Memories at the X are aplenty for UND
Mar. 21—ST. PAUL, Minn. — After Saturday night, college hockey conference tournaments will be gone from St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.
The National Collegiate Hockey Conference will hold its playoffs entirely at home sites beginning next season.
But there will be plenty of memories for UND fans to hold, especially from the old Western Collegiate Hockey Association days.
"The level of intensity in that building was phenomenal for college hockey," former UND coach Dave Hakstol said.
Here are a few memorable Xcel Energy Center moments:
The first time college hockey hit Xcel Energy Center was for the 2001 WCHA Final Five.
UND met St. Cloud State in the final and they played a thriller.
St. Cloud State's Tyler Arnason scored a hat trick goal with 7:36 left in the third period to give the Huskies what seemed to be a comfortable 5-2 lead. But UND erased it in the final six minutes.
Jeff Panzer scored with 5:35 to go, Jason Notermann with 1:02 to go and Travis Roche tied it with :11 left.
Despite the furious rally, St. Cloud State won it anyway on a Derek Eastman goal 11:33 into overtime.
The first North Dakota-Minnesota matchup at Xcel Energy Center was a classic in the 2004 championship game.
UND's Zach Parise and Brandon Bochenski went blow-for-blow with Minnesota's Thomas Vanek, Grant Potulny and Danny Irmen.
Minnesota led 2-1. UND led 3-2. Minnesota led 4-3. UND tied it on a shorthanded goal.
Potulny won it in the third.
"That was one of the greatest games I was ever in," former Minnesota coach Don Lucia said. "You had the rivalry. You had 19,000 people. You had epic games on each side of the battle."
After going to the NCAA national championship game in 2005, UND lost a huge senior class and returned in 2005-06 with 13 freshmen.
It took them a little while to get going, but they got rolling at the end of the season.
UND beat St. Cloud State 5-3 for the 2006 Final Five championship.
The goals: Sophomore Rastislav Spirko from freshman T.J. Oshie, freshman Jonathan Toews from freshman Ryan Duncan, Oshie from freshman Taylor Chorney and freshman Brian Lee, Duncan from Toews and Oshie, Duncan from Toews and junior Matt Smaby.
Rookies had 11 of UND's 13 points that night.
"One thing that stands out was the guys on the ice after winning it and how big of a moment that was for those guys," Hakstol said. "We had a real turnover from the year before from a team that, in my opinion, for the teams I had, was not the prettiest but ended up being one of the best teams I've been part of at North Dakota.
"We turned the page with a bunch of young guys. When you look at who played in that game, it's a pretty spectacular roster. You add in there Travis Zajac and Drew Stafford, and we had some really good players on that team. They played well at the right time."
UND fans may prefer to remember the 2007 NCAA regional final in Denver, where Chris Porter scored an overtime winner against Minnesota to send UND to the NCAA Frozen Four.
But the teams also played an epic game a week earlier in St. Paul.
Duncan, who won the Hobey Baker Award that year, scored a game-tying goal in the third period to send it to overtime.
Then, Minnesota forward Blake Wheeler, attempting to negate an icing call, dove at a loose puck and swatted it into the corner of the net on UND goaltender Jean-Philippe Lamoureux.
"It took me a long time to admit it but the play by Wheeler to win it was spectacular," Hakstol said. "When you look at the rosters and the level of play, that was a hell of a game by two good teams.
"We didn't win it, but for me, the championship game that year against Minnesota was the start of a run of, in my opinion, four of the highest-level college hockey games I had been part of."
The next week, UND beat Michigan and Minnesota to reach the NCAA Frozen Four. Then, UND lost to Boston College in the Frozen Four semifinals.
UND became the second team in WCHA Final Five history to win the tournament after playing in the Thursday quarterfinal play-in game.
UND's run started by beating Minnesota in a three-game series in the first round in Grand Forks.
Then, UND beat Minnesota Duluth 2-0 in a quarterfinal play-in. It beat Denver 4-3 in the semifinals and St. Cloud State 5-3 in the finals.
"Being able to go through three games shows the mental and physical toughness of those teams," Hakstol said. "In 2010 in particular, we came through a tough three-game battle with Minnesota, had a quick reset, got on the bus, and then went through a run of games."
UND trailed St. Cloud State 2-0 within the first minute of the championship, but swung the momentum back.
UND outshot the Huskies 34-17 over the first two periods and received goals from Corban Knight, Brad Malone, Danny Kristo and Chris VandeVelde.
St. Cloud State outshot UND 15-6 in the third period, but goalie Brad Eidsness was excellent and Matt Frattin ended it with an empty-netter.
Captain Chay Genoway, who suffered a season-ending injury against St. Cloud State in November, accepted the trophy.
"That group was phenomenal," Hakstol said.
Evan Trupp frequently did things on the ice you'd never seen before and you'd never see again.
One happened in the 2011 Final Five semifinal game against Colorado College.
Trupp picked up a puck on the blade of his stick, carried it the length of the ice and threw it on net for a scoring chance.
"Trupper stopped in and saw us in Seattle last year or the year before," Hakstol said. "I had our video coach pull it up. Trupper was sitting in our coaches' room. All the guys were like, 'What the heck is going on?' It was one of those moments where you go, 'Did I really just see that?'
"He didn't plan to do it. It just happened and he just did it."
UND and Denver played a double-overtime epic in the 2011 WCHA Final Five title game.
Kristo and Brent Davidson scored in the second period to give UND a 2-1 lead. Denver's Anthony Maiani tied it with less than three minutes to go in the third period.
The game went deep into overtime.
Frattin ended it, one-timing a rebound off a Genoway shot.
As UND accepted the trophy at center ice, the green-clad crowd chanted "Hobey Baker" at Frattin, who had just scored his 35th goal of the season.
"That group hadn't lost many hockey games at that point in time," Hakstol said. "You knew they were going to find a way. We were the best team there and we went and did it.
"There's always a cost to playing those overtime games. Fratty got nicked up in that one. I don't know how much he even practiced the following week going into the regionals."
The most notable run happened in 2012.
UND entered the Final Five without enough healthy players to fill out a full lineup. Nearly half of its forwards were defensemen, walk-ons or, in one case, a walk-on defenseman.
That team beat St. Cloud State in the quarterfinal, setting up a UND-Minnesota semifinal.
It looked like UND had run out of gas. At the midway point in the game, the Gophers led 3-0. UND had just four shots on goal.
Hakstol called a timeout after an icing call to rest his team
— and the game turned in a hurry.
Derek Forbort scored at the end of the second period.
Then, goals came in waves in the third. Michael Parks scored at 5:31. Brock Nelson tied it 30 seconds later.
Mario Lamoureux buried a feed from Stephane Pattyn at 9:42 to give UND the lead. Corban Knight tipped a Nick Mattson point shot at 37 seconds later to make it 5-3.
Then, Lamoureux iced it with his second goal of the game.
"That was the greatest momentum swing I've ever seen in a hockey game in my life," Hakstol said. "Not just the games I've been involved in — any game I've watched, too."
UND still had to win one more game to secure the title, though.
"I remember walking out of the rink and back to the hotel," Hakstol said. "You come off that emotional swing, I think, and sometimes you worry about crashing. But it just continued to ramp up."
UND beat Denver 4-0 the next night for the championship. Nelson, Carter Rowney, Parks and Mark MacMillan scored. Aaron Dell posted a 22-save shutout.
It was the last game UND wore its old Fighting Sioux jerseys.
When the NCHC started in 2013-14, the postseason tournament moved to the Target Center in Minneapolis for four years.
The Big Ten and WCHA alternated years in the Xcel Center.
The NCHC returned to St. Paul in 2018, skipped two years due to the pandemic, then returned again.
This weekend will be the NCHC's sixth and final tournament at the Xcel Energy Center.
UND participated in 17 of the 19 tournaments its conference played in the Minnesota Wild's arena.
"This tournament absolutely had a character of its own," Hakstol said. "It had a life of its own. It was built by a lot of different people. On the travel day, you'd move in and see Bruce (McLeod), Carol (LaBelle-Ehrhardt), Doug (Spencer), Greg Shepherd, our team host Pete (Stielow). He'd be there to greet us. All of these things became part of the tradition of a spring trip to St. Paul.
"You had thousands of Sioux fans in green, St. Patrick's Day, and the Final Five."
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