GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- University of North Dakota senior left wing Brendan O'Donnell went from first line on the depth chart Friday to the same position on the fourth line tonight.

But in the more important flow of the game, O'Donnell vaulted to star status.

His first career hat trick sparked his team to a 5-2 National Collegiate Hockey Conference victory over Minnesota Duluth and earned O'Donnell the game's No. 1 star status.

O'Donnell, who now has six goals in his last seven games, scored a goal in each period as North Dakota bounced back from Friday's 4-1 loss with a Grade A performance tonight.

And the leaders of that turnaround were O'Donnell and junior goaltender Zane McIntyre, who stopped a season-high 41 of 43 Bulldog shots to earn No. 2 star honors.

"We all played the right way,'' UND coach Dave Hakstol said. "We all played hard. Pretty simple, overall.''

It added up to a big win for North Dakota, which came into the weekend ranked No. 1 in both national polls.

Hakstol put O'Donnell on a line with senior Connor Gaarder and rookie Austin Poganski.

"That line has been good different times before,'' Hakstol said. Hakstol said he was especially pleased for O'Donnell, who has battled injuries throughout his career, but now has eight goals halfway through this season, his career high for goals.

"I couldn't be happier for anybody in our room than Brendan,'' Hakstol said. "He hasn't had a lot of things bounce his way offensively and he's a good offensive player. Tonight he did a great job.''

And that O'Donnell was listed on the line chart sheet as on the fourth line, it's not Hakstol views his line combinations -- or O'Donnell's situation.

"I never look at it that way,'' Hakstol said. "I know everybody else does. We put four lines together that we thought could contribute. That's the way our team is. I don't have a number for any one line. They're all a little bit different.''

McIntyre made 31 of his 41 saves in the last two periods, allowing just a goal in the period.

NoDak broke the game open with a three-goal second period, sparked by Mark MacMillan's first goal in his last five games but his ninth of the season. He made a quick transition with his hands to move the puck from his backhand to his forehand on his rush to the net to then beat Duluth goalie Kasimir Kaskisuo (28 saves) to the stick side from in tight.

That goal at 6:11 of the second period put UND in front to stay.

Gaarder stole the puck from Duluth defenseman Carson Soucy to set up O'Donnell's second goal at 10:19. Forward Drake Caggiula notched his ninth of the season on a UND power play at 12:43 for the 4-1 lead.

Duluth's Justin Crandall scored on a power play at 4:04 of the third period to chop the lead to 4-2, but O'Donnell one-timed a Luke Johnson feed from the left faceoff circle to complete his hat trick at 9:16 to close the scoring.

In a feisty game which featured 24 combined penalties for 64 minutes, even McIntyre got into the action. He drew a slashing penalty in the third period after collecting a rare goalie assist on MacMillan's goal.

"He played great yesterday,'' Hakstol said of McIntyre. "He gave us a chance. We didn't play well in front of him. He's probably the one guy in our room who played really well for 120 minutes. Both these guys (McIntyre and Kaskisuo) were outstanding. Maybe Zane was just a little bit better.''

He needed to be.

"They're outstanding,'' Hakstol said of Duluth. "That's the best hockey team we've played against.''

It was a sharp improvement in the team game for UND from Friday's performance.

"We played a little soft yesterday,'' UND captain Stephane Pattyn said. "We didn't really commit to what we need to do to win a game,'' Pattyn added. "Tonight our goal was to forget about systems, forget about what we need to do. We all know that. We practice that every day. We just knew we had to go out there and play hard and it would come our way.''

And it did, led by O'Donnell and McIntyre's superb nights.

UND, 14-5-2 overall and 7-4-1 in the NCHC, hosts Niagara University in a nonconference series next weekend.

Game notes: O'Donnell, Michael Parks, Gage Ausmus and Jordan Schmaltz led UND in shots on goal with four apiece ... O'Donnell, Keaton Thompson and Andrew Panzarella all finished with a plus-3 on the plus/minus rating ... UND was 0-3 on the power play with 11 shots, Duluth 1-5 with nine total shots ... MacMillan was named the game's third star ... The game drew a sellout of 11,777 ... UND had a 35-25 faceoff edge, led by Johnson (7-3) and Gaarder (6-3)

Virg Foss covered UND hockey for 35 seasons for the Grand Forks Herald until his retirement. He's now in his 10th season of reporting on UND home games exclusively for UNDsports.com. Contact him at virgfoss@yahoo.com.