ESPN College Sports

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In the end it wasn't about Colorado College having to play on a small rink.

And it wasn't about Denver playing its freshman goalie -- although several of Peter Mannino's 41 saves were special and his performance deserves mention.

And it wasn't about the familiar I-25 schools playing each other for the sixth time this season.

All of those may have been factors, but in the end it was about the Tigers' inability to stay out of the penalty box -- and the Pioneers' ability to make them pay for those mistakes.

DU, which came in ranked only 18th in the nation with the man-advantage, converted on six of its 12 power-play chances en route to a 6-2 win over CC in the first Frozen Four semifinal at Value City Arena.

"We shot ourselves in the foot with penalties and obviously with our penalty killing," Colorado Coach Scott Owens said. "We were never able to make a good thing happen.

"The roof fell in today."

Now the defending national champion Pioneers (31-9-2) move on to Saturday night's national championship game (ESPN, 7 p.m. ET) against the winner of North Dakota-Minnesota. DU is 6-2 in its previous championship game appearances.

The Pioneers advanced to a second straight title game because they were finally able to find the net with the man advantage. Coming into the Frozen Four, there was no reason to expect that to be the case.

In fact, to say DU had been anemic of late on the power play would be kind. Consider these numbers:

• 1-for-13 at the Northeast Regional (vs. Bemidji State and UNH)
• 2-for-10 at the WCHA Final Five (vs. North Dakota and CC)
• 0-for-13 in the WCHA opening round (vs. Michigan Tech)
• 0-for-12 in the final regular-season series with Colorado College

Add it up and the Pioneers were converting at just better than six percent (3-for-48) in their last eight games. And in the five games this season against the Tigers, DU was only 4-for-32 (12.5 percent) with the man advantage.

So from where did this outburst come? The Pioneers said they spent a lot time on specialty teams in the 10 days of preparation since regional play.

"Our power play has not been capitalizing of late," DU coach George Gwozdecky said. "We've had some good chances but we haven't been able to put the puck in the back of the net. We've worked on it a little more bit of late but I don't know if this game was a result of that.

"I thought the one thing we were able to do was get shooting lanes open. We have been a little bit static in our movement away from the puck and tonight we were able to find the shooting lanes and get those lanes opened up by our movement in order to get pucks delivered to the net."

The benefactors were seniors Luke Fulghum and Gabe Gauthier, who each tallied a pair of goals, and sophomores Matt Carle and Adrian Veideman, who rounded out DU's offensive outburst.

Carle scored what turned out to be the game-winner, but Fulghum's goals gave DU a 2-0 first-period lead and set the tone for the game.

"We worked on it hard in practice," Fulghum said. "The coaches really harped on how important it was when we get these chances to get it done and score goals."

Mission accomplished.

CC (31-9-3) heads back to Colorado Springs still looking for its first national title since 1957. And still trying to figure what went wrong on the Value City Arena ice.

"I think it was a combination of Denver's power play being so good and I think they also got some deflections," Tigers goalie Curtis McElhinney said. "They were really clicking and then they got a couple of bounces on their second and third goals. Sometimes that happens and there is really nothing you can do about it."

Especially when the roof starts caving in.

David Albright is a senior editor at ESPN.com and can be reached at david.albright@espn3.com.