By Alexander Fern / Sports Director / @AlexInTheBooth

The St. Cloud State Men’s Hockey team sits 11th in the PairWise rankings as they welcome their NCHC foe the Denver Pioneers into the Brooks Center for their final regular season games on Olympic ice.

LAST TIME OUT

The Huskies are coming off of a weekend against Western Michigan where they took 4 out of a possible 6 points from the Broncos. With that series victory, SCSU sits just 3 points behind conference-leading North Dakota as each team has 4 games left this season.

FLOURISHING FRESHMAN

SCSU is being led by a veteran group of seniors such as Zach Okabe, Dylan Anhorn, Veeti Miettinen, and so on. But depth has been a big story for the success of this SCSU team in recent weeks.

Goaltender Isak Posch was named NCHC freshman of the week this past week. He made back-to-back starts for the first time in his college career, Posch came up big for the Huskies, backstopping SCSU to 4 points against Western Michigan. In Saturday’s finale, the Swede stopped all 19 shots he faced in a 3-0 win for his first career shutout. That earned him Second Star of the Game. On Friday, Posch racked up 30 saves in a 4-3 overtime loss, the third time this season he’s reached the 30-save plateau.

Posch finished the series with 49 saves, while posting a .925 save percentage and a 2.01 goals-against average. He improved to 3-1-2 in six starts in net this year, while compiling a .936 save percentage and a 1.79 goals-against average on the season in seven appearances.

Jack Reimann, Verner Miettinen, Tyson Gross, and others have been a massive part of SCSU’s success. 2 of SCSU’s 4 centers are freshman, and Verner Miettinen has shown his talent with his assist numbers so far this season.

PREVIEWING THE ‘PIOS

SCSU and DU are on two different paths since they last saw each other. Denver is coming off of a weekend where they secured 5 points in an 8-1 win and a tie against Miami (OH). But the main reason that most have pointed to for the iffy weekend for Denver, was that they were without Massimo Rizzo, and Carter King. Those men are the top two centers for DU.

But that didn’t seem to effect the dot. Denver has won 60 percent of its faceoffs over the last four games (153-for-255) after going 82-for-140 (58.6%) in the two contests last week vs. Miami.  Sophomore Aidan Thompson went 19-for-25 on faceoffs on Friday night, setting a new career high for draws in a single game.
 
The Huskies struggled in the dot at times last weekend, leading the faceoff dot by as much as 10 on Friday, but still losing the category in that game. They won the category on Saturday handily however.

Denver is backstopped by goaltender Matt Davis, who has been good in spurts for DU this year. Davis has started 14 consecutive games (9-3-2) since Jan. 5, the longest such stretch of his career and the longest by a DU goaltender this season. He sits at a 12-4-3 cumulative record and has a .901 Save %. Earlier this year, Davis allowed 5 goals in the mile-high city, 4 of them in the Saturday game which resulted in a tie.

PENROSE PANDEMONIUM

Each team in the NCHC has 4 games remaining, and all 4 home playoff, spots are still open, but as of now they’re being occupied by UND, SCSU, DU, and CC.

The Huskies sit 3 points behind UND who welcome Western Michigan to Grand Forks this weekend. It’s all about keeping pace for SCSU right now.

PAIRWISE…

SCSU is now at the point where the PairWise rankings are being checked after every weekend. As of now, SCSU sits 11th in the Pairwise, and the USCHO predicts they would be in a regional in Sioux Falls, SD with UND, Quinnipiac, and Michigan. SCSU has played two of the other three teams in the regional this season.

SCSU can jump up further this weekend if they steal some wins from the Pioneers, but losses this week will hurt, but not as much as they have in the past for PairWise implications.

HOW TO TUNE IN

Both games this weekend will be broadcast live on 88.1FM KVSC with Alexander Fern on play-by-play duties and Brian Moos providing the analysis. Gavin Nelson will be back in studio for your pregame, post-game, and intermission reports.

The series gets underway at 7:30 P.M. on Friday and 6:00 On Saturday. Pregame begins 30 minutes before both contests. (PENDING SCSU Women’s Overtime Possibilities)

KVSC is proud to bring award-winning, student-run Hockey broadcasts to our listeners!!!