Grand Forks, ND – “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,” UND
head coach Brian Idalski on tonight’s game.
Coming
into this season, there is a lot of positive energy surrounding the UND
women’s hockey team based on the personnel they have coming back and
some of the new recruits they have coming in.on’s post season run that included their first ever bid to the
NCAA tourney. UND would go on to lose their quarterfinal game to
Minnesota Gophers who would end up being the national champion.
UND
has aspirations of hanging a banner of their own this season – “the
ultimate goal is to put a national championship banner up in our rink,”
Monique Lamoureux said during an interview on UND hockey media day.
While
it’s probably too early to be about thinking about hanging banners and
there is a lot of hockey to be played – the future for UND looks bright –
UND will have to play more disciplined hockey if they’re going to be
successful this season.
Tonight, UND came out of the gates with a
lot of energy and definitely had the upper hand in play against the
Mavericks during the first period taking a 1-0 lead in to the locker
room after one period with a highlight reel goal by
Jocelyn Lamoureux.
UND
also led in the shots after one period of hockey outshooting the
Mavericks 8-3 and could have had more goals but Mavericks Junior goalie
Danielle Butters shut UND down.
UND took a 2-0 lead during the second period with a goal by Andrea Dalen at the 2:48 mark – that was all of the scoring that UND would get as Butters shut the door the rest of the way.
“Butters
played well,” Idalski said. I thought for most of the night especially
that second [period] we made her job real easy and she saw a lot of
things and if she can see it she can save.”
One thing UND wanted
to limit this season is the amount of penalties that they take as a team
– unfortunately they started a parade to the penalty box during the
second period when they took four minor for eight minutes in penalties.
That
march to the penalty box continued during the third period as UND
continued to take more undisciplined penalties and ended up squandering a
2 goal lead giving up three unanswered goals in about a 10 minute time
period. Minnesota State senior Lauren Smith paced the Mavericks with
two goals during the third period scoring on the power play and even
strength.
While Butters paced the Mavericks with 16 saves – on the
other end of the ice a rookie goalie Shelby Amsley-Benzie was making
her first career start UND but wasn’t able to get the win for despite
making 20 saves, many of them difficult and during the latter half of
the game when the Mavericks were pressing.
When asked about his rookie goalie's effort the head coach had this to
say, “quite honestly I thought Shelby was going to get the shutout,”
Idalski said.
"She
was playing really well and she kind of held us in there through the
second, unfortunately I thought she deserved a little fate than what we
gave her down the stretch.”
UND captain Jocelyne Lamoureux agreed
with the head coaches’ comments, “she played good and she made some big
saves when it was 1-0.”
Mankato would score three unanswered goals in the third period to ice the game, spoiling UND’s home opener.
The same two teams play tomorrow at 2:07 PM