Colorado College this week jumped up five spots to No. 10 in the latest USCHO.com Division I Men’s Hockey Poll, the highest spot the Tigers have held in 12 years.
Two blowout home wins last weekend against then-No. 2 North Dakota helped explain the Tigers’ big rise. More to the point, CC swept its four-game season series with the Fighting Hawks, doing so for the first time in the history of a rivalry that dates back to 1948.
The Tigers ran rampant in their 7-1 win Friday, scoring six unanswered goals and going 4 for 5 on power plays. Saturday’s 6-2 CC win, though, may have been more instructive with regards to what has made the Tigers so unexpectedly good this season. They had been picked by media members to finish sixth in the NCHC but are only four points back from first-place UND with six games left.
North Dakota led twice in Saturday’s first period through goals from Abram Wiebe and then Cameron Berg, who scored on a power play with nine seconds left before intermission. CC was dinged for four penalties in that period alone, one early in the second period and then none the rest of the way, and as CC coach Kris Mayotte said in his postgame comments, the Tigers simply got back to their game. Much of that involved goaltender Kaidan Mbereko, who made a combined 34 saves in the first two periods before finishing with 43.
“I give (North Dakota) a ton of credit,” said Mayotte, a former college goalie himself at Union. “They made the push that you would expect them to make, but Mbereko was special tonight. He made, we’re probably talking five, eight, 10 saves that you shake your head at.
“It wasn’t just like he was under siege; it was big-time chances, cross-crease stuff. He was special. He was the player of the game, no question about it, him on top of our (penalty) kill. A lot on what we had to endure early was PK time, and you put Tommy (Middleton) in the box, you put (Noah) Laba in the box, those are our PK guys, so we had a lot of guys step up in that scenario, but there’s no doubt that Berkie got us that thing tonight. He was absolutely incredible. He just made unbelievable save after unbelievable save, and allowed us to kind of get going.”
The game was still close, tied at 2-2, before CC scored four goals in the third period. Logan Will bagged the eventual game-winner at 4:19, Gleb Veremyev then scored two goals a minute apart and Laba fired into an empty net with 6:33 left. The Tigers outshot UND 15-9 in that period, while largely keeping the dangerous Fighting Hawks’ offense at arm’s length.
“The poise and how we attacked the third period, that was the biggest thing,” Mayotte said. “Adversity is going to happen, especially when you’re playing top teams in the country, and (UND) certainly are. They can come at you in waves, and you’re going to have a ton of adversity in playoff-atmosphere-type games against really good teams, and we bent but didn’t break.
“That’s probably the thing that if you think about our culture, what we’re trying to build and how we’re trying to do it, that’s what stands out to me, is just our ability to do the hard things, do it together and not let the adversity put us on our heels.”
CC has also scored 18 goals in the Tigers’ last three games. That and Mbereko’s Mike Richter Award-worthy form should have CC in good shape for its remaining regular-season games, four of them coming against ranked opposition in No. 19 Omaha this weekend and against No. 3 Denver, one week before the NCHC playoffs begin.
“When you get that, when you score goals, when you win games, it just allows you to believe more and more and more,” Mayotte said.
