WHKY: North Dakota outlasts Ohio State in triple overtime

Grand Forks, N.D. -- Fans who attended North Dakota's Saturday afternoon game against Ohio State got more than their money's worth in a triple overtime game that ended allowing North Dakota an advancement to the WCHA Final Face-Off.

Saturday's score was more indicative of the play between the two teams more so than North Dakota's 5-2 Friday win.

The goals that drove the teams into overtime play happened in second period. North Dakota's Samantha Hanson broke the scoreless stalemate around halfway through the second. The Buckeyes were able to rally the tying goal with 38 seconds remaining in the period

After OSU's tying goal at the end of the second period. It would take another 63 minutes for North Dakota to complete the sweep and punch their ticket to play, at least, one more game at home. "It was a super grind; start to finish," head coach Brian Idalski said.

The game ended 3:17 seconds into triple overtime when Becca Kohler made a transition play that sent Megan Dufault up ice. Dufault passed the puck cutting through two OSU defense to Amy Menke who put it top shelf on UND's 41st shot on goal.

North Dakota will take a couple days off before they start preparing for the WCHA Final Face-Off that is being hosted at The Ralph on Saturday and Sunday. "The one thing we knew for sure we didn't want was to do was watch other teams play in our rink," Amy Menke said.

Taking a page out of the UND men's hockey program's playbook, the women's team is 22-2-2 sine mid-January.

North Dakota plans to take the next couple days off before preparing for face-off against the Wisconsin Badgers at 5:00 on Saturday, March 7. Tickets are available for the WCHA Final Face-Off at The Ralph box office and online.

WHKY: UND sweeps the Huskies under the rug and heads to Madison

GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- The University of North Dakota women's hockey team picked up their first home sweep of the season over St. Cloud on Sunday.

The sweep didn't come easy. Although UND held the lead for the entire game, the Huskies outperformed themselves from their Saturday afternoon showing. UND was able to hold onto a 3-1 lead to cap off the weekend before heading to Madison, Wisconsin .

North Dakota goes into their Friday and Sunday series against WCHA top-ranked Wisconsin with a three-game unbeaten streak. In their first meeting this season UND settled for a tie and a loss.

The team hopes to ride their recent momentum into this weekend. "I think we have to score early and keep the lead, and play smart like we have been," jr., forward Becca Kohler said. "Now that we have a few games under our belt we're feeling more confident."

Head coach Brian Idalski said that he anticipates a high pace, high intensity series against the Badgers. North Dakota hopes to snap Wisconsin's 10 game unbeaten streak and five game shutout streak.

North Dakota will play Wisconsin Friday at 3:07 p.m. and Sunday at 2:07 p.m.. Web audio streaming can be heard here. For more information and game day notes visit UNDSports.com.

Dufault, Kohler, Krzyzaniak UND's Now, Canada's Future

The UND Women's Hockey Team  has had its fair share of dynamic players and probably none better than two time Olympic silver medalists Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux. However, there are three players on the roster who are leading the way for UND and are the future of Canadian Women's Hockey. Becca Kohler, Meghan Dufault, and Halli Krzyzaniak have done everything to solidify them in Hockey Canada's future plans.

This past weekend, the trio put their skills on display in UND's sweep against Mankato. Kohler tallied up five points this weekend and was named WCHA offensive player of the week. Her play out front of the net is some of the best in the country and look for her to do big things this season as UND looks to charge back into the NCAA tournament.

As for Meghan Dufault, she has been getting big line minutes since coming to UND, showing that size isn't everything, it's heart. Her hat trick this past Friday night is just a little example of her big time play on the ice. She is always someone you expect to produce and no matter what you throw in front of her, she usually gets at least one point out of a weekend.

Dufault also put on a show at Canada's development camp this past summer, stealing the show on offense and turning the heads of the women's hockey community, all be it no surprise to me.

Halli Krzyzaniak is the workhorse on the blue line for UND. Although Tanja Eisenschmid may be seen as the top defender in a UND uniform right now, Krzyzaniak is much to UND as Ryan Suter is to the Minnesota Wild. You will always find her on the ice at key points of the game, and will rarely take a penalty or make a costly mistake. She does not score often, but that's not her role with UND. She does have that ability, which is a nice added bonus with her, but her strength to play big minutes will only make the UND

blue line that much better.

These three have what it takes to take their games to the next level. Hockey Canada should be put on alert because there is a green wave about to take over in the likes of Dufault, Kohler, and Krzyzaniak, in the very near future.

Dufault, Krzyzaniak Take Part in Canada Development Camp

After a long summer of no women's hockey news to report, we finally get a taste of some with Meghan Dufault and Halli Krzyzaniak participating in Canada's development camp. Junior Becca Kohler was also invited, but was unable to attend this camp.

Today saw team Blue, with Halli Krzyzaniak, go against team Yellow, with Meghan Dufault. Krzyzaniak was held relatively quiet on the stat sheet with zeros across the board today in her team's 3-1 loss to team yellow. However, Dufault

was able to find her way on the score sheet as she opened up the games scoring to put team yellow up 1-0.

Even though Kohler was unable to attend this camp, I believe that her, along with Dufault and Krzyzaniak, will be a big part of Canada's women's hockey future. These three have the talent to take their games to the next level after they are done with the NCAA squad. It is going to be very exciting to see how their games progress over the next two seasons for Kohler and Dufault, and three for Krzyzaniak.

UND Women’s Hockey the day after

From Sioux Sports this morning on the UND Women’s Hockey team losing a two goal lead and the game against the MSUM Mavericks… @pucknut9 on last night’s loss, “looks like the women have been reading too many headlines as they lose 3-2 to MSU.” Mea Culpa.  

Also, another good point from @pucknut9 “hell of a comeback for sure, I mean give credit where credit is due instead of some of these posters blaming the refs.”

Good words of advice from a guy that I have a lot of respect for – winners will look answers and not excuses… In this case the UND women will regroup and make the proper adjustments and you didn't hear any excuses last night for their performance.

I am not going to kid anyone – I have to admit that I thought the officiating was questionable at times myself, someone from my twitter account might have tweeted something along those lines as well last night.

But I digress.

I don’t think the officiating is the reason the UND women lost the game last night… I blame a plethora of things… I saw young players try to force pucks in instances where later in the season they wouldn’t make that pass. There also many opportunities in the blue paint and in the slot that weren’t capitalized on.

When the refs are calling the game tight last night – what’s new?  It’s the player’s responsibility to make adjustments to how the game is called – that didn’t happened last night.

Also, the MSUM defenders were relentless and this was actually the first time that I have ever seen the “trap” played at a women’s game – the Mavericks were miserable team to play against.

Let’s give credit where credit is due the Mavericks got into the shooting zones – pressured the defenseman and their goaltender Danielle Butters was very good and made the big saves and stopping 18 out of 20 shots and she was big late in the game when she had to be… Luck was also on her side and one of the twins had her beat glove side late in the game only to see it puck clank off of the iron.

I can tell you based on the head coaches’ body language and by his comments last night during the postgame conference that Brian Idalski was “less” than pleased about his team’s play during their game.

“I thought we were a little sloppy and I thought we were way too cute and down the stretch we made some poor decision defensively that ending up costing us pretty big,”

I don’t think that any of us are worried though because Brian Idalski is a good hockey coach and he will make adjustments and I expect the team to be much better this afternoon against the Mavericks.

There were some positive points to take out of last night’s game.

Freshman forward Becca Kohler from St. Thomas Ontario is going to be a big time forward and she showed glimpses of greatness.

Freshman goalie Shelby Amsley-Benzie was very good in her debut and I predict that we will see her again between the pipes very soon.

Freshman Leah Jensen didn’t look out of place and seemed to do well in the pressure position playing on the wing with Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux.