UND Hockey: Splitsville in Denver

Peter_Thome 3

UND goalie Peter Thome against Miami University. (Photo Credit: Russ Hons)

Last night, during the post-game handshake, University of Denver head coach Jim Montgomery stood at center ice and berated the National Collegiate Hockey Conference on-ice officials.

If you watch the video above, you can see that it doesn’t take an expert lip reader to figure out what the Denver head coach said.

This most recent display comes a week after getting into a heated post-game altercation with the St. Cloud head coach Bob Motzko. Again, a week later, Montgomery was giving the NCHC officials an earful. It would appear that Montgomery’s league issued reprimand hadn’t taught him anything.

Isn’t this the same kind of behavior he was reprimanded for?

Montgomery’s violations include using inappropriate language toward an opposing team’s player during Saturday’s game and displaying a lack of conduct and sportsmanship on the ice at the conclusion of Saturday’s game, the NCHC said in a press release. (Link)

Apparently, Friday’s profanity-laced tongue lashing paid off. During Saturday’s game, the Pioneers enjoyed a lopsided advantage in penalty minutes; DU 2 penalty minutes — UND 27 penalty minutes. Give the Pioneers credit, they made the most of their chances going  3-for-8 on the man advantage. The Fighting Hawks were unable to cash in on their lone man advantage.

A night after berating the on-ice officials, coach Montgomery was complimenting them.

“I give credit to the refs — I thought they did a great job of protecting our players, because there were a lot of dangerous hits tonight,” Montgomery told the Denver Post.

UND’s undisciplined play wasn’t the only thing that buried them. In the third period, the Fighting Hawks thought they’d scored the game-tying goal by freshman forward Jordan Kawaguchi. After reviewing the game-tying goal in question, the on-ice officials ruled that freshman forward Collin Adams had interfered with Denver goalie Tanner Jaillet. No goal.

“I want to see it here. I’m disappointed in the way the whole night shook out and I’m just going to leave it for that,” Berry said.

Here’s a gif of the goal in question.

With the game tied entering the third period, the Fighting Hawks gave up three goals. In the end, All-American forward Henrik Borgstrom led Denver with two goals and four points. Final score 4-1 Denver.

All things considered, UND left Denver with a series split. An acceptable result against the defending champs in their building. Don’t tell Fighting Hawks fans that, after the game, fans took to Twitter to express their displeasure.

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