Minnesota Duluth is heading to its fourth consecutive NCHC Frozen Faceoff next weekend after finishing off a series sweep of Nebraska-Omaha on Saturday with a 4-1 victory in the second game of a best-of-three quarterfinal series.
Freshman center Jackson Cates, sophomore wing Kobe Roth, freshman wing Cole Koepke and senior center Peter Krieger scored in the final game of the 2018-19 season at Amsoil Arena. Junior goaltender Hunter Shepard made 18 saves before a crowd of 4,318.
“Very excited to move forward. We have another chance to win a championship there at the Frozen Faceoff,” said UMD senior captain Parker Mackay, who was part of the Bulldogs squad that won the Frozen Faceoff two years ago and the NCAA title last year at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. “We’re looking forward to it, but we got work to do this week. We can always be making things better out there.”
Sophomore defenseman Mikey Anderson set up the Bulldogs’ first two goals to extend his point streak to six games and erase an initial 1-0 deficit.
Anderson took a pass by sophomore defenseman Dylan Samberg and one-timed it hard toward the end boards. The puck bounced right to Cates, who tied the game at 1-1 at the 11:46 mark of the first with his seventh goal of the season.
With UMD on a power play seven minutes into the second, Roth put the Bulldogs ahead 2-1 by getting a piece of a shot that came down the pipe from Anderson.
Anderson has no goals, but 10 assists in his six-game points streak. He’s recorded multiple assists now in four of the last six games.
“We’ve had some good finishes by all of them. I’ve had a good amount of power-play assists, too,” said Anderson, who has five power-play assists in the last six games. “It’s just finishing our chances that we’ve been having. That goes to the guys in the room. They are bearing down and finishing their chances.”
The Bulldogs thought they went ahead 2-1 via a power-play goal at the first-period buzzer - another Anderson set up, this time to Noah Cates - but video review showed the puck was on the goal line when the clock struck 0.00.
There was no video review necessary in the closing seconds of the second period when Koepke picked up his fifth goal of his rookie campaign, this one on a pass by sophomore center Justin Richards. That shot crossed the goal line with 5.8 seconds left before the intermission.
Koepke’s goal not only came late in the period, it came after a pair of successful penalty kills late in the period. Those kills were just as important as the goal, coach Scott Sandelin said.
“I thought the penalty kills in the second period were huge, those two in a row. They gave us some momentum and we got a big goal at the end of the period,” Sandelin said. “I thought that was a really big goal. That timeframe was a turning point in the game. That game could have gone either way.”
Krieger recorded his eighth goal of the season just over six minutes into the third period thanks to a late dish by Noah Cates - the freshman winger and NCHC Rookie of the Year candidate who now has 22 points on the year - on a two-on-one attack.
Freshman wing Taylor Ward gave the Mavericks a 1-0 lead 9:40 in, a lead that was erased 2 minutes, 6 seconds by the elder Cates brother.
UMD, the tournament’s second seed, will play the highest remaining seed Friday in the Frozen Faceoff semifinals. Top-seeded St. Cloud State, which swept Miami this weekend, will play the lowest remaining seed.
Sixth-seeded Colorado College took a 1-0 lead at third-seeded Western Michigan on Saturday in a series that started a day late because weather and mechanical problems kept delaying the Tigers’ flights to Kalamazoo, Mich.
Fourth-seeded Denver finished a sweep of North Dakota, which will miss the NCHC Frozen Faceoff for the first time in the six-year history of the league.
Omaha 1-0-0-1
Minn. Duluth 1-2-1-4
First period - 1. UNO, Taylor Ward 9 (Mason Morelli, Fredrik Olofsson), 9:40; 2. UMD, Jackson Cates 7 (Mikey Anderson, Dylan Samberg), 11:46. Penalties - Nick Wolff, UMD (holding), 2:38; Tyler Weiss, UNO (hooking), 3:46; Wolff, UMD (tripping), 6:31; Ward, UNO (hand on the puck), 18:00.
Second period - 3. UMD, Kobe Roth 7 (Mikey Anderson, Peter Krieger), 7:14 (pp); 4. UMD, Cole Koepke 5 (Justin Richards, Parker Mackay), 19:54. Penalties - Zach Jordan, UNO (tripping), 6:21; Teemu Pulkkinen, UNO (charging), 9:52; Noah Cates, UMD (interference), 12:33; Dylan Samberg, UMD (holding), 16:22.
Third period - 5. UMD, Krieger 8 (N. Cates. Wolff), 6:11. Penalties - Morelli, UNO (high sticking), 3:19; Ryan Jones, UNO (interference), 16:30.
Shots on goal - UNO 7-7-5-19; UMD 7-11-15-33. Goalies - Evan Weninger, UNO (33 shots-29 saves); Hunter Shepard, UMD (19-18). Power plays - UNO 0-of-4; UMD 1-of-6. Referees - Scott Bokal, Timm Walsh. Linesmen - Jeff Schultz, Sterling Egan. Att. - 4,318.
