The University of Denver Pioneers (1-0-1, NCHC 0-0-0-0) responded to a late-game push from the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish (2-1-1, Big Ten 0-0-0-0) to win, 4-2, in the Compton Family Ice Arena on Saturday night. Dylan Gambrell, Troy Terry, and Logan O'Connor each logged multi-point games and Tanner Jaillet made 31 saves in the Pioneers' first victory of the season.
After killing a penalty only 20 seconds into the game, the Pioneers began creating offense and capitalized at 10:10 of the first period when a net-front scramble gave Troy Terry his first goal of the season. Colin Staub and Jarid Lukosevicius had assists on the goal.
Denver's 1-0 lead held until the final two minutes of the opening frame when Griffin Mendel guided the puck into the offensive zone, O'Connor played a pass from the end boards to the front of the net and Jake Durflinger buried his first collegiate goal. The goal came at 18:21 of the first period and the 2-0 lead would hold through the second intermission.
Cam Morrison and the Irish cut the Pioneers' lead in half at 14:44 of the third period. Jake Evans and Andrew Oglevie had assists on the play. Notre Dame was awarded a power play following the goal and evened the score with a wrist shot that appeared to graze the side of the night but, upon video review, was revealed to have entered a hole in the net. Jordan Gross had the shot to make it 2-2 at 15:08 of the third period. Bobby Nardella and Jake Evans had the assists.
Twenty-four seconds after the Irish equalized with a pair of quick goals, Liam Finlay found open space and fired a wrist shot past the glove of Irish goalie Cale Morris. Tyson McLellan and Dylan Gambrell had the assists.
Gambrell iced the game with an empty-netter at 18:40 of the third period. Terry and O'Connor had assists.
The Pioneers finished 0/2 on the power play and 2/3 on the penalty kill.
Jim Montgomery Post-Game Transcript
Q: …it was a really balanced effort tonight…
A: Yeah, I thought all four lines played really well and all six defensemen. Tanner (Jaillet) was fantastic. We generated a lot of scoring chances, did a lot of good stuff in the offensive zone, our puck protection was better and we got inside the middle ice. (Liam Finlay) missed a wide-open net and there were a couple (chances) on the back door that we just missed. Their goalie made some big saves too.
Q: Notre Dame seemed like a different team in that third period. All the sudden they just kept coming at you. Were they doing anything different or were you just unable to match their intensity?
A: Yeah, I think that for the first two periods I thought we…aside from the first four minutes of the first…we won every foot race and we won every battle. They started winning battles against us and hemmed us in our end…we didn't communicate well. We started communicating. I really loved our response. Once it went 2-2, that's a big-time (goal) and then they really didn't get anything after that. The execution of…Terry and Gambrell were fantastic tonight and they executed along with our best defensive forward in Logan O'Connor on the empty-net situation. We got a pretty easy empty-net goal as a result of our forecheck.
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