The University of North Dakota Women’s team doesn’t score a lot of goals. The Fighting Hawks bread and butter is their team defense and solid goaltending.
Today, they continued with that trend. What wasn’t expected was a six-goal outburst from the Green and White.
During the 2015-16 season the Hawks have scored four or more goals nine times this season (7-0-2). Today was a new milestone. Not once did they score six or more goals during the 2015-16 season.
While goal scoring has been a problem this season, the Fighting Hawks defense has been nothing short of stellar (1.78 G/PG, 3rd in the WCHA). Offensively, UND entered this afternoon’s WCHA playoff game averaging 2.21 goals per game.
For the most part, UND played a flawless game and broke the game open in the second periods scoring four goals.
Offensively, UND was led by junior forward Amy Menke (1g-3a—4pts). UND’s top line of Menke, Meghan Dufault, Becca Kohler line had what most would classify as a banner day scoring (3g-7a—10pts).
“I think our passion buckets were full today,” Menke said. “We came out there flying and got a few in right away. Layla (Marvin) had that awesome snipe. That just fired us up right off of the bat.
“It was fun coming back after the second period and saying wow, we haven’t had one of these games where we were blowing them out of the water.”
“They were good,” head coach Brian Idalksi said. “When we’re scoring goals it’s genuinely them as a group. The thing that makes it hard is being on the road. You get a little more difficult time, matchup wise. We can get out whoever they want out against them. At home, you can move them around and bit and do some different things matchup wise. I thought they had a nice night.”
Coming into the game, UND had a pretty simple game plan.
“Well I think we did some things well that we talked about earlier in the week about getting traffic and getting some gritty goal – tip and screens,” Idalski said. “I think that we executed that well.”
Before we punch UND’s ticket to next weekend’s Final Faceoff, It’s only one game and they still have some work to do to make it to Minneapolis. Scoring six goals should give the Fighting Hawks some much-needed confidence.
“I think it was pretty much expected,” Menke said. “We know now that we set a bar. We know we can reach that. There’s no excuse that we can’t come out and do it again tomorrow.”
“First, that was a good start,” Idalski said. “We have aways to go. We have to be better tomorrow. We were good today. We have to be better tomorrow. It’s pretty simple boys. We have a lot of work to do.”
This season, the Fighting Hawks have a 6-5-3 (.535) record on Saturday’s. UND has had trouble closing out opponents to get the series sweeps.
Coach Idalski was asked what it would take to get the series sweep and close out the best-of-three series against the Huskies? “I guess that’s the million-dollar question isn’t it? Some of the consistency we have been battling. Until we come out and play like that again, I am going to have to answer questions like that.”
UND will look to get the sweep against the Huskies tomorrow afternoon at 2:37 p.m. CT.
