There won’t be many NCHC road teams that enter Lawson Ice Arena this year and leave with six points. But thanks to their 6-3 victory over the #4 Western Michigan Broncos (5-5-0, 1-3-0 NCHC) on Saturday night on the heels of their 3-1 comeback victory on Friday, #9 Denver Pioneers (6-3-1, 2-0-0 NCHC) will be one of them. This weekend’s 2025 Frozen Four rematch and matchup of the last two national champions went heavily in Denver’s favor and will hopefully give the Pioneers the positive jolt of momentum they have sorely needed in this young season.

Until this weekend, the Pioneers struggled to play two full games in a weekend, highlighted (lowlighted?) by splits at Lindenwood and against Alaska-Anchorage, with a tough Boston-area split in between. To say consistency has eluded these Pioneers would be the understatement of the year, but this weekend’s sweep in a building that is notoriously difficult to play in gives David Carle’s young team a strong result to build on.

To get there, Denver picked up on Saturday right where they left off on Friday, when they scored three times in the third period to erase a 1-0 deficit and win 3-1. Kristian Epperson opened the scoring just 1:43 into game two off a fantastic pass from Clarke Caswell on the rush, and even though the Broncos controlled much of the game through the first 10 minutes, the Pioneers held the lead and added to it when Rieger Lorenz netted a shorthanded goal to make it 2-0 on only Denver’s third shot of the game. Sam Harris added DU’s third goal of the opening period with just 1:11 left, sneaking a wrister just under the bar off the rush with a shot that would have made even Nathan MacKinnon blush.

And just like that, instead of having to withstand a desperate push from a home team trying to avoid getting swept, the Pioneers came out, punched the Broncos in the mouth, and never looked back. Eric Pohlkamp scored his 7th goal of the year barely a minute into the second period to extend the lead to 4-0, and from there, the closest the Broncos would ever get was back to within three as both teams alternated goals over the remainder of the 6-3 game.

As good as the scoreboard looked, it was far from a perfect game for the Pioneers. They were outshot 44-34, special teams struggled – they failed to generate much momentum en route to an 0/2 night on the power play while surrendering two power-play goals in five tries – and relied a bit too heavily at times on freshman goaltender Quentin Miller, who shouldered the two-game road workload masterfully this weekend. But in a hostile building, against a fellow conference and national contender, the results sometimes matter more than the proscess. And when the results include six different goal-scorers (James Reeder and Kieran Cebrian scored DU’s last two goals) and 12 different players who recorded a point, you’ll happily turn a blind eye to the proscess…at least until Monday’s practice.

It’s going to be a happy, satisfied plane ride home from Kalamazoo tonight for these Pioneers, who, in sweeping the Broncos at Lawson, did something only two other DU teams (2015-16 & 2022-23) have done since the NCHC’s inception. And, with the season’s first home-and-home with Colorado College up next, DU will look to keep the good times rolling against the Tigers, who split with Arizona State in Tempe this weekend after being swept by Omaha in Colorado Springs a week ago.