Grand Forks, ND – Coming into tonight’s game the University of North Dakota’s Woman’s Hockey team had given up a goal on the first shot of the game six times since Thanksgiving.
Tonight was a different story, as Bemidji State would not score the first goal of the game; on the first shot of the game, this time around.
Tonight for a change, UND would score the first goal of the game, and at the 01:20 mark of the first period Josefine Jakobsen would score a gritty, hardworking goal.
It didn’t take long for Bemidji state to answer the UND goal. While it wasn’t the first shot of the game, Bemidj State Beavers would get the equalizer on their fifth attempted shot of the game two minutes and 26 seconds later; with a goal from freshman forward Nathasha Kostenko.
The rest of the first period would be all UND, as the quartet of Jocelyne Lamoureux, Monique Lamoureux-Kolls, Michelle Karvinen, and Josefine Jakobsen put on an offensive display. Each of those players would record two points during the opening period.
Unfortunately, that is all of the scoring we would see for the rest of the game. The game would become more of a grind it out game that had little flow, due to the amount of penalties that were called.
Special teams play would take over in the second period and UND and BSU would begin a parade to the penalty box.
UND came into the game as the most-penalized team in Division I Women’s hockey. That stat wouldn’t change after tonight game either.
On the evening, UND’s Penalty kill was air tight and successfully killed all nine Beaver power plays. That was the story for the weekend. UND did not give up a single power play goal to the BSU Beavers all weekend long. When it was all said and done, UND had successfully killed 18 Beaver power plays.
UND wasn’t much more successful than BSU on the power play as they went 2/12 on the weekend.
UND defenseman Monique Lamoureux-Kolls talked about their successful penalty kill and how they killed all 18 Beaver power plays.
“The one thing is we wanted to do was get pucks deep. I think a little bit yesterday we struggled, but today when we had chances to get it out, there was maybe one time that we might not have gotten it out, but the second time we got it deep,” Lamoureux-Kolls said. That’s the key, once you don’t get it out once, twice and three times, that’s when they score on you.”
Brian Idahlski was also impressed with his penalty kill’s play on the weekend.
“It was excellent! Obviously, holding them without a power play goal in 18 chances is pretty good stuff,” Idahlski said. “It starts in net; Steph [Ney] was very good for us. It just thought that unit did a good job.“
Tonight was also the last regular season game of the year and was also senior night. All six seniors that started their career with UND were all in the starting lineup for UND and took the opening faceoff.
Idahlski reflected on his senior class after the game.
“I took a little time afterward and spoke to them as a group, and just reiterated; that’s a special group. When I came here with the program, it was where it was. That was the first class full class that bought into what we were doing, when a lot of other people didn’t,” Idahlski said.
“ …The coaches at the time, they did a great job of recruiting. I know how many calls we had to make, just to get a couple of people that were even interested in coming here during that time frame.”
“They bought in, laid the foundation, they told them it wasn’t easy and we told them as a group we had our ups and downs.”
“Through it all they worked hard and stayed the course. Hopefully we send them out with some special memories down the stretch and being a part of a lot of firsts in this program.”
With the win against the Beavers tonight UND improves to 18-9-2 overall, 14-8-2-1 in the WCHA. With the win UND is now sitting in sixth place in the PairWise Rankings, UND needs to finish in 8th place or better to make the NCAA tourney. Next weekend UND travels to Mankato to play the Mavericks.
With the loss Bemidji State drops to 14-13-3, 8-13-2-0 in the WCHA.
