The only thing better than moving on to the NCHC Frozen Faceoff? Ending a bitter rival’s season in the process.
That’s exactly what the University of Denver hockey team did Sunday night, as the Pioneers completed their comeback from a game down in a best-of-three quarterfinal series against Colorado College with a 9-2 rout inside Magness Arena.
Ranked 33rd in the Pairwise rankings, Colorado College needed to win the NCHC championship in order to advance to the 16-team NCAA Tournament. Instead, the Tigers (18-18-1) will see their NCAA drought stretch to 14 years.
DU (28-10-1) moves on to face No. 2 seed Arizona State (21-13-2) in a single-elimination semifinal next Friday inside Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minn. The Sun Devils won the regular season series 3-1 against the Pios. Top seed Western Michigan will face No. 5 North Dakota in the other semifinal. The winners play for the championship at 6:30 p.m. MDT Saturday in Saint Paul.
Colorado College won the first game of the series 3-1 on Friday, but the Pios outscored them 15-5 over the final two games to advance to the semifinals.
Carter King scored twice, and Cale Ashcroft and Jack Devine notched three assists apiece to lead DU to a rout on Sunday. All told, eight Pioneers scored goals, with one of King’s coming short-handed.
Samu Salminen got things going with an even-strength goal less than three minutes into the game, then Garrett Brown netted a goal 15 minutes later to give the Pios a 2-0 edge.
Ty Gallagher got one back with the first of his two goals for the Tigers with 1:28 left in the first period, but Zeev Buium and Devine set up Kent Anderson for a goal early in the second period and DU never relinquished control of the game after that.
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