UND Hockey Gets Ready for Conference Play

North Dakota Faces Elite Competition in upcoming NCHC Play

Video Courtesy: Midco Sports Network

GRAND FORKS, N.D — Fresh off a loss to number 16 Penn State in the Hall of Fame Game, North Dakota hockey skates into conference play having already faced three top-25 opponents preparing them for an even more competitive NCHC conference slate.

“You take the positives and negatives and you see what you can do to change the negatives and you stay with the positive. Coach Berry always reiterates to the guys, we don’t worry about the other team and worry about ourselves and we kind of just keep working on that every day and getting back,” said freshman forward, Matteo Costantini.

“I think just playing hard teams like the Bemidji State and Penn State. I mean, they play hard and every conference game is going to be hard. There’s a lot of top 10 teams and I know it’s gonna be a challenge every night so we just got to be ready to play hard and play our game and just compete every night,” said freshman forward, Jake Schmaltz.

“Now we get into the 24-game grind that we experienced last year we were in the pod in Omaha where we had to play 10 games in a short amount of time and get after it and now it’s going to be the same thing thing here. It exponentially dials up another level here and we got a very good opponent coming in here into our rink; we’ve been on the road the last couple of weekends here and all we’re finally back at the Ralph. It’s a situation now where you know, these 24 games matter and position yourself in a situation to try to get always advantage be in top four. There’s a lot of good teams that this year,” said head coach Brad Berry.

Number eight UND will host number 11 Denver this weekend at the Ralph. It will be the only meeting between the Pioneers and the Fighting Hawks this season and this will begin a stretch of the next three or four series being played at home.