Men's Hockey Misses Chance to Move Up in Standings

Mavericks sit six points back in the race for home ice after North Dakota takes both games, pushing MSU back to seventh in the WCHA.

by Joey Burns
January 25, 2006

After going 6-1-1 over its last eight games, the Minnesota State Men’s Hockey team’s momentum heading down the stretch was stopped in Grand Forks, N.D., as North Dakota swept the Mavericks last weekend.

The hardest thing to swallow for MSU was not that they dropped both games of their first Western Collegiate Hockey Association series since December 3, 2005 it was instead that the Mavs felt they played well enough to come away with a win.

“I think [our offensive production] was definitely good enough to come out of the series with two points,” said MSU head coach Troy Jutting. “On Friday night we made mistakes and we turned it over in our zone. On Saturday night, they got one more goal than we did.”

If any one word could describe Minnesota the series, it would be momentum.

Saturday night, North Dakota came out at full force, which was further fueled by the stellar play of junior net minder Jordan Parise.

Parise stopped all 23 Maverick shots in the first forty minutes of play, showing no signs of wear from the injury that kept him out of the previous two games.

“We had a couple of backdoor chances,” said junior forward David Backes. “He was there when he had to be and made the saves he had to and a few that he shouldn’t have. He was outstanding.”

While Parise was stifling the MSU offense, UND’s offense fired three goals by Mavericks’ goaltender Dan Tormey.

When all seemed to be going North Dakota’s way, Ryan Carter got one past Parise unassisted at 10:34 in the third period, placing the Mavericks on the board at 3-1.

If there was a question on anyone’s mind at the Ralph Englestad Arena that MSU had any fight left in them after that, it was answered as a fight broke out at 11:09 in the third.

The brawl was so massive that it took the officials 15 minutes to calm everything down, and assess in total the 98 minutes of penalties, including two game misconducts and four game disqualifications. The end result was a North Dakota power play, the ejection of six players, including Mavericks Rob Rankin (misconduct), Brent Cummings (disqualification), and Steve Wagner (disqualification).

“It was emotions running high in a very intense series that was played very hard by both teams,” Jutting said. “At times that’s going to happen.”

The Mavericks’ momentum continued to build after that, as five minutes later Travis Morin found the back of the net to bring MSU within one.

With 3:26 left in the game, a little over a minute later, that Joel Hanson made what everyone thought was the equalizing goal. That is everyone but referee Scott Zelkin, who after conferring with the replay of the shot disallowed the goal, citing that Hanson had interfered with Parise on the shot.

“You’re riding a huge high and the other teams really down and in one decision, the emotions of the two teams are flip-flopped and now they’re on a high and we’re down a little bit because it’s not a tie game,” Jutting said.

The Mavericks fought to reclaim the momentum and the tying goal over the final three minutes, but all hopes were crushed by Travis Zajac’s empty-net goal with 40 seconds remaining.

Momentum was just as much of a key in Friday night’s game, only this time the momentum was fueled by mistakes made by Minnesota State.

After going down early 1-0, Carter, assisted by Kyle Peto and Backes, scored the equalizer for MSU at 14:14 on a power play.

Although Carter did score key goals in each game, he could not be completely happy with his performance because of the final result.

“Regardless of how any individual did, we lost four points,” Carter said. “When you look at it that way, it wasn’t good enough.”

Unfortunately for Minnesota State, the Carter goal was unable to stop the momentum of UND, as its offense exploded for five straight goals on Tormey, blowing the game wide open.

The North Dakota assault was led by first-round draft picks Drew Stafford and T.J. Oshie; who each scored three points on the weekend, with all of Oshie’s points coming on Friday night.

“As a team, we gave up more good chances than we should,” Backes said. “[Tormey’s] been solid for us when he’s been in the nets. As a team, we kind of let him down, giving up breakaways and back-door chances that goalies in the NHL don’t even stop.”

After the series, the Mavericks are now in a three-way-tie for seventh in the WCHA at 13 points with Michigan Tech and MSU’s next opponent, Minnesota-Duluth. The three teams trail St. Cloud State in 6th by two points and Colorado College in 5th by six points.

MSU will make the trip up to Duluth this weekend looking for their first conference win since November 12th, 2005, when they defeated WCHA’s No. 2 team Denver.

“They’re a team we felt gained one point when they were in our barn and we should have gained more,” Backes said. “If we capitalize on a few chances and play better in the defensive zone, I think that is a realistic goal.”

The Mavericks will go into the short two Defensemen, as Cummings and Wagner will sit out the first game versus Minnesota-Duluth for their disqualifications from fighting in last Saturday’s game.

“We need to continue to keep getting better each weekend,” Jutting said. “It’s a very critical series, just like any other game right now.”