North Dakota Squanders Two-Goal Lead to Denver

by Eric Burton | Feb 15, 2015

North Dakota Squanders Two-Goal Lead to Denver

by Eric Burton | Feb 15, 2015

The University of North Dakota has yet to lose a game in regulation on Saturday night during the 2014-15 season. Coming to Saturday’s game, UND had a 13-0-1 record on Saturday nights.

That streak continued on Saturday night following UND’s 3-3 tie to the Denver Pioneers.

UND also entered Saturday’s game with a 16-0-1 record when leading after two periods of play. With the 3-3 tie to the Denver Pioneers, UND unbeaten streak on Saturday nights continues.

Gauging from the mood of some of the players, there was a feeling that UND let this one slip away. UND’s senior caption Stephane Pattyn explained.

“It’s obviously disappointing going into the third with a two-goal lead,” Pattyn said. “They came out hard. We knew they would. They’re a desperate team. They’re a good team. Coming into our barn, you’ve got a 20-minute game to play and you’re down by two you’re going to give it your all. We didn’t take care of pucks early in the third period and it came back and bit us.”

UND 0-2 in the shootout this season

The NCHC uses the shutout to break ties for NCHC regular season Conference games. While the game was officially a tie, the Pioneers secured the extra point by winning the shootout.

By, not winning the game in overtime or in the shootout proved to be costly to UND. When Saturday night ended, three teams were tied for first place in the NCHC standings.

UND had their chances to win the game but failed to cash in on them when it mattered the most. UND had an apparent, legitimate goal waved off via goal review.

With about 4:12 remaining in the game, UND thought they had scored the go-ahead goal. Video confirmed that the puck was clearly in the net.

The refs reviewed the play in question yet failed to confirm a goal. (See Video Below)

The NCHC head of officials Mike Schmidt said the goal was waved off because the ref intended to blow his whistle.

Yeah, okay.

That wasn’t the only blown call by the on-ice officials. There was another defining moment in the game. At the 14:44 mark of the first period, Denver sophomore forward Trevor Moore was assessed a five-minute major penalty for clipping UND forward Drake Caggiula.

Moore wasn’t thrown out of the game and went on to score two goals and the game-winning goal in the shootout. One could argue that he should have been tossed from the game. You can watch the embedded video and make up your mind for yourself.

Scoring goals for UND was Keaton Thompson, Nick Mattson and Drake Caggiula.

The game would go to overtime and the game would end with yet another goal review at the end of the game. Pioneers forward Quentin Shore thought he had scored the game-winning goal with 1.6 second remaining. The call on the ice was that the Pioneers had scored a good goal.

After further review, the puck hit a water bottle on the top of the net and the puck never was in the goal.

With the tie, UND improves to (20-6-3, 11-5-2-0 NCHC). Denver improves to (16-10-2, 9-8-1-1NCHC).

“Another hard fought game,” head coach Dave Hakstol said. “We were maybe not as sharp in some areas as we would like to be. It was a pretty hard fought game. The only area that I would like to do a better job was in first two or three minutes of the third period.”

Hakstol continued, “We had an opportunity to get another two points tonight. We got the one. I think that’s the prevailing mentality in our locker room and we failed to do that. We chance to close out those two extra points and we didn’t do that.”