DENVER — Behind 36 saves from Craig Pantano and two goals from Brett Seney, the Merrimack Warriors upset the No. 2 Denver Pioneers, 3-2, at Magness Arena in Denver.
Coming into the game, Merrimack had just one previous road win, but it didn’t show in their play.
“I don’t know that our guys know the difference between the road and home,” said Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy. “The record may not be great, but we’ve played some really good road games, and we’ve got a veteran team, a resilient team, and we played a really hard schedule at the start of the season, so I feel like we’ve been battle-tested.”
Denver fell behind early on a poor neutral zone turnover. Erich Fear had the puck at the DU blue line and looked to pass it up to a forward on the left boards, but the pass was easily picked off by Cole McBride, who could clearly see where Fear was going with the pass. McBride skated in alone on a breakaway and beat Tanner Jaillet with a quick deke five-hole at 2:38.
“They’re a really good team; you’ve got to tip your cap, and I know they had a tough stretch before the break and coach Montgomery was not happy with them, so we expected them to come out guns a-blazing, so our whole point before the game was we can’t match their pace, we’ve got to try to set it,” said Dennehy. “I was happy with the way we came out. I thought that played a big part in the game.”
For several minutes after that goal, Denver looked shaken, and took two careless penalties, but the Warriors were unable to get the second goal. Instead, Denver tied it at 15:48 when Kohen Olischefski got the puck deep in the right corner in the offensive zone and threw a pass into the slot that deflected in past Pantano.
“I liked the way we played; I thought we battled hard,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery. “Our execution and our skill with the puck, our passing, was not very good, but you expect that after a 10-day break. Your execution, you’re not going to be very clean, but I thought we got better throughout the game.”
The second period and start of the third saw Denver get more consistent offensive chances, but Pantano stood strong, no more than when Dylan Gambrell dangled between two Merrimack defenders and had a golden chance alone in the slot, but Pantano flashed the right pad to make the save.
“There was some ebb and flow there early in the third period,” said Dennehy. “They had us hemmed in a little bit, we had them hemmed in a little bit at times, so you need a save like that. I used to kid around with all our goaltenders: they only need to make one save each game, the game-winner, and that may very well have been the game-winner.”
That proved a turning point. First, Brett Seney scored on a beautiful deflection, holding his stick out in the crease and deflecting Jace Hennig’s perfect pass top corner glove side just inside the post at 8:14. Right after that Merrimack went on a power play, and Seney made them pay again, circling out from the right boards into the circle and ripping a snap shot top corner glove side past a frozen Jaillet at 8:58.
“Jace has great poise,” said Dennehy. “Those two guys have played together off and on for the last three and a half years, and I’m finally smart enough to keep them together.”
With time running out, Montgomery pulled Jaillet after Denver went on a power play, and it worked, as Ian Mitchell scored a six-on-four man-advantage goal on a quick wrist shot from the left point at 19:27.
Denver had looked to tie it just seconds later, but the puck went in well after the referees blew the play dead. With 32.4 seconds left, Denver got another power play when Mitchell was tripped at the blue line while he had the puck.
Part of Denver’s struggles have been that its three top players have struggled to score.
Since scoring four points against North Dakota on Nov. 18, Henrik Borgström has four assists in his last seven games, including two Friday. Troy Terry has one point in his last seven games, and Gambrell has five points in his last seven, including an assist on Mitchell’s goal, but three of those five points came against Colorado College in one game, so he only has two points in his other six.
The players are overthinking things. For instance, with less than five seconds left, Gambrell had the puck in the left circle, and rather than shoot, he held the puck, then tried to pass it into the slot to Borgström, where it was deflected harmlessly away.
“I think it’s different for all three of them, but needless to say, none of them are top of their game,” said Montgomery. “They’re either not being aggressive enough or not looking to shoot. I think they’re trying to defer to other people a little too much or want make the pretty play. That’s what I see offensively. Defensively, I thought that 7 (Gambrell) and 19 (Terry) played a real determined game tonight, and I thought 5 (Borgström) in shifts was incredibly determined.”
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