Nate Nomeland set three Bank One Badger Hockey Showdown records on Saturday.<\/p>\n
He made 60 saves, a tournament record. He stopped 27 shots in the second period, a tournament record. His 79 saves for the two-day event was a tournament record.<\/p>\n
Yet he still had to carry his own equipment to the bus.<\/p>\n
“No respect,” Nomeland quipped as he swerved his way through the winding hallways of the Bradley Center.<\/p>\n
His Princeton team lost the Showdown’s third-place game 5-4 to No. 3 North Dakota, but his feats almost made up for that fact.<\/p>\n
He said he never really got tired. His play seemed to back that up, as he made some of his best saves in the third period.<\/p>\n
“It was a lot of adrenaline,” he said. “I’ll be sore tomorrow morning for sure.”<\/p>\n
If Princeton had won the game, Nomeland’s performance would have gone down among the stuff of legends. Still, for a guy from Fargo, N.D., to put on such a show against the high-powered offense from his home state was enough about which to write home.<\/p>\n
“It was pretty easy for him to get up for this game,” Princeton coach Len Quesnelle said.<\/p>\n
With the shot charts looking more like an ink-blot test than an indication of who took a shot and from where (North Dakota attempted 25 shots from the high-quality area in front of the net in the second period alone), the Sioux dominated territorially, if not on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n
“You look at where the shots were taken from, and they were all Grade-A opportunities,” Quesnelle said. “Wisconsin’s shots [Friday] night were spread out throughout the zone, and tonight North Dakota had plenty of chances in tight.”<\/p>\n
It’s not like Nomeland didn’t have help, though. The Sioux put shots off the goalpost three times in the first period, and during a stretch early in the second period, three shots got behind the goaltender, only to be cleared from the crease by either Tigers defenders or Nomeland himself.<\/p>\n
“Standing behind the bench, you start to get a little bit worried because a break or a lapse defensively and all of a sudden the puck is in your net and the momentum changes drastically,” said Dave Hakstol, a North Dakota assistant who’s filling in for head coach Dean Blais, who left Milwaukee on Friday morning to be with his daughter at a hospital in Rochester, Minn.<\/p>\n
Said Sioux goaltender Andy Kollar: “It’s fun to watch but I wish we could have gotten a few more goals, make it a bigger lead.”<\/p>\n
While everyone was thinking about records and Nomeland’s performance, the Tigers made the game close in the last minute.<\/p>\n
Trailing 5-3, Princeton top-line center Kirk Lamb beat Kollar (32 saves) with a shot from the middle of the zone to cut the lead to one with 30.8 seconds left.<\/p>\n
The goal came on Princeton’s 36th shot of the game. North Dakota had reached that point by the 10:43 mark of the second.<\/p>\n
“It got to be a little bit frustrating, but the main thing is we gave up a couple of goals we maybe shouldn’t have because we started pressing a little bit because it was all offense the whole time,” said North Dakota top-line winger Bryan Lundbohm, who had two assists. “You have to give that goalie a lot of credit.”<\/p>\n
The Sioux were forced to play catch-up after Princeton took the lead just 3:54 into the game. Defenseman Matt Maglione picked up a loose puck in the right side of the zone and while David Del Monte screened a North Dakota defenseman, he charged to the net and wristed the puck under the right arm of Kollar.<\/p>\n
The Sioux knotted the score, though, at 7:01 when the Tigers defense couldn’t prevent Adrian Hasbargen’s charge at a loose rebound. Lundbohm redirected Travis Roche’s shot from the right point and Hasbargen beat a defender to the puck and put it past Nomeland.<\/p>\n
And they kept the pressure in the second period. And then some.<\/p>\n
The Sioux put 30 shots on goal in the second period, to give them a 51-27 advantage after 40 minutes. Their 30th shot of the game came with 15:30 left in the second and they reached the half-century mark with 1:07 remaining.<\/p>\n
Shots 35 and 36 were particularly key for North Dakota, as they, sandwiched around a Princeton score, gave the Sioux a pair of one-goal leads.<\/p>\n
At 8:17 of the period, the Sioux were finally able to capitalize on a Nomeland rebound as Jeff Panzer tapped the puck just over the goal line on a play that was confirmed by video replay.<\/p>\n
After Scott Prime evened the game 48 seconds later for the Tigers on a three-on-one rush, Sioux defenseman Chad Mazurak took a drop pass from Panzer on a three-on-two break and wristed it low past Nomeland.<\/p>\n
Tim Skarperud gave the Sioux their first two-goal lead of the game at 13:02 of the second, picking up a loose puck off a left-circle faceoff and working it under Nomeland’s outstretched arm on the ice.<\/p>\n
Princeton’s Shane Campbell managed to cut the lead to one midway through the third, but Kevin Spiewak answered less than two minutes later to restore the two-goal advantage.<\/p>\n
Aside from a few blemishes, though, it was Nomeland’s night.<\/p>\n
“This game certainly wasn’t a classic defensively,” Hakstol said.<\/p>\n
Except, maybe, for Nomeland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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