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Grand Forks, ND – Tonight, the University of North Dakota woman’s team played their final home game of the regular season.
For eight seniors, tonight’s game marked the last time they would ever play a “regular season” game in the Ralph Engelstad Arena.
In two weeks, the UND women will play one more WCHA playoff series at the Ralph, as they clinched home ice for the WCHA playoffs with last night’s win.
With the win tonight, UND also extended its current win streak to eight games, and also tied the single-season wins record.
One could say that this night was historic for the UND women’s hockey program.
So on this night for the record books, the UND women (22-10-0, 17-9-0 WCHA) donned their black third jerseys and sent the fans home with something to cheer about, as they beat the Ohio State Buckeyes (16-14-2, 11-13-2-2 WCHA) 3-2 to complete the sweep.
This season’s senior class includes two world class players and 2010 Olympians Jocelyne Lamoureux (121g-150a—271) and Monique Lamoureux (106g-149a—255). Both players rank one and two and UND’s all-time scoring list.
Today was a special day for a special for the UND women’s hockey team, and the day wasn’t lacking in emotions. UND head coach Brian Idalski reminisced about his seniors.
“It was an emotional day, it always is,” Idalski said. “It’s a tough day to coach, quite honestly. It’s a special group and they’ve worked hard. We talked about what our vision is here and being the pinnacle of woman’s hockey and making this our woman’s NHL. So these are special kids that are a big part of getting us where we are today. Again, a special group and you know, the emotions kind of sprang out there a little bit good stuff.”
While the night belonged to the eight UND seniors, freshman Meghan Deufault led the way for UND on the score sheet with a couple of goals, including the game winning goal at the 14:11 mark of the second period.
“Were glad to get the two wins out because we needed that,” freshman forward Megan Dufault said. “Tonight was really emotional for our seniors, so I think everyone did a good job keeping their emotion in check and coming out with the win.”
It wasn’t a pretty win, but the Green and White came out on top. “We did what he needed to do to win the Hockey game,” Idalski said.
The work is not done for the UND women’s hockey team; next weekend they travel to Duluth for another crucial test against the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs. Jocelyne Lamoureux laid out the weekend ahead.
“Going into the post-season you want to be peaking at the right time,” Jocelyne Lamoureux said. “It’s good, but these are teams that we feel like we should be beating teams and we would be disappointed if we weren’t. Next weekend is going to be huge for us, it’s going to be big for points, Pairwise (rankings) and league so we have to be ready to go and take care of business.”
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