Bjorn Engstrom had a four-point night with two goals and two assists, Kelly Popadynetz added a goal and two assists, and both skaters joined the Pioneers’ Century Club as Denver defeated Air Force, 5-2, in the first round of the Wells Fargo Denver Cup.<\/p>\n
With the win, the Pioneeers (10-7-2) stretch their unbeaten streak to 10 games (8-0-2) — the second-longest wave in the country — and advance to Saturday’s championship game to play Providence, a 4-2 winner over Ferris State. Air Force (9-7-1) will play the Bulldogs on Saturday in the consolation game.<\/p>\n
The Pioneers quickly shook off two weeks of rust by scoring the game’s first goal just 2 minutes, 6 seconds into the game when Popadynetz and Engstrom started a 2-on-1 break. Popadynetz skated down the right wing, waited as the Air Force defender fell down to block the shot, then slipped a pass under the Falcon defender to a cutting Engstrom, who flipped a one-timer under Marc Kielkucki’s stick side.<\/p>\n
Air Force struck back at the 11:11 mark when Judd Stauss broke his stick trying to clear the puck out of the Pioneer zone. The Falcons took the turnover and converted when Shane Saum wristed a bullet over the stick side of Adam Berkhoel, who was making his first start between the pipes in 10 games.<\/p>\n
Engstrom and Popadynetz would hook up again in mirror fashion 5:36 into the second period, as Engstrom streaked down the left wing and fed a cross to Popadynetz, who wristed a shot over Kielkucki’s stick side. Less than two minutes later, Stauss skated along the blue line and fired a shot toward the net that Max Bull deflected in at 7:24. <\/p>\n
The first highlight of the night came at the 9:42 mark of the second period,when Popadynetz fed Engstrom a pass from the left circle. Engstrom chipped in an easy one-timer for his second goal of the game, and more notably, the 100th point of Popadynetz’ career. He now has 40 goals and 60 assists over his four-year career. <\/p>\n
With 11 seconds left in the game, Matt Weber slid in an empty-netter that was assisted by Engstrom to post his 100th career point (43-57-100). Popadynetz and Engstrom are now the 80th and 81st Pioneers to join the Century Club. <\/p>\n
“Kelly and Bjorn are both great players, and they both had great games,” said Denver coach George Gwozdecky. “All four teams showed rust from the break, but I thought we played a solid game. There is a lot to play for tomorrow night.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bjorn Engstrom had a four-point night with two goals and two assists, Kelly Popadynetz added a goal and two assists, and both skaters joined the Pioneers’ Century Club as Denver defeated Air Force, 5-2, in the first round of the Wells Fargo Denver Cup. With the win, the Pioneeers (10-7-2) stretch their unbeaten streak to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}