This season, under UND head coach Brian Idalski, University of North Dakota has become a high scoring hockey team. Currently, UND has the third best scoring offense in the country.
Part of that potent UND offense is the highly talented, world class tandem of Jocelyne Lamoureux and Monique Lamoureux-Kolls. The Lamoureux’s twins are second and third in the nation in points respectively and log a ton of ice time. The twins play even strength, on the power play and also kill penalties.
It’s not an understatement to say that they usually play about half the game and most times are double shifted.
UND also has the nation’s top scoring rookie in Michelle Karvinen from Rodovre, Denmark who leads the nation with (21g-27a—48pts) in points.
Tonight, Karvinen would add three goals and an assist to her already impressive point total. Karvinen would draw an assist on UND’s game tying goal in the first period and then lead UND with a natural hat trick during the second period of tonight’s game, to help UND run past BSU.
Unfortunately, Karvinen’s night would be cut short by a questionable checking from behind penalty at the 05:22 mark of the third period, her night would be over and she would watch the rest of the game from the showers.
None the less, Karvinen’s four points would help lead UND to a 5-2 victory of their WCHA rival the Bemidji State Beavers.
Fortunately for UND, they were able to kill the Karvinen major. In fact, UND’s penalty kill was spotless on the night as they killed all nine Beaver power plays.
After the game, UND Coach Brian Idalski had this to say about his freshman forward Karvinen and her four point night.
“She was terrific! Obviously that is the kind of impact player we expected when she came in,” Idalski said. “She is feeling comfortable and she has chemistry with a lot of players, and she definitely played at a high level for us this evening.”
After the game the freshman forward Karvinen was asked about the five minute checking from behind penalty.
“I was a bit surprised. It wasn’t my intention to hit her in the back but we were skating back at the same time,” Karvinen said.
“When I tried to call her off, she turned around and I accidently hit her in the back. It wasn’t my intention to hit her from behind. Stuff like that happens, but I don’t think it was a five minute penalty. Maybe two minutes. It was an accident and it wasn’t my intention to hit her in the back.”
In the third period, while killing a Bemidji State power play, UND would add a beautiful spin-o-rama goal by Jocelyne Lamoureux; that is bound to be an instant YouTube sensation.
Jocelyne Lamoureux would also have a strong night in all three zones on the ice and would finished the game with three points (1g-2a—3pts) as well.
UND came into the game as the countries most penalized team in the country in Division I Women’s hockey, that statistic would not change after tonight as UND had to kill nine Beaver power plays.
After the game UND head coach Brian Idalski was asked about the amount of penalties and if it threw off his team’s rhythm.
“I am going to take the high road with that. Yeah, I mean it’s hard to get into a flow when they keep calling some of the stuff they were calling down the stretch.” Idalsk said. “I am not sure it was overly necessary. I didn’t see a lot of them, especially the Karvinen penalty. So, it is what it is, we have to be more disciplined coming down the stretch, because we did need to do that in the third period with all of the penalties both ways.”
The same two teams play game two of the series tomorrow night at 07:07pm at Ralph Englestad Arena.
Box Score
