Sparks, sticks fly in North Dakota-Minnesota series
MINNEAPOLIS -- As Hobey Baker Award winner Ryan Duncan made his way down the hallway from the North Dakota dressing room toward the team bus Saturday night, he crossed paths with what passed for the law in the basement of Mariucci Arena.
WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod, league supervisor of officials Greg Shepherd (planning for trouble, or just here by coincidence?) and game referee Don Adam were escorted by University of Minnesota policemen to a nearby room where they could review the game tape to discern what really happened in the melee (and decide what they would do about it) at the end of a 1-1 tie between the Fighting Sioux and Gophers.
What really happened was just another chapter in the storied rivalry that is Minnesota-North Dakota hockey.
Nearly three hours earlier, Duncan, the smallest player on the ice at 5-foot-6 and around 160 pounds, set off the beginning of a game-long storm of chippy and undisciplined play -- that ended up in 160 penalty minutes being whistled -- when he cross-checked Minnesota right wing Jay Barriball from behind and into the side wall just seven seconds into the game.
Adam gave Duncan a game misconduct to go along with a five-minute major for his stick work, which sent the junior from Calgary upstairs to watch -- along with the sellout crowd of 10,197 -- the rest of the game from the pressbox.
"You want to be involved in a heated rivalry like this," Duncan said. "You want to play in pressure situations with high intensity. I was on the edge of my seat the entire game and I just wanted to be out there. My teammates kind of bailed me out."
Minnesota (12-12-6) couldn't convert on its five-minute power play and the two border rivals proceeded to trade shots, slashes and scrums for two scoreless periods.
Then the Gophers, whose third-period struggles will keep sports psychologists in business until further notice, struck first when Blake Wheeler found Ben Gordon on a three-on-two break. He beat Sioux goaltender Jean-Philippe Lamoureux high to the stick side.
History, not to mention the Gophers' demeanor of late, dictated that a 1-0 lead wouldn't hold.
That's because in all of Minnesota's nine overtime games (0-3-6) this season, Don Lucia's boys have surrendered the tying goal -- with seven of those tallies coming in the third period.
Enter the seventh Gopher villain in the form of Chris VandeVelde.
The sophomore center buried a rebound feed from Ryan Martens into the open net to beat Alex Kangas and make it 1-1 with nearly nine minutes to go.
Kangas (27 saves) and Lamoureux (29 saves) did their part the rest of the way to ensure there would be no more goal scoring in the second game of this always-anticipated weekend series.
But there was still plenty of action on the ice -- before and often after the whistle.
And a lack of composure by Minnesota's best player likely cost the Gophers a chance at one final power-play opportunity -- in overtime no less. With North Dakota's Rylan Kaip set to go off for hooking with 2:02 left to play, Wheeler was whistled for a retaliatory roughing to the head call to Chay Genoway.
"The last thing you want is your best player in the box," Lucia said. "And certainly when we were going to go on the power play in overtime, you don't have to protect anyone at that point with two minutes to go."
No, but some protection would come in handy after the final horn.
That's when Sioux center Darcy Zajac cross-checked defenseman R.J. Anderson from behind and sent him down to the ice. Taking exception to the lumber to the lumbar, Gopher left wing Tony Lucia went after Zajac as several other Gopher-Sioux pairings erupted around the main match.
Whereas Friday night's overtime produced an acrobatic midair goal by UND's Evan Trupp that was the top play on "SportsCenter," Saturday night's extra session more resembled a street scene from the movie "Cloverfield."
The climax of which was a square [off] dance that started when the handshake line didn't exactly go as planned.
"That's an understatement," Gordon said. "With the rivalry that we have and the history of the series, it's going to be like that. It's just the way it is.
"We've got to learn how to walk that fine line between having emotion and undisciplined penalties. It's good that we showed some emotion and were there to back each other up. It's good to see that we do have a pulse and we can rev up for a big game."
While the triumvirate of McLeod, Shepherd and Adam sorted out what ended up being 93 penalty minutes being assessed after the game had ended, both sides shook off the youth-gone-wild exhibition as little more than escalated emotions that were to be expected when heated (read: hated) rivals get reacquainted.
It was even suggested that Saturday night was pretty tame compared to some of the scraps during warm-ups that this rivalry has produced since 1930.
"This is a huge rivalry and a lot of the guys know each other," VandeVelde said. "It was just a battle out there and I guess both teams were mad that we tied.
"For us, coming into this building and stealing three out of four points is huge. We would have liked to get the win, but it's special that we came in here and got three out of four points."
For Minnesota, there isn't much time to dwell on another lost weekend. Up next is a trip to Denver (18-8-0), and Lucia's numbers-challenged roster will be down one more player on Friday night because his son Tony picked up a game disqualification to go along with a fighting major for his scrap with Zajac -- who was also assessed a game DQ and will have to sit out UND's next game (Feb. 15 vs. DU).
The Gophers are 1-3-3 since resuming WCHA play last month and find themselves in seventh place in the conference with four weekends to play. They're also tied for 17th in the PairWise rankings, meaning the end of the season may arrive earlier than normal at the U.
The Sioux (17-8-2) are tied for fifth in PairWise and get next weekend off to heal up a bit and prepare for their final six WCHA games. North Dakota (29 points) is second behind league-leader Colorado College (31 points) but the Tigers have two games in hand.
The break may come at a good time physically, but for a team on an 8-1-1 roll since January, it remains to be seen if the idle time will impact the Sioux's momentum.
"It's cliché time," North Dakota coach Dave Hakstol said. "It's one game at a time -- but it really is. We have a week off and it's a good time for it physically. We have some guys that need a few days away from the contact.
"And a week from now, after some of the teams have made up some of the games, we can re-evaluate exactly where we're at going into the stretch run of league play. We only have six league games to go, but the playoffs seem like they're a long way to go."
That's funny, because the atmosphere in Mariucci Arena -- before, during and especially after a pair of games on the first weekend of February -- made it feel like hockey's second season was already here.
Even if Ryan Duncan missed out on most of the fun.
David Albright is the senior deputy editor for college sports at ESPN.com. He can be reached at david.albright@espn3.com.
