UND Hockey looks to lean on its five unanswered goals from last Saturday to give it some juice this weekend.
The Fighting Hawks improved 13-10-2 (8-5-1 NCHC) after beating St. Cloud State last Saturday 6-2.
After giving up a 3-1 lead in the third period on Friday, the team took a step back after the dominant first 40 minutes.
“Opportunity that got away from us,” UND Head Coach Brad Berry told the Grand Forks Herald. “We’re getting late in the year here. The same things keep coming up about habits and details. It’s one of those things that you can’t win a game until you close out a 60-minute game. The game got away from us when we took a couple of undisciplined penalties, and it cost us with the momentum. This is the time of the year you have to hammer down the details.”
While UND won the game in a shootout, the frustrating finish gave it fuel for game two.
“I just think when we’re up by two goals with 10 minutes left, it’s that time where you have to make smart plays,” UND senior Cameron Berg told the Grand Forks Herald. “It’s just the cliches. You have to get pucks out of our zone. If you have a play, make it. But if you don’t, at this time of the game, just get it in deep and make them go 200-feet to score.”
On Saturday, UND played the full 60 minutes and hammered down on all the “cliches,” scoring six goals with five different players scoring.
UND played on Olympic ice for the first time this season in St. Cloud.
St. Cloud State is the only National Collegiate Hockey Conference team with an Olympic sheet.
“It’s knowing when to go and knowing when to play defense and not try to rush at someone, so a lot of space opens up,” UND alternate captain Jake Schmaltz told the Grand Forks Herald. “At the end of the day, it’s hockey. There might be some more space, but for us, it’s probably just using our speed to our advantage and taking advantage of more ice.”
The bigger sheet did not bother them at all as they scored nine goals in two games and moved up in the NCHC standings.
“The standings in the NCHC are really tight,” UND senior Carter Wilkie told the Grand Forks Herald after game one. “Points come really hard. Coming off a two-week break, getting a (shootout) win after getting swept felt really good, but we’re still hungry for a regulation win. We want all three points tomorrow.”
After getting three points on Saturday, they moved to fourth in the NCHC and 22nd in the pairwise.
Schmaltz emphasized the team’s urgency to get things going these last few weeks as they need to string together key wins for the pairwise.
“We kind of put ourselves in a spot that’s not perfect, but we’re just trying to look at every single game as an opportunity to keep building toward the end of the year,” Shmaltz said. “We’re not looking too far ahead.”
UND will look to get in a groove this weekend when it hosts Colorado College for a two-game series at Ralph Engelstad Arena.
“We always talk about being 1-0 every time you hit the ice,” Berry told the Grand Forks Herald. “Then, that stuff takes care of itself. You can’t look at the Pairwise. You can’t look at the standings. You’ve just got to manage the day-to-day of playing that game and going through a process of trying to get the result. I know it sounds like a huge cliche, but it’s very true.”
Elijah Andrews is the Dakota Student Sports Reporter. He can be reached at [email protected].
