Nov. 8—OMAHA, Neb. — UND has scored 35 goals through the first nine games of the season.
It is the highest number of goals UND has scored through nine games since the 2019-20 team, which went 26-5-4 and was No. 1 in the Pairwise Rankings when the season was canceled due to the pandemic.
UND is averaging 3.9 goals per game, tied for fifth nationally.
The offensive surge isn’t coming from one spot, though.
The Fighting Hawks are giving their opponents fits with their third and fourth lines, who are routinely creating mismatches.
UND has just one player in the top 50 nationally in scoring right now. It is third-line winger Ben Strinden, who has 12 points.
Other players on the bottom six have all had their moments this season.
On Friday, sophomore winger Cody Croal was one of those players.
Croal set up a pair of Strinden goals with excellent feeds.
“Cody does everything the right way,” Strinden said. “He drives the play. He plays physical. He makes the right plays. He’s been playing awesome, so it’s really cool to play with Cody.”
Croal had one goal and six points as a freshman. He already has two goals and four points as a sophomore.
“Cody Croal skates so well,” UND coach Dane Jackson said. “We’ve been talking about valuing the puck on entry, not just taking low-percentage shots from the outside. Cody Croal has been doing a really good job of delaying and looking to the inside of the ice. Sometimes, when you delay, teams vacate the middle and go check to the outside.”
UND was called for its first major penalty of the season early in the third period when senior forward Ellis Rickwood was whistled for a standalone boarding major.
The game was still in doubt at the time — UND led 4-2 — but the Fighting Hawks killed it off.
“It was a big part of the game,” Jackson said of the penalty kill. “It’s unfortunate. Rickwood was playing hard and just caught him a bit on the bad side there. It was nice to see the boys got some good clears — missed a few — but overall just had some good shot blocks, Spoons (goalie Jan Špunar) made some big saves. Emotionally, it was really big for our group. Then, when we got the chance on the power play, guys were sharp. We kept pucks alive and made some really good plays.”
UND heavily leaned on Cole Reschny, Dylan James, Ollie Josephson, Croal, Bennett Zmolek, Jake Livanavage, E.J. Emery and Abram Wiebe on the penalty kill.
Mac Swanson also had two shifts on the penalty kill and Anthony Menghini and Andrew Strathmann had one.
“(The game) could have gone either way at that point,” Livanavage said. “With a five-minute, you can score as many times as you want. I think we knew what we had to do. (Assistant coach Matt) Smaby has a great PK for us and we were ready for it.”
The past two weekends, UND started senior Gibson Homer on Friday and freshman Jan Špunar on Saturday.
The Fighting Hawks changed that up this week by starting Špunar in the series opener.
Špunar stopped 22 of 24 shots on Friday against the Mavericks.
The rookie from Czechia hasn’t faced large workloads. He saw 17 shots in his first start against Clarkson, 20 last Saturday against Minnesota Duluth and 24 against Omaha.
But Friday night might have been Špunar’s best effort to date.
“Compared to his earlier games, he probably had some more challenging saves there,” Jackson said. “He made some really good ones. He was outstanding.”
Špunar has a .951 save percentage in his three starts.
Jackson said the teams were warned in the third period that the officials were going to crack down on calls.
“(Referee) Ryan Hersey came over in third period and said, ‘Hey, there’s too much crap going on, just knock it off.’ We just said, ‘Hey boys, let’s stay out of it. Let’s focus on the task at hand.’
“I thought we just kind of stayed out of the extracurriculars and just played and focused on the game.”
In the third period, Omaha forward Samuel Huo was called for a five-minute major and game misconduct for contact to the head. Omaha forward Marc Lajoie was called for slashing twice. Omaha forward Marcus Nguyen was called for unsportsmanlike conduct.
UND scored two power-play goals during that penalty-fest.
UND’s power play is up to 28.6% on the season, ranking 11th nationally. The Fighting Hawks went 4-for-8 against the Mavericks.
The Fighting Hawks lost the faceoff battle 31-23. Omaha’s Sean Tschigerl went 9-3 in the dot to lead the Mavericks. Rickwood led UND with a 7-6 mark.
