Preview: Tight games becoming the trend
Jan. 19—ST. CLOUD, Minn. — UND's last three games against St. Cloud State have gone into overtime.
This season, close games are becoming a trend, too.
UND's last five National Collegiate Hockey Conference games have all been one-goal games, excluding empty-net goals.
The Fighting Hawks are expecting more of that as they head down the stretch run in the NCHC.
That stretch begins at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Saturday against St. Cloud State in the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center. It continues next week in Ralph Engelstad Arena against Denver.
"Iron sharpens iron," UND coach Brad Berry said. "You saw your nonconference schedule in the first half of the year and everybody goes, 'How are you going to get through that?' We found a way to do it and come up with a really good nonconference record against really good teams. It's the same thing right now. It makes your team better.
"If you want to go on a long run in the NCAA tournament, first you've got to get there and make the field. But it helps to play in these high pressure games. This is a really good opportunity to play against a good team here and try to get the result we want."
This will be the only meeting between UND and St. Cloud State during the regular season. The Huskies do not travel to Grand Forks.
"It's an exciting place to play," Berry said. "It's a really good team we're playing against and we're a really good team as well."
UND SCSU
3.77 (8th) Off 3.15 (21st)
2.41 (10th) Def 2.40 (8th)
22.5 (16th) PP 18.8 (34th)
82.0 (24th) PK 82.7 (21st)
52.2 (17th) FO 51.7 (20th)
.901 (31st) SP .911 (15th)
National stats in parenthesis. Categories are offense (goals per game), defense (goals against per game), power play percentage, penalty kill percentage, faceoff percentage and team save percentage.
St. Cloud State forward Zach Okabe scored 18 goals and tallied 36 points last season. He scored in the first game of the season against St. Thomas, then went on a surprising 16-game goal drought. Okabe appears to be breaking out of that right now. He's scored in two of the last three games for the Huskies.
On the Olympic-sized ice sheet, there's a little bit more room to wheel around. UND freshman defenseman Jake Livanavage is an elite skater and might be able to use that to his advantage at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center.
UND and St. Cloud State are pretty close in every stat category. They're pretty close in the standings, too. This one appears to have the makings of a split, just like most series in this building between these teams.
Friday: SCSU 4, UND 3
Saturday: UND 3, SCSU 2
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Podcast:
The call for home regionals and a preview of UND-SCSU
