{"id":9616,"date":"2009-03-19T15:03:56","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T20:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2009\/03\/19\/past-is-past-umd-continues-resurgence-with-play-in-victory-over-minnesota\/"},"modified":"2010-08-23T11:55:38","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T16:55:38","slug":"past-is-past-umd-continues-resurgence-with-play-in-victory-over-minnesota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/2009\/03\/19\/past-is-past-umd-continues-resurgence-with-play-in-victory-over-minnesota\/","title":{"rendered":"Past Is Past: UMD Continues Resurgence With Play-In Victory Over Minnesota"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team that entered the postseason looking quite the opposite of a a threat to the WCHA’s top five teams took down another one Thursday.<\/p>\n

Up next for No. 17 Minnesota-Duluth: the top seed.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs tacked two more days onto their stay at the WCHA Final Five with a heartstopping 2-1 victory over No. 13 Minnesota at Xcel Energy Center in the tournament’s play-in game.<\/p>\n

Considering that the Bulldogs went winless in their last five regular season games to slide into the league’s second division, a three-game playoff winning streak may not have been the most likely of scenarios.<\/p>\n

But here they are, among the WCHA’s final four teams and probably with a little better feeling about their NCAA tournament chances.<\/p>\n

\"Alex<\/p>\n
Alex Stalock makes one of his 39 saves Thursday night (photo: Jason Waldowski).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Goals by MacGregor Sharp and Matt Greer in the first two periods and another strong outing from WCHA first-team goaltender Alex Stalock made the difference and put some more distance between the seventh-seeded Bulldogs and the disappointing regular season finish.<\/p>\n

“From the beginning of the year, this group’s been (close),” Stalock said. “Something like that’s never going to get in the way of a group.”<\/p>\n

But Thursday’s thriller went down to the wire, and the Bulldogs could celebrate only after winger Andrew Carroll hooked Gophers forward Ryan Stoa off the puck in the dying seconds — a play that drew a penalty that didn’t matter because it came after the horn.<\/p>\n

“Great penalty,” Bulldogs coach Scott Sandelin said. “That one didn’t bother me.”<\/p>\n

It was those kind of little plays — most of them were, in fact, legal — that defined the smart, safe way UMD pulled out the victory Thursday.<\/p>\n

Things didn’t always turn out that way down the stretch of the regular season, when the Bulldogs went from home-ice contenders to bottom-half dwellers.<\/p>\n

Sandelin cited four games that the Bulldogs could have won had they held onto leads.<\/p>\n

“Maybe it was one of those things that (was) the best thing that (can) happen,” he said.<\/p>\n

UMD (19-12-8) knocked off fourth seed Colorado College in two games last weekend to turn things back around in a topsy-turvy second half of the season that also included a 7-2 stretch. Thursday, fifth seed Minnesota was the victim.<\/p>\n

Now it will be the next in line to try to pull off what hasn’t been done in Final Five history — win three games in three days.<\/p>\n

The next step is a 7 p.m. game Friday against top seed North Dakota, a team the Bulldogs tied and defeated at home in November.<\/p>\n

Other than a first-period stretch in which it recorded 13 shots on goal in under five minutes and its third-period rally attempt, Minnesota (17-13-7) looked sluggish.<\/p>\n

Battling the flu all week, starting goaltender Alex Kangas lasted only a period before being replaced by Kent Patterson.<\/p>\n

Kangas left a bad rebound that turned into Sharp’s goal just 3:46 into the game, giving the Bulldogs the early lead that is becoming their postseason trademark.<\/p>\n

Greer scored on Patterson in the second period off the second rebound of his initial shot on a rush up the right side.<\/p>\n

Still, the Gophers had their chances.<\/p>\n

They enjoyed a 5-on-3 advantage for 66 seconds in the first period, but UMD held them off the scoreboard.<\/p>\n

“To kill that penalty was huge,” Sharp said, “and I think it really set the tone for the whole game for us.”<\/p>\n

With Minnesota pushing for an equalizer after Cade Fairchild’s third-period goal, forward Nico Sacchetti missed an open net from the slot.<\/p>\n

“Kind of typified our night a little bit,” Minnesota coach Don Lucia said.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs, meanwhile, by no means surged toward the final horn. They played it safe and relied on Stalock and the defense to come through to pull out a one-goal victory.<\/p>\n

It worked, so they’ll work again Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A team that entered the postseason looking quite the opposite of a a threat to the WCHA’s top five teams took down another one Thursday. Up next for No. 17 Minnesota-Duluth: the top seed. The Bulldogs tacked two more days onto their stay at the WCHA Final Five with a heartstopping 2-1 victory over No. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"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\/9616"}],"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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9616\/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=9616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9616"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}