COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—There was no post-championship letdown for Colorado College.
One night after clinching the MacNaughton Cup as the regular season champion in the Western Collegiate Association, the Tigers continued to torment their in-state rivals, completing the regular season with a 3-1 win against the University of Denver on Saturday at the sold out World Arena.
CC (26-9-1, 21-6-1 WCHA) finishes the regular season with a 16-2-0 mark at home and will host Alaska Anchorage in a best-of-three first-round series in the WCHA playoffs next week. DU (22-13-1, 16-11-1 WCHA) still holds the No. 3 seed in the league despite losing three consecutive games and will host Minnesota Duluth in the first round.
Sophomore Bill Sweatt led CC with one goal and one assist. With the league title all locked up, Tigers junior goaltender Drew O’Connell started in place of freshman Richard Bachman. O’Connell recorded 27 saves to post his third win of the season.
“We had it wrapped up, but when you get all that hardware you don’t want to get it with a loss,” CC forward Jimmy Kilpatrick said. “It definitely was fun to get a win and get all that hardware at the same time.”
Mike Testwuide opened the scoring for CC, netting a power-play goal at the 12:09 mark of the first period. Sophomore Matt Overman gave the Tigers a 2-0 edge less than two minutes later with his second goal of the season. Sweatts goal, off an assist from Chad Rau, chased DU goaltender Peter Mannino at the 2:37 mark of the second period.
DU defenseman Chris Butler allowed the Pioneers to avoid the shutout with a power-play goal early in the third period. The Pioneers outshot the Tigers 28-24 but went 1-for-7 on the power play.
“We kind of bent a little bit early but didn’t break,” CC coach Scott Owens said. “I thought (O’Connell), for not having played since January 18 looked confident and had a good 60 minutes.”
