One more win and the University of Denver Pioneers will have punched their ticket to Minneapolis for the National Collegiate Hockey Conference’s Frozen Faceoff.
Trevor Moore, Troy Terry and Colin Staub each scored in a span of 2:22 early in the second period Friday night to give the Pioneers a 3-0 lead, and they went on to take a 5-2 victory over Nebraska-Omaha in Game 1 of a best-of-three quarterfinal series at Magness Arena.
After the Mavericks closed to within 3-2 to make things interesting — and tense — Danton Heinen’s unassisted short-handed goal at 8:06 of the third put the Pioneers up by two. Then Heinen added an empty-netter with 56.7 seconds remaining.
With many students leaving town Friday for spring break after final exams and with the general public tickets not part of the season package, a cozy gathering of 3,034 watched the nationally sixth-ranked Pioneers take the opener and stretch their winning streak to 10 games.
Game 2 is Saturday night.
“I thought UNO was the better team,” said DU coach Jim Montgomery. “I thought we played a little nervous in the first, and then as the game wore on, we continued to make a lot of mental mistakes and we weren’t playing with good pace. I just thought our team was a little lethargic. Finals are mentally draining, so I thought our mental energy was what cost us. I think physically we were pretty good, but we were skating out of position and not stopping and starting. When you see stuff like that, you’re not mentally sharp.”
Said Heinen: “We didn’t have our ‘A’ game, for sure. But in the playoffs, you have to find a way to pull out wins when you don’t have your ‘A’ game, and I thought we did that tonight.”
Since the teams finished the regular season with a two-game series against each other, it was DU’s third win over the Mavericks in eight days. DU (22-8-5) also won both meetings in Omaha in January.
In Game 1, the Mavericks ended up outshooting the Pioneers 31-20.
After the Mavericks fought back with late second-period goals from Jake Guentzel and Brian Cooper to cut the DU lead to one. And when the Pioneers’ Emil Romig was called for holding the stick at 7:13 of the third, the Mavericks had a chance to tie it on the power play.
But Heinen got the decisive goal instead, beating Kirk Thompson high to the glove side from the left circle.
“It’s a goal-scorer’s shot,” Montgomery said. “I give him credit, I wasn’t happy with his first shift of the period and I kind of told him we needed more from him. We need him to lead us, and a couple of shifts later, he scores that.”
Terry Frei: tfrei@denverpost.com or @TFrei
