Gothberg and Gaarder lead team to Frozen Four

Like most UND hockey fans, I am still trying process what happened this past weekend. I don’t think that many saw this coming. Especially after they started the season 4-7-2. Since December 1, 2013, UND has been on a tear and gone 21-6-1 (.768). That's one of the best records in college hockey during that time span.

Before leaving the Wednesday press conference, Jayson Hajdu told me that UND would be playing in two weeks. "There will be a press conference next week." Maybe we should re-name him Carnac the Magnificent.

No one in the blogosphere really gave UND much of a chance to win the Midwest Regional. When I saw that UND was playing Wisconsin in the Midwest Regional semifinal game, I felt there was a “good chance” UND could advance to the Midwest Regional final. Ironically, there are a lot of similarities between last year’s Yale team and this year’s UND team. UND was the last team in the NCAA tournament, so was Yale. The Bulldogs beat a one-seed and a two-seed. Ditto for UND.

The winning goalie after the game...

“Growing up, you hear about North Dakota hockey and it is just tradition,” UND sophomore goalie Zane Gothberg said. “It’s something we take pride in practice or in games. A lot of it starts with the coaching staff instilling that level of competition and pride. It feels great and all of our hard work has gone for a good cause.”

On scoring the game winning goal.

“We were scrumming in the corner and it just came to a point out there,’ junior forward Connor Gaarder said. “I knew I had to get to the net. The rebound came right to me and kind of just slid it in there.”