Rink Report: St. Cloud State Series Serves as a Lesson Learned for UND Hockey

UND garnered two points in its last series with St. Cloud State

GRAND FORKS, N.D. — UND Hockey garnered just two points last week against the top-seeded St. Cloud State Huskies. A pair of points happens to be enough to clinch the fourth and final home ice spot in the NCHC Quarterfinals. UND will now host Omaha this coming weekend.

Nonetheless, the hawks are saying they are taking away much more than just two points after last weekend’s matchup. They are carrying some confidence into this series as well.

“Our starts were great,” Fighting Hawks defenseman Hyaden Shaw said. “I think we stayed level-headed throughout the game without really a roller coaster of emotions obviously that’s how games are. But now with playoffs too, the margin of error is that much slimmer and it’s good to look at, especially with the weekend we just had against the number one team. That’s something we can use as a confidence boost. We’re going to take that weekend and translate it to this.”

Aside from that, UND also says they are taking away some valuable learning lessons from that series.

“A big thing was discipline especially with St. Cloud they got a great power play,” Hawks defenseman Colton Poolman explained. “Omaha has another great power play at 25 percent. Obviously [St. Cloud] beat us on Friday night they scored three-out-of-three power plays, so that was a big lesson. They’re a great team, so is Omaha so it’s going to have to be the same effort to maybe get some of those bounces going.”

“I think we have to have probably the commitment level and the intensity that we had last weekend with probably dialing in a couple of things, special teams being one of them knowing that this is a very good power play team coming in,” Head Coach Brad Berry added. “Discipline is probably going to be huge… and Winning a game. I’ll be it 3-on-3 overtime, but still to us that’s winning the outcome of a game and that’s what we need to build on going forward here.”

The 13th ranked Mavericks will head to the Ralph boasting the top power play in the NCHC. Puck drop on Friday night is at 7:37.