MINNEAPOLIS - North Dakota freshman forward Danny Kristo scored a pair of goals to help lift the fourth-ranked Fighting Sioux to a 3-3 overtime tie with host Minnesota tonight at Mariucci Arena.
With the tie, UND improved to 12-6-5 overall and 8-6-3 in the WCHA and stayed five points ahead of the Golden Gophers in the league standings. The Sioux are unbeaten in their last five games, going 3-0-2 during that stretch.
The Sioux were 124 seconds away from claiming their third straight conference victory, but Minnesota forward Jacob Cepis grabbed a bouncing puck in the UND slot and beat Sioux goalie Brad Eidsness (So., Chestermere, Alberta) high to the blocker side with a wrist shot to tie the game at 3-3 with 2:04 left in the period.
UND had a chance to win it in overtime when Minnesota's Nick Leddy took a minor penalty with 68 seconds left in the extra frame, but the Sioux were unable to come up with a power-play tally and the Gopher penalty kill finished off a perfect 4-for-4 night.
"It was hard fought," said UND head coach Dave Hakstol. "There were a lot of guys that emptied the tanks and played hard.
"From our standpoint we feel like we lost a point, giving up a one-goal lead with two minutes to go. But in the same respect, both teams battled real hard and both walked away with a point."
Kristo staked the Sioux to a 1-0 lead at 15:56 of the first period, making a move that forced a Gopher defenseman to commit to the outside, then quickly cut back inside and wired a shot just inside the far post.
The Gophers tied it up just 53 seconds into the second period while on the power-play, when Jordan Schroeder blasted a point shot through traffic and past a screened Eidsness.
Less than two minutes later, Minnesota took its only lead of the night. A Ryan Flynn shot from the right circle was blocked by a Sioux defender, but the puck bounced right to Patrick White, and White buried it in the open net to put the Gophers on top early in the second.
UND was able to answer with 6:36 left in the period on a Twin Cities connection. Freshman defenseman Joe Gleason, a native of Edina, Minn., threaded a pass into the slot to Kristo and the Eden Prairie, Minn., native whistled another wrist shot past Minnesota goalie Alex Kangas.
The Sioux went back on top at 6:37 of the second period on junior Brad Malone's (Miramichi, New Brunswick) sixth goal of the season. Linemate Evan Trupp (Jr., Anchorage, Alaska), stationed in the right corner, spotted Malone at the far post and hit him on the tap with a goal mouth pass. Malone tapped the puck past Kangas for the go-ahead goal.
The Gophers poured on furious pressure in the final minutes until Cepis, playing in just his fifth game of the year, knotted the equalizer with just over two minutes remaining.
UND outshot the Gophers 33-27. Eidsness finished with 24 saves while Kangas countered with 30.
The two teams will do battle again tomorrow night at 7:07 p.m. Central.
Notes: Junior D Derrick LaPoint (Eau Claire, Wis.) enjoyed his second two-assist outing in the last three games and extended his career-long point streak to six games, the longest current streak on the team. LaPoint has eight assists during that stretch. He had seven career assists entering the season ... Kristo led all players with a +3 ... UND's five-game unbeaten streak matches its longest of the season when the Sioux opened the year 4-0-1 ... Trupp had a pair of assists and took over the team scoring lead. He has 20 points in 23 games ... UND and Minnesota have gone to overtime in six of their last 11 meetings.
- Go Sioux -
