ST. PAUL, Minn. — One year after falling short in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff, the Denver Pioneers defeated the St. Cloud State Huskies 4-1 on Saturday to win it, becoming the first NCHC team to win the event twice.
Denver and St. Cloud were the two best teams in the conference this year, with the Huskies taking the Penrose Cup and the Pioneers winning the tournament. St. Cloud will be the top seed in the NCAA tournament next weekend, while Denver will be seeded fifth.
“Really proud of our group; I thought we were relentless,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery. “I thought the first 5-10 minutes we were on our heels and St. Cloud was coming at us, and obviously the tournament MVP stood tall in those moments.”
Denver goalie Tanner Jaillet made 28 saves to earn MVP honors.
Denver took the early lead when Kohen Olischefski got a shot on net in the slot that went in off a St. Cloud defender. The goal was reviewed and stood as a good goal at 4:24.
“After we scored that first goal, I thought we really started to play Denver hockey,” said Montgomery. “We were very persistent, very hard offensively and defensively, and able to push our lead because of it.”
Denver just missed taking a two-goal lead later in the period when Dylan Gambrell hit the post from in close. St. Cloud then had a good chance to tie it while on a power play in the last two minutes of the game, but the Huskies couldn’t convert, and then in the last 10 seconds Denver’s Logan O’Connor raced up the left boards and got off a snap shot that Dávid Hrenák stopped with his left pad. However, Hrenák didn’t control the rebound, and it came to Jake Durflinger on the right side of the slot, and he fired it into the open net.
“That was huge,” Jaillet said. “I know personally you don’t want to get scored on the last two minutes of a period, just for momentum purposes. Us being able to get that one before the end of the first to go up two was huge, and from there I guess we just kept on rolling.”
Early in the second, Denver made it 3-0 when Ryan Barrow raced up the left side of the ice from the neutral zone and lifted a backhand top corner glove side at 2:06. That was all on the night for Hrenák, who was replaced by Jeff Smith.
“Get him out of there; he’d been going awfully strong,” St. Cloud coach Bob Motzko said of the decision to pull Hrenák. “He really wasn’t at fault in them; they were kind of fluky goals. One of them ricocheted in on the first one; I didn’t like the backhander. At that point, Smithy has been good for us, let’s get him in there and see if we could change something up. It was kind of a simple decision to do.”
Denver had a few power-play chances midway through the third to put the game completely out of reach, but didn’t capitalize, and then Ryan Fitzgerald brought the partisan crowd to life with a rebound goal at 15:54 after Jimmy Schuldt had taken a shot from the right faceoff circle, making it 3-1. After the goal, St. Cloud started to play with renewed life.
“I think we knew their game plan was to try to get a lead early and then hold on,” said Schuldt. “They’re a really structured team; we knew that coming into the game. They usually try to get a goal or two out of their top guys and play shutdown hockey.”
However, Denver did quickly regroup, as the puck came off Jack Poehling’s stick at the boards and to Gambrell at the top of the right faceoff circle, and he ripped a one-timer slap shot that went in off Smith’s arm at 17:06.
Jaillet, Gambrell, O’Connor, and Ian Mitchell were named to the all-tournament team. Also on the all-tournament team were Jack Ahcan and Nick Poehling from St. Cloud State.
“It’s pretty cool, means a lot,” said Jaillet of winning the Frozen Faceoff after Denver fell short the last three years. “[We] haven’t had success before this so coming in, this was one of the goals in mind. I’m very happy we got it done.”
