Playing without its Hobey Baker candidates, UND beats Omaha 4-2

Feb. 27—OMAHA, Neb. — UND gave its two Hobey Baker Award candidates the night off.

With the Penrose Cup as National Collegiate Hockey Conference champions already in hand, and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament virtually assured, the Fighting Hawks let the league's top two scorers, Shane Pinto and Jordan Kawaguchi, stay home, rest and heal up.

Forward Grant Mismash, who ranks in the top 10 in the league in goals, also stayed home with an injury and defenseman regular Gabe Bast served a one-game suspension for a fighting major and disqualification last week.

It didn't matter.

The Fighting Hawks just used it as an opportunity to show how deep they are this season by going on the road and beating the No. 11 team in the country, anyway.

UND (18-4-1) scored three power-play goals and a shorthanded empty-netter to beat Omaha 4-2 in front of 1,979 fans in Baxter Arena.

Jasper Weatherby continued his torrid pace by scoring in a seventh-straight game — this one a game-winning goal with just 1:18 left in the third period. Weatherby added two assists for a three-point night. Only two players in the NCHC have more goals than Weatherby's 11: Pinto has 15 and Minnesota Duluth's Cole Koepke has 12.

Jake Sanderson and Judd Caulfield each added a goal and an assist, while Mark Senden scored his first-career power-play goal. Defenseman Jacob Bernard-Docker had a pair of assists for his third multi-point game of the last month.

Junior Adam Scheel, named a Mike Richter Award finalist as the top goalie in the country Friday morning, stopped 30 of 32 Omaha shots.

"This was a good chance for us, if we came out of here with a win, to kind of build our team. . . to show it doesn't matter who is in our lineup, we can do the job," UND coach Brad Berry said. "Do we miss those guys? Yeah, we miss those guys. But at the same time, we have other good players here that took up the slack and did a good job tonight.

"The game was up-and-down as far as momentum shifts in the game. But finding a way to win helps build your team when you have to put this lineup together we had tonight."

This was UND's third and final trip to Baxter Arena this season.

The Fighting Hawks traveled to Omaha in December to open the season by playing 10 games in 19 days in the NCHC Pod. Despite playing much of the Pod shorthanded due to Sanderson and Tyler Kleven playing in the World Junior Championship and injuries to others, UND came out of that event in first place.

Returning to Omaha with other key players out, the Fighting Hawks had others fill in to get the job done.

"I think there's a pride thing, too," Berry said. "Everybody is team first and everybody does what they can for their role on the team. But at the same time, 'Hey, I'm going to show I can go in there and our team can be successful.' To a man, I thought they all played very well. I thought they all played committed."

Special teams won the game for UND.

UND's usual top power-play unit — Pinto, Kawaguchi, Matt Kiersted, Riese Gaber and Collin Adams — was missing two of its cornerstones, so Berry and power-play coach Karl Goehring opted to use its red-hot second power-play unit as the main one.

That paid off.

They scored on three of their four chances, despite going against one of the nation's top penalty-kill units. Omaha has allowed 13 power-play goals this season. UND has scored eight of them.

The "second" power-play unit of Weatherby, Sanderson, Bernard-Docker, Senden and Caulfield scored in three different fashions.

Senden buried the first power-play goal of his career at 7:29 of the first period. The Fighting Hawks are now 17-0 when scoring the first goal of the game this season.

Sanderson scored on the power play in the second period, showing why he was the No. 5 overall pick in this year's NHL Draft by dangling Omaha forward Matt Miller and sniping the corner of the net.

Then, moments after Omaha tied the game with 3:43 remaining, Maverick defenseman Jason Smallidge was called for interference, putting UND on the power play. It struck when Weatherby hauled in a pass from Sanderson in the left circle, took a couple of steps and picked the corner of the net, marking his third-straight game with a power-play tally.

"Sanderson runs it," Weatherby said of the power play. "You guys watch him out there. Sometimes I'm sitting there like, 'Who the hell is this guy? How did he get this good?' Same with Jacob Bernard-Docker. It's a unique group of five guys who just work together and try to play the right way. If we stick to doing our job, hopefully more pucks will go in for us. We're just going to keep working and keep having fun out there."

Weatherby's goal streak is approaching some of the longest at UND.

If he scores in UND's regular-season finale next Friday against Omaha in Ralph Engelstad Arena, he will match the fifth-longest goal streak in program history.

The record is 12 games, set by Ginny Christian in 1948-49 and Ben Cherski in 1952.

Chris Jensen (1986) and Matt Frattin (2011) are tied for third with nine-game goal streaks.

There are eight players who have eight-game runs: Frattin, Milton Johnson, Terry Casey, Roger Bamburak, Kevin Maxwell, Jim Archibald, Jason Blake and Brandon Bochenski.

"He's tearing it up," Sanderson said of Weatherby. "That's what he's doing. It's exciting to see. He deserves it. He works so hard on and off the ice. He's a great leader and role model to me."