North Dakota Hockey Looks to Make it Six Straight Wins With Sweep in Omaha

A Split Will Not Meet the Standard as UND Hockey Prepares For the Postseason

GRAND FORKS, N.D. (KVRR) — North Dakota Hockey already lifted the Penrose Cup last weekend. This weekend they wrap up their regular season on the road against Omaha. While the Fighting Hawks come in at number three in the latest USCHO and Pairwise rankings, the Omaha Mavs come into this weekend’s series at 16 in the USCHO and 17 in the Pairwise. While North Dakota is looking like a lock for the National Tournament and has already clinched the Penrose, the Mavs are on the bubble and fighting for their playoff lives on their home ice this weekend. For Coach Berry and the Hawks the goal is a sweep.

“I had on the dry board what’s on the line. I had what Omaha has on the line and what we have on the line. Omaha is 17th in the Pairwise. You firmly have to be at 14 and above to be in the tournament. 15 and 16 are to the Atlantic winner and the CCHA winner. So they’re fighting for that 14th spot or higher. They know that we’re a top team coming in; that in order for them to get to where they need to be they have to go through us. The other thing is they’re fighting for home ice. I told them, they’re going to be fighting for their lives. The other thing for us like I told you earlier here, we want to grab the number two spot overall or the number one spot if we can in the Pairwise. We want to keep going up the latter on that side. But the other thing for us is having the ability to win game after game after game. We talked about if you have to win, in order to win a Regional or the NCAA National Title, you got to win two games on the weekend. We’ve done that he past two weekends. We got to make sure that each and every weekend it’s not just one game, it’s not no games, it’s two games,” said Coach Berry.

Puck drop for the North Dakota Fighting Hawks and the Omaha Mavericks Friday night is at 7:07 down in Nebraska.