Prior to\u00a0Saturday’s game against the Broncos, UND freshman forward Tyson Jost left Grand Forks to join his teammates on the Canadian World Junior team. Obviously, Jost\u2019s absence on Saturday left a huge void in the Hawks lineup. Without Jost, the Hawks struggled mightily on the power play.<\/p>\n
During Saturday’s game, the Broncos beat a path to the penalty box. During the third period, the Fighting Hawks had 12:35 of power-play time but were unable to get anything past freshman goalie Ben Blacker. Frankly, it\u2019s hard to win a hockey game if you have two five-minute majors and don\u2019t score on the power play.<\/p>\n
Bronco\u2019s senior defenseman Taylor Fleming was the game’s villain. Fleming, took a pair of minor penalties and\u00a0was assessed two five-minute majors in the third period (one kneeing and one for checking from behind). In the end, none of this mattered, because the Hawks failed to cash in on the man advantage. \u00a0For the game, UND was 0-6 on the power play. For the weekend they were 1-9 on the man advantage.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Fleming leads the NCHC in penalty minutes with 44, there are four players tied for second place 19 penalty minutes. Fleming added 24 penalty minutes to that total in Saturday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the lack of execution,\u201d junior defenseman Tucker Poolman said. \u201c(We’re) just not playing together, as far as making the little plays that make a power play successful \u2013 as far as getting it deep \u2013 little passes and pops, (we weren\u2019t ) moving our feet. \u00a0As a team, it wasn\u2019t good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the Hawks want to make a run in the second half of the season, they\u2019re going to need to improve their special team\u2019s play. UND is ranked 32nd<\/sup> nationally on the power play and 46th<\/sup> on the penalty kill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prior to\u00a0Saturday’s game against the Broncos, UND freshman forward Tyson Jost left Grand Forks to join his teammates on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[543617842],"tags":[140539989],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n