Rivalry was the theme of the weekend for the then-No. 10 Denver men’s hockey team as it faced off against then-No. 6 North Dakota for a home weekend series. The Pioneers upset UND Friday night 5-4 before dropping Saturday’s game 6-1.
The weekend’s performance puts the Pioneers at 16-10-5 overall and 11-8-5 in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, keeping Denver at No. 10 in the national rankings. Denver also sits at No. 12 in the Pairwise Rankings, and they need to stay in the top 16 to gain a spot in the NCAA playoffs. North Dakota moves to 17-9-6 and 12-6-6 in the WCHA and holds their position at No. 6 in the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls.
“I’m obviously pleased with the win. I know it’s going to be a heck of a battle tomorrow night, and hopefully we don’t have to make it as difficult as we did on ourselves tonight,” said head coach George Gwozdecky Friday night. “With 10 minutes to go in the game, you’re up by two, you’re on a powerplay, and at that point, you have an opportunity to put your opponent out completely, and we opened the door and let them right back in.”
The Pioneers were able to come out on top Friday after a physical game between rival teams, including multiple sets of former teammates who are now opponents, such as sophomore forward Zac Larraza and UND freshman forward Rocco Grimaldi, among others.
“There are many players on both teams who know each other from past playing experiences in not only college hockey, but juniors and youth hockey,” said Gwozdecky in Tuesday’s press conference. “They communicate with each other, but there’s no question that when the puck drops, like in every other sport, there’s no love lost. You’ve got no friends on the ice other than the guys who are wearing your jersey.”
Scoring for Denver on Friday night were Larraza, senior forward Chris Knowlton, sophomore forward Daniel Doremus, sophomore defenseman Joey LaLeggia and junior forward Nick Shore.
On the UND side, the team’s top line accounted for three of their four goals coming from Gimaldi, senior forwards Corban Knight and Danny Kristo and one from second-line senior forward Carter Rowney.
“They’ve got a very good team,” said Gwozdecky. “They’ve got an outstanding first line, and once you get through that first line, the second line is pretty darn good.”
Sophomore goaltender Juho Olkinuora defended the Pioneer net, turning away 35 shots in the team’s win. At the other end of the ice, UND started freshman goaltender Zane Gothberg before pulling him four minutes into the second period after allowing three goals, two of which were within 25 seconds of each other. Gothberg left the ice with 22 saves. UND replaced him with junior goaltender Clarke Saunders, who stopped 14 shots and allowed two goals.
“Anytime you win in this league, I think you have to first of all look at your work ethic,” said Gwozdecky. “I thought we worked really hard tonight. I thought that we were ready to expend a lot of energy, and we did. We made it tough on ourselves; certainly Olkinuora was outstanding. Throughout the game he was very good.”
North Dakota struck early to open the scoring at 2:59 in the first period when Grimaldi buried a slap shot from just inside the blueline.
Larraza answered to knot the game at 1-1 at 5:48 in the first with a slap shot of his own to beat Gothberg over his shoulder on the stick side off an assist from sophomore forward Ty Loney.
After a deadlocked first period, Rowney regained UND’s lead, which would be their last of the game, just over a minute into the second stanza with a goal assisted by freshman forward Drake Caggiula and junior defenseman Derek Forbort.
Denver countered, as Knowlton capitalized on a power-play opportunity with a blast from the top of the right circle to score his team-high 13th goal of the season and start a scoring flurry for the Pioneers where they would strike twice in the span of 25 seconds. Senior captain and defenseman Paul Phillips and junior defenseman David Makowski were credited with assists.
Doremus followed quickly with his ninth goal of the season after his solo-effort shot was deflected off a UND skate into the net giving the Pioneers a 3-2 lead at 4:08 in the second period.
LaLeggia continued the scoring for Denver at 7:56 in the middle frame, when he took advantage of another power-play opportunity after UND’s sophomore forward Michael Parks was whistled for interference. LaLeggia beat Saunders with a blast from high in the slot for his team-best sixth power-play goal of the season and his 11th overall to increase Denver’s lead to a two-goal margin.
Knight put an end to the Pioneer run with a power-play goal at 9:22 after freshman forward Quentin Shore was called for boarding. Knight’s goal for UND was assisted by senior defenseman Joe Gleason and Kristo and cut Denver’s lead to 4-3.
UND made an attempt to knot the game at 2:17, but the goal was called back with an offsides call against UND.
Nick Shore regained Denver’s two-goal lead just under four minutes into the final stanza with his 12th tally of the season, after knocking in a rebound from senior forward Chris Knowlton’s shot. Doremus was also credited with an assist in the effort.
Kristo was able to bring the game within one when the Pioneers allowed a shorthanded goal at 8:29 in the final period. Kristo chipped the puck in high over Olkinuora’s diving save attempt on the glove side to bring the game to its final 5-4 score.
“Our play just wasn’t crisp and sharp,” said UND head coach Dave Hakstol. “I thought the only time we had a sharp crisp push was after we scored the shorthanded goal to make it 5-4, but you don’t win many games when you only have one 10-minute push. Our team wasn’t sharp tonight.”
Olkinuora made several key saves throughout the contest, highlighted by a crucial stop with nine minutes remaining in regulation when he swatted the puck out of mid air with his stick to seal the game for the Pioneers.
“At this time of the season, every shift is really important, because it could mean the difference between scoring or defending, keeping the opponent from scoring; this is the playoffs for us, and I think you probably saw kind of a playoff effort, at least from our team,” said Gwozdecky. “I can’t be happy with everything we did, because we made a boat load of mistakes, but the bottom line is that at the end of 60 minutes, we were able to have one more goal than they did.”
UND snaps Pioneers’ home win streak
The Pioneers came out Saturday looking for the sweep, but UND had redemption in mind, which they would find with their 6-1 stomping of Denver in front of a sellout crowd of 6,049 – Magness Arena’s fifth sellout contest of the season.
The loss snapped the Pioneers’ seven-game unbeaten home streak and put the Pioneers tied for sixth place in the WCHA standings with Wisconsin with 27 points, just two points behind Minnesota State for fifth place.
Olkinuora started in goal for Denver, where he made five saves and allowed three goals in the first period before being replaced by junior goaltender Sam Brittain, who turned away 26 shots and allowed three goals of his own. Saunders made 28 saves for UND and allowed one goal in the team’s win.
“I thought we started the game very well, scoring the first goal, and really we had a very good jump, then all the sudden [there were] a couple of unfortunate bounces that really weren’t [Olkinuora’s] fault,” said Gwozdecky. “When things are going like that, you want to see if you can change the momentum, and that’s one of the reasons we made the switch [to Brittain].”
The Pioneers struck first, taking their only lead of the evening 8:50 into the opening period and taking advantage of their first power-play opportunity of the contest. Freshman defenseman Nolan Zajac tallied his 17th assist of the season when he set up Loney for a one-timer just outside the crease, which he blasted past Saunders for his sixth goal of the season and second in the past three games. Nick Shore was also credited with an assist in the effort.
UND tied the game 1-1 just 1:44 later by Kristo, his 20th of the season, at 10:34 off a shot from the slot.
The first period ended with a two-goal spurt from UND when Rowney and Grimaldi scored a combined pair in the final 1:36 of the first frame, sending both teams to the locker rooms with UND leading 3-1. Sophomore forward Mark MacMillian, Grimaldi, Kristo and junior defenseman Dillon Simpson were all credited with assists on the two goals.
The two teams came back to the ice and skated to a scoreless second stanza until UND found the net again with just 0.3 seconds remaining. Despite Denver outshooting North Dakota 16-13 in the period, MacMillian put away a rebound on Rowney’s shot on the power-play to extend the lead to 4-1 at the second intermission.
UND’s Parks extended the lead to a four-goal margin with a wrap-around goal following a rebound of MacMillian’s shot at 12:43 before Simpson added a power-play goal with just 40 seconds remaining in regulation to make the score its final 6-1.
The Pioneers were outshot 37-29 in the loss and finished 1-for-7 on power-play opportunities, while North Dakota had a 3-of-9 success rate.
“We had a lot of opportunities to get back in the game to score, but we just [were not] very sharp,” said Gwozdecky. “North Dakota, to their credit, have been very good defensively, getting sticks in passing lanes, deflecting pucks, blocking passes and blocking shots.”
Denver served 43 penalty minutes in the game, including a game misconduct and five-minute major penalty called on Doremus for checking from behind in the second period and a 10-minute misconduct penalty on sophomore defenseman Scott Mayfield for roughing. The Pioneers were whistled seven times for 22 minutes in the third period, while UND were called only eight times to serve 16 minutes throughout the entire game.
“We came out hard and were playing good hockey; it came down to controlling our emotions, and we did a bad job of that,” said Phillips. “Our penalty kill wasn’t good enough, our power-play wasn’t good enough and theirs were much better. It’s tough after a big win on Friday night.”
The Pioneers will hit the road this week to take on No. 2 Minnesota on Friday and Saturday.
This will mark the first time the two teams have met this season. Last season, the Pioneers finished 2-0-0 against the Gophers after upsetting them in Magness Arena. At the time the teams met, Minnesota was ranked No. 1/2 and the Pioneers were No. 14.
Friday’s series opener is slated to begin at 6:07 p.m. and will be televised on the Big 10 Network.
