The home opener for the regular season was upon the University of North Dakota men’s hockey team, when UND took on the Bemidji State University Beavers. UND was looking to shake off a loss from the night before in Bemidji.

UND came out strong to start the game, feeding off the crowd’s excitement. UND struck early when sophomore forward, Grant Mismash, buried one only 2:31 into the game with help from senior forward, Nick Jones and freshman forward, Gavin Hain.

Unfortunately, this was the most excitement the crowd at the Ralph Engelstad would have for most of the night. Once the goal was scored the game became very defensive and sloppy.

The power play was a major talking point in the series. However, not for good reason.

UND would be gifted power play opportunities for the rest of the game, but the power play units could not even get set up. Sloppy zone entry, careless passing in the zone and face-off losses became the main issues on the power play.

“Embarrassing is the only word I have,” senior alternate captain Nick Jones said. “The last two times they’ve come in here, I’ve been pretty optimistic about it. Tonight, there was nothing to be optimistic about. We couldn’t even get set up (on the power play). It was dreadful to be honest with you. It starts with that, but we let our team down tonight as a whole power play unit. We’ve got guys going out there and earning power plays for us and we go out there and put that effort forward. It starts with me losing face-offs out there, but just as a whole unit, we cannot have that.”

“Not good enough. That’s basically all there is to that,” Mismash said in regard to the power play.

“We didn’t start with the puck,” head coach Brad Berry said. “They won draws, they cleared the puck probably 90 or 95% of the time. You have to start with the puck to give yourself a chance.”

While the power play struggled, freshman goaltender, Adam Scheel, made his regular season debut for UND.

“It was exciting waking up this morning and finding out I am playing,” Scheel said. “You can’t beat playing here.”

“I thought Adam Scheel had an outstanding game tonight in goal for being a freshman,” Berry said.

“He played awesome,” Jones said. “For him to come into this environment as a freshman goaltender, he played awesome. We needed him there at the end, and he made some key saves for us. But we let him down tonight only putting in one goal.”

Scheel would make 15 saves on 16 shots. Scheel’s play is definitely going to keep his name in the discussion for the starting goaltender job between himself and sophomore goaltender Peter Thome.

While the game was nothing to write home about in the long-standing series against Bemidji State University, UND can only hope and work even harder to breakout of this scoring slump.

“We need more from the whole team in general. Just bearing down on our chances,” Mismash said. “We’re all in it together. Start fresh on Monday and start a run.”

UND will continue their homestand against the Minnesota State University Mavericks this weekend.