Gearing up to get back to work, the Green and White tries to recover from its loss against Bemidji last weekend as UND heads back on the road to play St. Cloud State this weekend.

“Obviously, we’re not happy about the loss,” UND forward Amy Menke said. “We just have to learn from this loss and find a way not to have it happen again.”

The loss against the Beavers dropped UND down to the eighth spot in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Women’s College Hockey Poll, trading places with Bemidji.

The St. Cloud Huskies are currently on a four game losing streak after being defeated by the No. 2 team in the nation, the University of Wisconsin. In the four games the Huskies lost, the goalies have allowed 25 pucks in the net, while the team remained shutout in every game.

Looking back to last season, the 2014-15 UND squad had St. Cloud under control by bringing home all four wins against the Huskies, while shutting them out twice.

During the season, UND stressed the importance of the entire team working together to learn about the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and how to use them as an advantage.

“I’ve said for a few weeks that we’re not a finished product,” UND coach Idalski said. “We have room to grow, but there are some pieces there, we do some good things.”

As always, the freshmen continue to develop into stronger players but dedication on a regular basis is required and strong leadership is key.

“We have to rely heavily on older kids right now,” Idalski said. “So we can get our younger kids up to speed to contribute on a regular basis.”

Going forward into this weekend, some things UND is working on is cleaner plays.

“I think we just need to make our play a little cleaner,” Menke said.  “We had some passes that were a little bouncy we couldn’t seem to get the puck on our stick and hold it we just need to clean it up a bit and slow it down.”

Overall, the mood in the locker room is confident for this weekend series.

“I’m feeling confident going into St. Cloud,” Menke said. “We will use what we learned from the Bemidji loss to move forward this weekend.”

“As a team, we have been working hard in practice this week. We know that if we do what we have to do, we will be successful,” Senior Defenseman Tanya Eisenschmid said. “We play 60, or in Saturday’s game, 65 minutes, and up until that whistle blows, we have to go all the way to win these games.”

The series will start in at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, Friday, Oct. 23 when the puck drops at 7 p.m.

Allyson Bento is a sports writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected]