GRAND FORKS, N.D. — The sound you hear of big rumblings coming down the highway isn’t just the parade of sugar beet trucks hauling the crop into the processing plants that is an annual ritual in our Red River Valley this time of the year.
It is sound of a college hockey giant, the undefeated and defending national champion Denver Pioneers, rolling into town for the biggest series of the weekend on a national scale, our Fighting Hawks from North Dakota U. against the beasts from the West.
It is indeed two hockey heavyweights set for battle at Ralph Engelstad Arena. While UND has won eight national championships and has come oh so close to others, it is Denver that has won three NCAA titles since the Fighting Hawks last won one in 2016 in Head Coach Brad Berry‘s first year as bench boss.
It is two programs that contend for National Collegiate Hockey Conference honors most every year as well, so that is another twist to what is at stake this weekend as to who gets the upper hand in that battle.
While UND opened league play last weekend with an impressive road sweep of Minnesota Duluth, this kicks off league play for the Pioneers, who seems to excel at every phase of the game.
Killing penalties? Converting on power plays? Winning faceoffs? Scoring goals? Preventing them? Denver ranks at or near the top nationally in every category, impressive in every aspect of the game.
No team has scored more than two goals against Denver in 10 games to date. And Denver has never scored less than four, so those numbers are daunting by themselves.
Denver as a team is ranked first in the nation, and perhaps favored to hang its 11th NCAA championship banner from the rafters of Magness Arena.
So there is a big challenge facing the green and white this weekend, no question about that.
But Berry loaded up his schedule this season with very tough non-opponents early on. Games against the likes of solid teams like Providence, Cornell, Minnesota State and Boston University certainly steeled the Hawks for what lies ahead in the always rugged NCHC.
It is in that league that we find the likes of Colorado College, St. Cloud State and Western Michigan, who all have shown signs so far of a willingness to join the scramble with the Pioneers and Fighting Hawks for top honors. And we can’t forget that former UND player Scott Sandelin has won a hat trick of NCAA titles with Minnesota Duluth. too.
This series will provide some answers at this point in the season of how ready this version of the Hawks is suited to win a game or two against the powerful Pioneers.
UND has shown us times of brilliance, and at times looked like a young team still finding its way, a mission hampered indeed by a string of injuries to key players.
There will be little margin for error this weekend. If Denver hasn’t shown signs of weakness in any area of its game, we’ll not likely to see any exposed here this weekend.
So the job at hand for UND this weekend will be to raise its level of play to match that of Denver and hope the roar of home fans can help push them to victory.
Virg Foss covered UND hockey for 35 seasons for the Grand Forks Herald until his retirement from the newspaper in 2005. He was the beat writer for the Herald when UND won NCAA titles in 1980, 1982, 1987, 1997 and 2000. He now writes a weekly column exclusively for UND Athletic Communications during the college hockey season. He can be contacted at virgfoss@yahoo.com.
