ST. PAUL, Minn. — What a day for UMD hockey fans of all shapes and sizes.
As the UMD women played in the Frozen Four and the UMD men in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff, here’s hoping Bulldog fans were glued to TVs and phones and radios maybe. There was certainly plenty to follow.
And the day turned out as well as it possibly could.
Naomi Rogge scored late in the second overtime, and the UMD women advanced to the NCAA championship game by beating Northeastern 2-1 in a marathon game. And in a game that started two hours after the women and still came close to ending before it did, the UMD men got 30 saves from Ryan Fanti in one of the best defensive efforts this season, a 2-0 NCHC Frozen Faceoff semifinal win over Denver.
The women fell behind 1-0 in the second period after Northeastern’s Skylar Irvine found a puck that no one from UMD could seem to locate and got it past senior goalie Emma Soderberg.
It remained 1-0 until the midpoint of the third period, when senior Taylor Anderson found a loose puck in the slot and one-timed it past Northeastern fifth-year goalie Aerin Frankel to level the score.
GOAL! Anderson @taytaya5 TIES IT UP! It’s 1-1 now in the 3rd! #UMDwHky #WFrozenFour pic.twitter.com/ZnwTyCJx83
— UMD Hockey gifs (@UMDHockeygifs) March 18, 2022
From there, UMD had some chances, including a Clara Van Wieren shot that caught the inside of the post behind Frankel late in the third. But 60 minutes wasn’t enough for these teams.
Neither was 80.
In fact, it wouldn’t be crazy to express surprise that the teams are not somehow still playing, given the performances of Frankel (48 saves) and Soderberg (career high 46 saves).
Söderberg keeps OT going. #UMDwHky #WFrozenFour pic.twitter.com/zf14ir8MaJ
— UMD Hockey gifs (@UMDHockeygifs) March 18, 2022
The duel ended late in the second overtime, when Elizabeth Giguere fed Rogge in the middle. It looks like Rogge was able to use the Northeastern defender as a screen, and her shot got a piece of Frankel but still leaked through, touching off a raucous celebration on the UMD bench and on the ice.
.@UMDWHockey is headed to the NCAA Championship after beating Northeastern in 2OT pic.twitter.com/YwMeiMo7vs
— ESPN+ (@ESPNPlus) March 18, 2022
It’s UMD’s seventh national championship game appearance (5-1 record), but first since 2010, when UMD beat Cornell 3-2 in three overtimes.
“What a hockey game,” UMD coach Maura Crowell said. “So long, double overtime. I think two really evenly-matched teams, tons of skill, great goaltending.
“Probably the best moment I’ve had in my career.”
“It’s hard to put into words,” said Rogge, a fifth-year senior. “We put in so much work, and our goal from the start was to make it to that game (the championship).”
Soderberg said it wasn’t too difficult to move on from the Northeastern goal, because of the nature of the goal.
“Those are the type of goals that happen in these games,” she said. “It’s easy to reset. You can’t think about it. If it goes in, it’s on to the next puck.”
The Bulldogs will match up Sunday with WCHA foe Ohio State, which held off Yale 2-1 in the second semifinal, a game that started about an hour after it was supposed to. The Buckeyes have never appeared in a title game before. The teams split four games during the regular season, which each series ending in a split.
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As for the men, they won their third straight, shutting out Denver 2-0 in the first of two NCHC semifinals on Friday. Western Michigan beat North Dakota 4-2 Friday night and will meet the Bulldogs for the NCHC title Saturday at 7:30.
Junior Ryan Fanti, less than 24 hours after being named the NCHC Goaltender of the Year, was rock-solid, making 30 saves for his fifth shutout and first since Nov. 27. He called it a “team shutout” afterward, and coach Scott Sandelin was complimentary of his team’s defensive mindset in this game, the first time this season the Pioneers have been held off the board.
“I thought our guys played three pretty good periods,” he said. “They came out pretty good in the third, but our guys settled into it.
“I said before the game, we need five guys back, it’s non-negotiable. Especially against this team, their second wave is dangerous. You’re gonna give up something. I thought for the most part, defensively, we did a good job.”
Blake Biondi gave UMD a 1-0 lead with five-plus minutes left in the first. Jesse Jacques stepped in front of a pass in the defensive slot and started a rush, then fed Biondi streaking towards the Denver net. The pass was perfect, and Biondi got it by DU goalie Magnus Chrona for his team-leading 17th of the season.
From there, UMD just didn’t give Denver much. The Bulldogs did as good a job as they have all season of pressuring the Pioneers, who seemed to be struggling to deal with that pressure and make plays. Fanti talked afterward about seeing a couple shots early and how it helped him get into a groove, but he didn’t have to make a lot of ten-bell stops, which also helped.
“Honestly, I had to make some saves, but I was really happy with the way we defended and played,” Fanti said.
UMD had a goal wiped out late in the second, when Koby Bender appeared to score at the netmouth, but it was ruled that Noah Cates batted the puck there with his glove during a mad scramble by Chrona. While I was pissed about this ruling, the reality is that — while you can’t see Cates actually make contact with the puck — there is no other realistic way the puck could have been propelled from where it was to where it ended up. It’s a bit bothersome because this is not a standard that has been regularly used to overturn calls, but to be blunt, if it’s the standard going forward, you’ll get little argument from me.
(It reminded me at the time, and still does, of current UMD assistant Adam Krause’s potential game-tying goal in the gut-wrenching loss to BU in the 2015 regional final. You can’t see the puck, but you know damn well where the puck is. By the letter of the law, they made the right call at that point in time.)
The Bulldogs locked it down in the third, didn’t give Denver much, and iced the game with 20 seconds left thanks to an empty-net goal by Kobe Roth. That’s 11 out of 14 goals this season by Roth that have come against Denver, North Dakota, Western Michigan, or St. Cloud State.
UMD and Western Michigan split four games in the regular season, with UMD winning the series via NCHC standings points (7-5) because the WMU win in Duluth went to overtime.
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We will have the title game for you from St. Paul Saturday night. Pregame at 7pm, faceoff at 7:30 for UMD and Western Michigan.
We also are going to carry the women’s NCAA final on Sunday with UMD and Ohio State. That will be called remotely, with coverage at 2:45 and the game at 3pm.
Both games will be streamed as usual.
I’ll be back Saturday with some NCAA scenarios for the men and the line charts.
