GRAND FORKS, ND– After a 4-1 win on Saturday night, the University of North Dakota kept their home cooking going, as they faced off against the Colorado College Tigers. In front of 1,775 at the Ralph Engelstad Arena, the Fighting Hawks completed the sweep with a 5-0 victory over the Tigers to move them into 1st of the NCHC. 

“We did a good job of coming out early,” head coach Brad Berry mentioned post-game. “We talk about the second night is the toughest after winning Friday and dealing with pushback. We had good discipline, until what happened at the end there, but that is what it is. We talked about taking less unneeded penalties, there are ones we will take, but I think we got rid of the unneeded penalties.”

North Dakota took control in the first part of the period, taking the pace of play to Colorado College and holding the Tigers’ offense to no shots until halfway through the frame. The Fighting Hawks struck first after Shane Pinto made a power move down the left side, cutting in and beating Dominic Basse for his seventh of the season. 

“During our video scouting this morning it was pointed out,” Pinto said of his goal. “Coach said their defense was pretty immobile, so I just took it to them.”

Pinto was the focal point for the first part of the frame, being set-up twice back door, but not being able to connect on either chance. The Fighting Hawks had some issues in their own end, giving up the puck and allowing the Tigers to get some offense going at the tail-end of the period. 

A chess match in the first few minutes, as both UND and CC played in the neutral zone a bit, but Collin Adams gave UND a 2-0 lead when he got a pass from Matt Kiersted behind all of the Tigers defense and slid the breakaway chance five-hole on Basse to extend the lead. Minutes later, Shane Pinto gots his second goal of the game after coming from the side wall and threw a fade-away shot from the top of the slot that eluded the traffic in front and went past Basse to make it 3-0. Judd Caufield got into the action midway through the period, getting a centering pass in front from Riese Gaber, initially getting it stopped by Basse, but following his own rebound to make it 4-0. 

The Tigers got into penalty trouble in the middle part of the second, going down two men. During the two-man advantage, Grant Mismash tallied his eighth goal of the year after a wonderful pass from the point by Jake Sanderson, making it a 5-0 UND.

Things broke down with 6:16 remaining, as Hugo Blixt laid a hit from behind to Jasper Weatherby, which drew the ire of Tyler Kleven, who dropped cross-check on Blixt while Blixt was on the ice. Both Blixt and Kleven were given the game misconducts on the incident. That was the last of the fireworks, as UND kept the play in the CC zone, keeping them away from Adam Scheel, who pitched a 15-save shutout and swept the weekend for the Fighting Hawks. 

The sweep at home was a carryover from the dominant home record UND had last season. While they don’t like to look in the past, the team did need to make sure it wasn’t neglected on the first weekend back. 

“This is our home. We don’t go back in history, but we had to this weekend,” Berry said of UND’s home ice advantage. “We were 18-1 last year and our younger guys had to know about it. It’s a special place we want to make sure we protect that and keep moving forward.”

The defense was active in the offensive end, as well, with Kiersted and Sanderson putting up two assists apiece, while helping hold the Tigers to only 15 shots on Sunday, bringing CC’s total to  36 on the weekend. 

THEY SAID IT

“Coming off the break and you play a couple of games and try to get momentum. Everyone is trying to  find their stride and building momentum. We saw what our bar is, how we can play to the capabilities of our team on that second night in Denver.” -Brad Berry on the team coming back off the Denver weekend

“It was a wake-up call. We were good in the pod, but we weren’t playing well. We’ve been much better ever since. We’re just being harder on pucks and playing our game. We’ve got to be physical, we cheated in Colorado (versus the Tigers) thinking it’d be coming easy to us, but we’ve got to keep working.” — Shane Pinto on how the loss against Denver affected the team.