GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- The secret to beating a very good hockey team might center on limiting its shots on goal and keeping the team away from a run of power plays.

The University of North Dakota aced the first part of that equation, but flunked the second half, resulting in a 3-2 National Collegiate Hockey Conference loss to No. 4 ranked Minnesota Duluth and a split of the weekend series

The Bulldogs converted a pair of 5-on-3 power plays into goals from senior center Peter Krieger against UND sophomore goalie Peter Thome to skate away with the victory, despite managing just 17 shots on goal for the entire game.

Krieger scored 45 seconds into the 5-on-3 at 3:05 of the first period and again 57 seconds into the second 5-on-3 at 6:14 of the second period for a 3-1 Bulldog lead. Minto, N.D., native Jade Miller scored Duluth's other goal, his first of the season. His goal gave Duluth a 2-1 lead at 2:49 of the second period, followed by Krieger's second 5-on-3 goal four minutes later, which goes down as the game-winner.

That was enough to withstand freshman Gavin Hain's fifth goal of the year at 17:59 of the second period and an earlier pipe shot by defenseman Gabe Bast.

Duluth converted 2 of the 5 power plays into goals while UND managed one power-play goal on four tries, that by defenseman Colton Poolman on a sensational spinning backhander from his knees to tie the game at 8:04 of the first period.

But there was little question that the Duluth power plays hurt UND, both on the scoreboard and in draining the legs of Fighting Hawks' penalty killers.

"The difference of the game was specialty teams,'' UND coach Brad Berry said. "We talked about it before last weekend at Western Michigan, and it's relative again tonight here. We can't drop any more. We've got to make make sure we have more discipline in our game.''

Both penalties that put the Fighting Hawks two men down were called on senior center Rhett Gardner, the most penalized player on the team. His loss hurt in several ways, since he is one of the mainstay penalty killers and the best faceoff man in the nation.

"Everybody's got to play for us,'' Berry said. "The way the game was tonight, only half our team played because of power play penalty kill. The biggest thing for us is playing consistently game in and game out. We're playing hard, but we're losing games on small details.''

Case in point would be faceoffs, where UND ranks No, 1 nationally in wins. But tonight, Duluth won 36 of 60 draws. Gardner, lost 11 of 19 and Mark Senden (7 of 17), Jasper Weatherby (5 of 12) and Ludvig Hoff (2 of 7) struggled as well.

UND managed just two shots in the first period but scored on its first shot, the spin-o-rama on the power play by Poolman.

"I think we took a little bit to get ourselves into it,'' Poolman said. "They came out with some jump. I didn't mind their start, but they came out a bit more grindy than we were, and that's our game. We've got to outwork teams this time of the year to to try to get results. They got those 5-on-3, and that's just so mental, and it came back to bite us.''

What it did was take away one of North Dakota's strengths. "We have to limit it to 3, maybe 4 power plays for their team,'' Poolman said. 'That way everybody gets to play, everyone's going. That's our strength, trying to grind teams down, wearing teams down in the offensive zone and winning games 3-2. We didn't have the energy to do that tonight.''

UND pulled Thome with 93 seconds to play, but didn't get any shots on net.

Despite the loss, UND moved up two places to No. 18 in the Pairwise Rankings, which mimic the process by which the NCAA will select its 16-team NCAA tournament field in a few weeks. UND dropped to 9-10-1 in the NCHC and 15-14-2 overall heading into a road series next weekend at Colorado College before returning home to close out the regular season against Nebraska-Omaha. Duluth improved to 19-9-2 overall and 12-7-1 in the league.

Game notes: Krieger was named the No 1 star by the media, followed by Poolman and Duluth defenseman Scott Perunovich, who had two assists . . .  UND outshot Duluth 14-8 over the last 40 minutes after being outshot 9-2 in the first period. . . Goalies Hunter Shepard of Duluth and Thome for UND finished with 14 saves apiece . . . The game drew 11,990 fans, the largest crowd of the season . . .  UND and Duluth split their four meetings this season, each winning once in the opposing rink . . . Bast and Colin Adams had 3 shots on goal each to lead UND, while Krieger paced Duluth with 4. . . . Long-time radio broadcaster Tim Hennessy was presented with a UND jersey in an on-ice ceremony before the game with No, 40 on it in recognition of his 40 years as play-by-play announcer for North Dakota hockey.