The National Collegiate Hockey Conference announced today that freshman University of Denver defenseman Adam Plant (Penticton, British Columbia) has been named the conference's Rookie of the Week for the week of Mar. 2-8. This is the first time this season that Plant has won this award and the fifth time a Pioneer has captured it, with first-year forward Danton Heinen (Langley, British Columbia) having previously won conference ROTW honors on four separate occasions.
Plant scored his first career NCAA goal in last Friday's 3-2 road win over St. Cloud State, firing a slap shot past Huskies netminder Charlie Lindgren in the third period to break a 2-2 deadlock. The 19-year-old rearguard finished the match with a +2 plus/minus rating and was named First Star of the Game. He blocked one shot and recorded two shots on goal the following evening in St. Cloud, a 4-2 loss for the Pios.
A bronze medalist with Team Canada West at the 2013 World Junior `A' Challenge, Plant registered 12G-53A-65P-87PIM in 104 games with the BCHL's West Kelowna Warriors from 2012-14 prior to commencing his collegiate career. Currently ranked fifth on the Pios with a +9 rating and ninth in assists (8), Plant is one of only six freshman NCHC defensemen to have played in all of his team's games this season (34). Among first-year blueliners in the conference, he ranks second (tied) in plus/minus rating, third in assists and fifth in SOG (40).
Last year's NCHC Tournament champions, the Pioneers (20-12-2, begin their postseason title defense on Friday night (7:37pm) at Magness Arena against the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs in the opener of a best-of-three series. Game 2 will be played on Saturday night (7:07pm) in Denver and, if necessary, a third and deciding match will be staged at Magness Arena on Sunday, also at 7:07pm. The winning team will go on to compete at the 2015 Frozen Faceoff tournament in Minneapolis, Minn.
Tickets to all three of this weekend's DU-UMD playoff games can be obtained by calling the Daniel L. Ritchie Center Box Office at (303) 871-2336 or by visiting DenverPioneers.com/tickets.
The Pioneers enter the 2015 NCHC Playoffs as the No. 8-ranked team on the national PairWise Chart and as the No. 4 seed in the conference's postseason bracket. Denver also came in at No. 7 on the latest edition of the USCHO.com poll and No. 8 on this week's USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll, both of which were announced earlier today.
