After a historic 2-0 victory in front of a packed Ball Arena crowd last week, Denver traveled to Colorado Springs on Feb. 4 to once again take on Colorado College. Denver continued their recent dominance over their in-state rivals, winning their ninth straight game and improving to 13-1-1 against CC in their last 15 meetings. While taking down the Tigers proved to be no easy task, DU secured a 4-1 victory, a scoreline that doesn’t reflect how tense the game was at times.
Head Coach David Carle’s men came out of the gates with high intensity, peppering CC goaltender Kaidan Mbereko with shot attempts early in the game. After both teams failed to score on their first power play of the night, Denver got their second power play of the night and took advantage.
After trapping the undermanned Tigers in their own zone for most of the powerplay, the Crimson and Gold finally struck with 19 seconds to go in the man advantage when senior forward Casey Dornbach (Edina, Minn.) collected a rebound following a Mbereko save and put it into the back of the net.
After some back-and-forth action, Denver would strike again when senior captain Justin Lee (Waskada, Manitoba) easily skated into a prime shooting position and fired a wrist shot past the goaltender.
However, the period was not without its scary moments for DU. With just over a minute remaining in the period, CC had a great chance to cut the lead in half. But senior goaltender Magnus Chrona (Stockholm, Sweden) made a fantastic stop to keep the game 2-0 and preserve his long shutout streak against Colorado College.
The second period was more of a stop-start affair with a lot of icing calls and stoppages of play. There was no real flow or rhythm to the game and that showed with the lack of goals in the period. Sophomore forward Massimo Rizzo (Burnaby, B.C.) hit the post early in the period, which was the best chance for either side.
The third period had a much faster tempo to it, with both teams going up and down the ice getting chances. Colorado College was beginning to push for a goal and ended up getting it four minutes into the period.
CC forward Hunter McKown had a breakaway opportunity that forced sophomore defenseman Shai Buium (San Diego, Calif.) to commit a penalty to stop McKown from getting a clean look at the goal. CC was awarded a penalty shot, which McKown slotted past Chrona following a nice piece of skill. This was the first goal Chrona had allowed against CC in 350 minutes and 11 seconds, a streak that spanned seven games.
With the quick third-period response from CC, DU needed to show their championship mentality to put the game away. They had an opportunity to do this when CC committed a penalty while already on the penalty kill to make it a 5-on-3 advantage for DU.
Head Coach Carle took his timeout after the second penalty to gather his players and tell them what the game plan was. Carle said he called the timeout because “it just felt like it was a big moment in a game.”
“They had just scored on the penalty-shot goal. They had a little momentum off of that at 5-on-5, so it settled everything down and get us on the same page,” he said.
Carle’s move paid off with Rizzo setting up junior defenseman Mike Benning (St. Albert, Alberta) who fired home a one-timer to make it a 3-1 game. This goal seemed to take the wind out of CC’s sails, and DU began to dominate.
Chrona had to make a couple of big saves, particularly on a CC power play just over halfway through the period, but Denver felt in control of the game after the Benning goal.
DU would add a fourth late in the period when sophomore forward Carter King (Calgary, Alberta) scored an empty net goal to put the finishing touches on the win.
However, that wasn’t the end of the drama, the two rivals got into a major bust-up in front of the goal and multiple players on each team were thrown out of the game. With under a minute to go and the game in hand, the incident was nothing more than drama and had no bearing on the game with DU securing a 4-1 victory.
DU returns to Magness Arena on Feb. 10 and 11 for a two-game set against another NCHC rival, North Dakota.
