Tournament MVP Connor James had two assists and six different players scored as Denver rolled past Nebraska-Omaha, 6-3, in the championship game of the Wells Fargo Denver Cup at Magness Arena.<\/p>\n
Denver (13-6-3) claimed its tenth Cup title in 12 years and improved its all-time tourney record to 20-3-1. UNO fell to 5-12-3 this season.<\/p>\n
“We had a really good start to the game,” said Denver coach George Gwozdecky. “We did a really nice job in the second period of managing the game. We played smart hockey and had an explosion with those two goals.<\/p>\n
“I liked the way we played our positions and how we wore their defensemen down. They didn’t have an answer for us, which gave us great scoring chances.”<\/p>\n
Three different Pioneers scored in the first period. Freshman Ryan Helgason extended his four-game point streak with a goal at 2:53 and then Gabe Gauthier capitalized on a power play at 6:22. Kevin Ulanski added a goal with 9:32 remaining to give the Pioneers an early 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
But before the end of the opening period, UNO came back with two goals to cut Denver’s lead to 3-2. Mike Lefley scored four-on-four and Phil Angell scored on the power play for the Mavericks.<\/p>\n
It remained 3-2 until the latter half of the second period, when the Pioneers took a commanding lead on back-to-back goals by Lukas Dora and Max Bull just 33 seconds apart. Bull recorded his first goal of the season off a pass from sophomore Ted O’Leary. The assist marked O’Leary’s third of the tournament.<\/p>\n
But UNO refused to go away, as Scott Parse scored a power-play goal at 16:51 to cut the Pioneer lead to 5-3 heading into the third period.<\/p>\n
Luke Fulghum’s goal just 1:41 into the third period regained the three-goal lead for Denver, and the hosts went on to the 6-3 win.<\/p>\n
Adam Berkhoel made 23 saves in the win, while UNO’s Brian Haaland made 36. Denver outshot UNO, 42-26, and went 2-of-7 on the power play. UNO finished 2-of-6 on the power play. <\/p>\n
Niagara’s Justin Cross, UNO’s Angell, and Denver’s Ryan Caldwell, Glenn Fisher and Dora joined James on the all-tournament team. James had one assist in last night’s 3-2 win over Niagara.<\/p>\n
Denver will return to action on Friday, Jan. 2, when the Pioneers host St. Lawrence at Magness Arena in a nonconference game. UNO returns to the ice on Jan. 7 with a CCHA game against Ferris State.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tournament MVP Connor James had two assists and six different players scored as Denver rolled past Nebraska-Omaha, 6-3, in the championship game of the Wells Fargo Denver Cup at Magness Arena. Denver (13-6-3) claimed its tenth Cup title in 12 years and improved its all-time tourney record to 20-3-1. UNO fell to 5-12-3 this season. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4859"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}