extra emotion involved in playing games with these guys,” said Gwozdecky. “I think it’s partially because we have played in so many big games against them: league championship games, league playoff championship games and national championship games. There’s certainly some bad blood, but I think that’s what makes good rivalries, and this is certainly one of them.”
On Friday, the Pioneers allowed the Fighting Sioux to score four unanswered goals before finally finding the net themselves with under six minutes left in the game. Denver was able to score three goals before the game concluded. Junior forward and captain Drew Shore, LaLeggia and sophomore forward Jason Zucker each recorded goals for the Pioneers.
“There are always two sides to everything. Obviously, as upset as we were about our effort, North Dakota played extremely well [Friday]. They took our time and space away constantly, and I don’t think we adjusted very well to their pressure,” said Gwozdecky. “I thought we did a much better job tonight adjusting to their pressure, taking the fight to them, getting involved in the fight and staying in the fight, which is something we just didn’t do a very good job of [Friday].”
After a scoreless first period on Saturday, the Pioneers opened the scoring in the second period with a barrage of five goals when Nick Shore scored, Knowlton scored an unassisted shorthanded goal on a breakaway and a power-play goal and Zucker and Mayfield scored power-play goals.
“We made a little adjustment, especially with Drew Shore, on the power-play, which I thought worked well. The penalty kill, having to kill off I think it was eight minutes of major power-play time was critical,” said Gwozdecky. “Certainly the effort of Juho Olkinuora was outstanding, especially early in the game. He was outstanding when they were aggressive. I thought the turning point in the game, in my mind, was that great individual effort by Chris Knowlton on that shorthanded goal.”
Next weekend, the Pioneers travel to Omaha, Neb., to take on the Mavericks Friday at 5:37 p.m. and Saturday at 6:07 p.m. in their final regular season series.
The Mavericks (14-14-6, 11-10-5 WCHA) are currently unranked in both the USCHO.com and the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine men’s hockey polls, while Denver stays at No. 9/10. Nebraska is also ranked No. 28 in the Pairwise rankings compared to No. 11 Denver. Nebraska trails Denver in WCHA rankings as well, No. 6 compared to the Pioneers’ No. 3 and is a potential second round opponent for the tournament.
Nebraska is led by forwards sophomore Matt White, junior Terry Broadhurst and freshman Jayson Menga, who all have 30 or more points this season.
The defense is led by junior Bryce Aneloski with 49 blocked shots and sophomore Michael Young with 29 blocked shots.
The Mavericks are represented in goal by freshman Ryan Massa, who has a .918 save percentage in 19 games and senior John Faulkner, who has a .879 save percentage in 16 games.
“Nebraska is a good team. They’re battling for a playoff position, they’re battling for home ice, so it’s going to be a heck of a series,” said Gwozdecky. “We don’t have to battle for home ice anymore, but we have to battle for a national tournament bid. I don’t know where we wound up right now, where we’re at right now, but certainly we realize that we need to continue to give ourselves the best chance to win in order to be able to put ourselves in a position where, hopefully, in a couple weeks from now, we can get ourselves a national bid.”
