Quentin Shore showed up in a big way Friday night as the Denver Pioneers beat the Western Michigan Broncos 5-3. Shore netted two goals in the Pios’ winning effort and nearly added a third multiple times in the third period.
Game one of the DU-WMU series started very well for the Pioneers. Both teams were skating hard and at the 2:00 mark of the first period, Emil Romig, while standing alone in the crease, fielded a pass from Colin Staub and buried his shot to give DU the first lead of the game.
DU dominated the first 10 minutes of play and at the 10:00 mark of the first frame, DU held a marked 10-4 advantage in shots on goal. However, at that point, the Broncos began to take control of the game.
“I thought it was a good college hockey game,” Denver head coach Jim Montgomery said. “Two contrasting styles. We tried to play fast and they tried to play big and heavy. We tried to dictate the speed of the game for the first ten minutes and then they started to wear on us.”
At the 11:31 mark of the first period, after a missed interference call in the Western Michigan zone, the Broncos found themselves on a 2 on 1 chance. After Jaillet made the initial save, Griffen Molino found the rebound come to his stick and he buried his shot over Jaillet’s glove to tie the game at 1.
After that goal, Western Michigan continued to press hard, but couldn’t find the back of the net thanks to some strong saves by Jaillet. With just 1:12 left in the first period, DU’s PP unit struck as Troy Terry took a great pass from Nolan Zajac across the slot and shot the puck past WMU goalie Lukas Hafner to give DU the lead back.
The teams went into intermission with DU up 2-1 but Quentin Shore was just getting started. At the 4:11 mark of the 2nd period, Matt VanVoorhis found Shore all alone low in the left circle with a perfect pass and Shore buried his shot over Hafner’s blocker to extend DU’s lead to 2 at 3-1.
Just 2: 37 later, though Sheldon Dries was all alone in the low slot and found the back of the net over Jaillet’s shoulder to cut the Pioneers lead to 1.
At that point, DU started to take control of the game again and, at the 13:09 mark of the 2nd period, Quentin Shore and Troy Terry engaged in some tic-tac-toe to extend the DU lead back to 2. Shore entered the zone passed the puck to Terry in the high slot who tapped it right back to Shore who was low in the right circle. Shore stickhandled once and then beat Hafner high to the glove side for DU’s fourth goal of the night.
“I think there is some chemistry between the two Colorado kids (Shore and Terry),” Montgomery said. “Shore played great. He’s moving his feet, he’s making plays, he’s being smart, and he’s being very reliable.”
After Shore’s second goal of the night, an already quiet “disappointing” crowd of 4,414 went basically silent and there were no more goals until WMU pulled their goalie for the extra skater late in the 3rd period.
“I was disappointed with our crowd tonight,” Montgomery added. “You would hope that our fans would be a little bit excited with the momentum we’ve been building since the New Year. I was hoping the student section was going to give us life like they did against Michigan State and CC, but they didn’t. So I hope they really come out for us Saturday night.”
At the 18:11 mark of the third period, Dries was fed the puck by Nolan LaPorte and Dries beat Jaillet for the second time on the power play to cut DU’s lead back down to 1.
DU didn’t crumble, though. After a few good saves by Jaillet, Trevor Moore found Matt Marcinew streaking up the left boards and Marcinew buried the empty net goal to seal the game with just 26 seconds left.
The story tonight was, yet again, poor officiating. Todd Anderson, noted terrible NCHC referee, was employed for this series. By the “official LetsGoDU Todd Anderson missed penalty counter,” Anderson missed 7 different penalties throughout the evening for both teams.
Officiating this poor is unacceptable. The NCHC should not and cannot allow this to continue. This marks 3 weekends in a row that the NCHC referees have been bad at their jobs in DU matchups.
This has been a problem for the entire three years of the NCHC’s existence and it cannot be allowed to continue. The NCHC needs to do something about it.
What’s Next
1/16
vs. Western Michigan
Magness Arena
7:06 PM
Watch: NCHC.tv
Listen: 104.3 FM
Tickets