GRAND FORKS, ND– After winning at Bemidji State last night, the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks came back home to complete the home-and-home against the Beavers. A slow start doomed the Hawks from the start, but thanks to late pressure– they were able to get the game into overtime, but could not complete the comeback, losing 4-3 to Bemidji in extra time. 

“One of the main points for today was to have a better start,” said UND coach Brad Berry after the game. “I thought a couple plays led to their goals, and they were nice goals, but a couple of mistakes– not handling the puck in the neutral zone and errand passes in our zone. You can’t put yourself down 2-0 against a good team like that.”

Bemidji struck first, as Kyle Looft wristed on through a mass of humanity and put it past Zach Driscoll to make it 1-0 Beavers 47 seconds into the game. Less than a minute after that, Tyler Kirkup picked up an errand pass in the defensive zone to make it 2-0 within the first 1:28 of the game. After their timeout was called, UND got on the board with a great transition and tic-tac passing from Connor Ford and Chris Jandric allowed Ashton Calder to put home his third of the year. While the Fighting Hawks got most of the chances through the period, including two solid chances from Gavin Hain, Kirkup got on the board again, after a pass from Alex Adams hit off his stick and trickled past Driscoll to make it 3-1 Bemidji.

North Dakota, knowing they couldn’t give the next goal, kept pushing offensively with a decent amount of chances– including Hain skying a puck on the breakaway. They finally got within one as Riese Gaber picked up a Louis Jamernik wrap-around rebound to close the gap to 3-2.  Even with the power plays that UND were given towards the end of the frame, they couldn’t convert and had only a few quality chances at Michael Carr. UND outshot Bemidji 11-4, but the score remained 3-2 after 40. 

Try as they might, UND couldn’t get shots past Carr. Bemidji got their bodies, sticks, and everything else in the way of any potential Fighting Hawks shots. While some passes didn’t connect, the Hawks made sure that they did support Driscoll when Bemidji tried to press the play. It wasn’t until there was 48 seconds left in the game, when– with the extra attacker– Ashton Calder fired it on net and Carr, who was half in the net, let it slip by him to tie the game, sending it to overtime. 

“(Sanderson) made a great play off the wall, caught them sleeping a little bit,” said Calder of the game-tying goal. “(Schmaltz) made a great pass and I was there to pump it into the back of the net.” 

It took only 53 seconds in OT to end it, as Ross Armour got behind the UND defense to put it over the shoulder of Driscoll to give Bemidji the split on the weekend with a 4-3 victory of their own. 

THEY SAID IT

“You gotta reset. That was a critical time to reset your team and get back into sorts again. When you give up two goals, you get kind of shaken a little bit; I wanted to make sure our guys get back on the horse again. You can’t control what’s in the past, but you can control the future. I want to make sure the future of our game was good.”– Berry on using his time-out 1:28 into regulation. 

“We showed we can play really well, especially those last two periods, we just have to start better. You can’t spot teams, especially like that, two goals, three goals right away in the first period, so I think if we clean that up, we’ll be really good after that.”– Calder on the takeaways on the weekend.

“At the end of the day, it’s huge to have that tied up and go into your pairwise ranking against a good team. The biggest point is we like our team, but we got to play more like a team in the early part of the game. Second and third, we had great push-back, I don’t think we spent a whole lot of time in the second and third at our end of the rink. We just have to have a more effort not playing in our zone in the first.”– Berry on getting into overtime.