DENVER — With a spot in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff on the line, No. 4 Denver’s top line came up big. Troy Terry had four assists, Henrik Borgström had a goal and two assists, and Jarid Lukosevicius had two goals and an assist as Denver rolled past Colorado College 6-1 on Sunday to capture their best-of-three series.
Tanner Jaillet made 18 saves in shutting out the Tigers before being replaced by Devin Cooley, who gave up a single goal.
The win was also Denver’s 20th of the season, marking 17 straight seasons with 20 or more wins, the best such streak in college hockey. Denver advanced to its fifth straight Frozen Faceoff, and will face Minnesota Duluth in Friday’s semifinals.
“Every year, it seems like there’s a point in the season where it’s either you can go like this or like that,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery, pointing up and down. “In the last couple years, last year, it was just little moments where we just forged on and got better. Two years ago, we lost four in a row and came back with a different attitude and work ethic in the second half. And this year, it has just never transpired. We’re hoping that Friday night was that lesson that galvanizes us to play inspired hockey and play the right way the rest of the way.”
Whereas Denver had spent most of the first two games trailing the Tigers, Sunday the Pioneers struck first. The goal came off a great play by Colin Staub, who got the puck behind the CC net, skated up the left boards, then spun and drove the net. Just outside the crease, he slid a pass through the crease to Logan O’Connor on the far post, and O’Connor snapped it in at 5:11.
“I think you look at it, we were short on the back end, we had five D playing tonight, we were really banged up, and they came out, they had a lot of energy, they get two early goals and kind of got us on our heels,” said CC coach Mike Haviland.
Shortly after the DU goal, CC had a chance to get it back when the Tigers went on a power play, but they only got one shot, and Denver had several good short-handed chances with an aggressive kill. CC got a second power-play opportunity later in the period, but couldn’t capitalize.
Right as the penalty ended, Terry forechecked the puck away from Alex Pernitsky in the left corner, then spun and sent a pass to Tariq Hammond driving down from the point. Hammond one-timed it home short side at 15:57.
“We wanted to make them defend, use our speed, use our size down low, and I think they just wore down,” said Hammond. “We were killing a penalty off and he got the puck down low, doing his thing in the corner, and I saw an opening. He got loose from his guy, and I just called for it, and he found me and I just snapped it home. It was a pretty good play.”
Despite not scoring on a power play that carried over into the second period, Denver made it 3-0 on a pretty tic-tac-toe play. Borgström carried the puck up the left-side boards and sent a pass to Terry driving the slot, who redirected the pass to Lukosevicius, who was trailing the play. Lukosevicius one-timed a blast top shelf at 6:33.
“The top line scored some high-end goals; those two Lukosevicius goals are tic-tac-toe plays that those guys can make, but I think it’s the team collective effort of grinding them down,” Montgomery said. “It was the mentality we had that we wanted to wear them down over time, and it took longer than we wanted it to, but we finally got to them tonight.”
CC had a great chance to get back in it when Ryan Barrow was called for a five-minute major and game misconduct for contact to the head. Barrow hit an outstretched Westin Michaud as the latter was leaning forward and driving toward the net. However, CC took an undisciplined too-many-men penalty, putting the teams at four-on-four, and Denver quickly put the game out of reach.
First, Terry dropped a pass to Borgström driving the slot. Borgström made a sweet dangle move that froze CC defenseman Zach Berzolla, then moved in on Leclerc, getting a shot on net, then picking up his rebound and beating Leclerc.
“I thought maybe that power play we could get something going and we kind of shot ourselves in the foot there taking a penalty on the five-minute,” said Haviland. “From there, we never really got our feet underneath us.”
Haviland then replaced Leclerc with Alec Calvaruso. It was a disappointing result for Leclerc, who had made 46 saves in Saturday’s 3-2 loss and 37 in Friday’s 2-0 win.
Denver didn’t waste any time testing Calvaruso, as Liam Finlay got a rebound by kicking it to his stick just outside the crease and beat Calvaruso just 18 seconds after Calvaruso came into the game.
Near the midway point of the third period, Montgomery pulled Jaillet and replaced him with Cooley, and CC almost immediately scored, as Trey Bradley circled behind the net and sent a pass to Mason Bergh at the left post, who one-timed it home at 7:35.
However, Denver’s top line quickly struck back as Borgström carried the puck into the CC zone and passed to Terry on the right side, and Terry sent a pass through the slot to Lukosevicius, who one-timed it low glove side at 8:51 as he was falling to the ice.
“It’s big for us,” said Hammond. “We had a little adversity losing Friday night, but it kind of brought our team together. It was a big victory for us, and a good way to go out at Magness for us four seniors.”
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