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DENVER — Behind a 29-save effort from goaltender Evan Cowley and three goals from its defensemen, No. 11 Denver beat No. 1 North Dakota 4-1 in front of 5,160 fans at Magness Arena Friday night.
“I thought our emotion and effort and execution were really good tonight,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery.
Denver had the better chances early, especially on a five-minute power play when Mark MacMillan was called for a five-minute major and game misconduct at 7:08 for checking from behind.
The Pioneers had a couple of good chances, and came in waves, but Zane McIntyre kept it scoreless and the North Dakota penalty kill was good at keeping Denver to the outside.
“Usually, that’s a huge momentum swing, and we were talking about it on the bench,” said Montgomery of North Dakota’s kill. “North Dakota was doing such a good job on its penalty kill, and I said, ‘We can’t get frustrated. We just go back to work five-on-five like we did at the start of the first period.”
It looked like the first period would end scoreless, but Gabe Levin got the puck inside the North Dakota blue line and spied Josiah Didier coming across on the far side and fed him a pass. Didier got a quick wrist shot off as he stepped toward the middle and beat McIntyre low stick side at 18:31.
Early in the second, North Dakota had a good chance, but Cowley pushed a rebound off to the far boards before Drake Caggiula could pick it up and shoot into the gaping net.
“We didn’t get to any of them until the third period,” said North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol of the rebounds. “We got to some and he was good; he made good second saves.”
North Dakota got its first full power play when Joey LaLeggia slashed Michael Parks as he broke in alone on Cowley. Parks tried to go to his backhand, but Cowley made the save. On the ensuing power play, North Dakota had a couple of good doorstop opportunities, but Cowley made the saves.
A few minutes later, Denver went on a power play, and the Pioneers capitalized when Ty Loney picked up the puck along the right boards and threw a pass to Quentin Shore in the slot. Shore one-timed a backhand top corner stick side at 12:49.
“No question, that’s the game, and those momentum swings are part of the game, and when it swings one way, you have to push back the other way,” said Hakstol. “Really, we stuck around and found a way to grind our way to the third period without being out of it and dug our way back in, but we just didn’t have enough of a push to swing that momentum all the way.”
Though Denver seemed to be in control, North Dakota turned it around in the third period. Right off a draw, Connor Gaarder got the puck near the goal line and threw a pass back out to Bryn Chyzyk out in the slot, and Chyzyk fought off a DU defender and beat Cowley low glove side with a quick backhand at 4:05.
“It was just kind of a lucky bounce off the faceoff,” said Cowley. “It went right on the guy’s stick.”
North Dakota poured on the pressure, and had DU running around in its own end for a few minutes. Right after the Pioneers iced it, Montgomery called timeout to get his team to regroup.
“You just try to slow things down and keep the crowd out of it; there’s a lot of NoDak fans,” said Cowley. “They got some wheels there, so we just tried to slow it down. We wanted to keep it simple and make sure they weren’t getting too many solid opportunities.”
The break worked, and shortly thereafter, while playing four-on-four, Denver got its two-goal lead back when Danton Heinen got a quick pass off to LaLeggia on the left side, and LaLeggia took two steps in and beat McIntyre top corner inside the left post with a quick snap shot at 7:51.
“He’s got such a great shot and he got a little daylight, and when he’s got daylight he can pick corners; he does it every day in practice,” said Montgomery. “I did think that we knew our responsibilities defensively and we kept things predominantly to the outside, and when they did get in, Cowley answered the bell.”
Will Butcher added an empty-net tally at 19:59 to wrap up the scoring.
The two teams are back at it Saturday at 7 p.m. MST.
