GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- A fair share of coaches in any sport stress to their teams the importance of a fast start in a game, to set the tone of the game, to build an early lead. It's hard to argue with that.
Other coaches say a strong finish to the game is just as important, if not more, in creating a good outcome for their teams.
All that ran through my mind from several angles last Saturday as I watched North Dakota's Judd Caulfield score a goal seven seconds into the opening period of the hockey game against Denver. His goal was one second off the school record for fastest goal from start of the game of :06 set by Lee Davidson in 1989.
That lead stood up for just over one period. Defending NCAA champion Denver blitzed the Fighting Hawks with three goals in each of the second and third periods to win going away, 6-3, and complete a rare weekend sweep of UND on its home ice.
It brought to mind a football game I covered in mid-October, 1969, four months into my 36-year-tenure as a sports editor/reporter for the Grand Forks Herald.
The scene was Dacotah Field in Fargo, where powerful NDSU -- the eventual national champion that season -- met the Fighting Sioux from North Dakota U.
The Bison scored on their first possession to take a 7-0 lead.
But then that fast start mentioned earlier in this article reared its ugly head.
Dan Martinsen, a great defensive back for UND, ran back the Bison kickoff after their score 100 yards to tie the game and raise a faint trace of hope. But the strong finish, from UND's standpoint, never happened. The Bison rolled up 692 yards of offense in beating UND 64-14, the largest margin of defeat by the losing team at that time in the history of this historic rivalry.
I remember approaching Martinsen in the UND locker room after the game. I made some off-hand attempt at humor by telling him that he must have really ticked of the Bison with his TD scamper, that the beat-down was his fault.
But the difference in what happened at Ralph Engelstad Arena last Saturday and what happened at Dacotah Field 54 seasons ago had a whole different feel for me.
In 1969, Ron Erhardt's Bison football team mowed over everyone on its way to beating Montana in the Camellia Bowl in Sacramento to wrap up the Division II National Championship. So that the Bison wiped away Martinsen's TD return and eventually the whole UND team came as no real surprise, even for a guy reporting on his first-ever UND/NDSU football game.
Last weekend at The Ralph, expectations were high for a great series between the two teams who tied for the league title last season and are expected to battle for it again this year.
After Denver pulled out a 3-2 win on Friday, a fast start to the game and a strong finish were much needed by the Fighting Hawks the next night. The quick goal arrived from Caulfield's stick, but the strong finish belonged to Denver.
UND is still in search of its identity as a team. Perhaps that can be learned in this weekend's series with Miami.
A flash of greatness will be brought back to the rink this weekend, and perhaps that will be in inspiration for this year's team.
On Friday, UND and NHL goaltending great Ed Belfour will be back, as a part of a series of former star players who take One More Shift on the Ralph Engelstad Arena ice before the start of the game. He backstopped the incredible 1987 team to a school-record 40 wins, and the school's fifth of eight NCAA titles.
On Saturday, the 1982 NCAA title team will be honored, 40 years since they beat Wisconsin 5-2 in Providence in the seventh meeting between them that season. That win came just two weeks after Wisconsin had drubbed UND 12-1 in a two-game, total-goal league playoff series at the old Ralph.
The 1982 champs were an amazing bunch. Consider this: They had 12 players who went on to play in the NHL, including both goalies (Jon Casey, Darren Jensen.) I believe that is the most players to make it the NHL from one team in UND history.
It was also, amazing enough, a team without a single All-America selection!! And that roster included the likes of Dave Tippett, James Patrick, Craig Ludwig, Rick Zombo and Troy Murray, who all had long and illustrious NHL careers.
And that team included Phil Sykes, too. He's done something no other player in UND history has ever done. He led the NCAA tournament in scoring on both the 1980 and 1982 title teams.In 1980, Sykes finished with 1 goal. 4 assists in a 5-2 victory over Northern Michigan in the title game. In 1982, he had 3 goals, 1 assist in a 5-2 win over Wisconsin in the championship game. That's what I would call big plays from a big-time player in the biggest of games.
At the 1997 NCAA tournament in Milwaukee (won by UND), Sykes was named to the NCAA's 50th anniversary team, honoring the very best players from the 50 previous years of the NCAA tournament. The only other UND player selected to that elite team was Tony Hrkac, who won the Hobey Baker Award in 1987 as national scoring leader (116 points in 48 games) for the UND team known as the "Hrkac Circus.''
So whether we'll see great results from this current UND team this weekend remains to be seen.
But with Belfour, and the 1982 team taking the ice Friday and Saturday, we'll all get to see greatness again from UND's storied hockey history.
Hawk-ey Talk with Virg Foss is a new weekly column about North Dakota hockey by longtime writer Virg Foss. Foss covered UND hockey for 35 seasons for the Grand Forks Herald, including 5 NCAA title teams, before his retirement. Since his retirement, he's written about UND hockey exclusively for FightingHawks.com. This marks his 53rd season since he began covering UND hockey in 1969.
