Grand Forks, ND – The University of North Dakota hockey team came into tonight’s game mired in a horrible slump, going 2-7-1 in their last 10 games.
After last night’s 5-2 loss to the St. Lawrence Saints, the UND hockey team had a closed door meeting to air their differences.
Tonight, alternate captain Stephane Pattyn gave us a glimpse of what was said.
“Yeah, yesterday was kind of just an open floor,” Pattyn said. “Everyone talked and gave their thoughts about what we needed to do. We had some great conversations. We definitely grew up as a team last night and I think today’s (win) helped too.”
It appeared that the closed door meeting worked. Through two periods of play, the UND hockey team played on their toes and took the play to the St. Lawrence Saints.
UND got goals from forwards Rocco Grimaldi, Connor Gaarder and Stephane Pattyn, and would take a 3-1 lead going into the third period.
St. Lawrence pushed hard in the third period, and cut the lead to 3-2 with a goal by the national scoring leader, Greg Carey. UND was able to hold off a late surge by the Saints to get the 3-2 win.
After the game, head coach Dave Hakstol didn’t seem to relish the win all that much.
“Real hard fought game,” head coach Dave Hakstol said. “We competed hard for 60-minutes. They pushed real hard in the last portion of the third period. We wanted to come back and do a little better tonight. I thought we did a little better.”
So far this season, UND has dug themselves into a hole with undisciplined play.
“We needed to come out like that,” Pattyn said. “We need to prove ourselves. A game like today was going to move us a step forward. We’ve dug ourselves in a hole so far this season and today’s one small step out of that hole.”
Pattyn continued, “That last 24-hours weren’t that much fun. Not much excitement going on in our dressing room. But we got focused and we knew we had to come out and do a job. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves today, to come out, to come out hard. Our steps are moving forward right now.”
Coming into tonight’s game, UND was 0-4-2 on Saturday nights. With the win tonight, UND improved that record to 1-4-2.
UND goalie Zane Gothberg stopped 25-of-27 shots and improved his record to 3-5-2 with the win. The sophomore goalie made many big saves late in the game to preserve the win.
Notes of interest
With the win tonight, UND is 3-6-1 in the last 10 games. With the win, UND improves to 5-7-2.
UND is 2-2-2 in non-conference play.
St Lawrence forward Greg Carey had an impressive weekend, scoring (2g-4a—6pts) on the weekend. Carey is the NCAA points leader with (11g-18a—29pts).
This was UND’s second win of the season when they score three or fewer goals.
UND has gone 1-0-1 the last two Saturday night’s.
Next weekend, UND travels to Kalamazoo to take on the Western Michigan Broncos December 6-7, 2013, game time is 6:07 central.
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