Denver’s designs on playing host to an NCHC quarterfinal series took a hit Friday night with a 5-1 loss to St. Cloud State.

The Huskies’ home win moved them to one point of the No. 6 Pioneers for fourth place and two points of Western Michigan for third in the league with three games to play.

The defeat continued Denver’s recent woes at St. Cloud, where it is 3-7-1 in its past 11 games and is winless (0-4-1) in its past five games. Another loss Saturday could put the Pioneers in the unenviable position of having to come back to St. Cloud in two weeks, or worse yet, traveling to Kalamazoo, Mich., to play surging Western Michigan.

Friday’s game was lost in the second period, when St. Cloud outshot the Pioneers 20-10 and scored three goals in a row after Emilio Pettersen had tied it with a power-play strike off a cross-slot feed from Ian Mitchell 50 seconds into the period.

The Pioneers (19-9-5) shot themselves in the foot by taking three penalties in the second – two of which resulted in pucks landing in their net – and three more in the third.

The second-period outburst also ended the night of DU starting goalie Devin Cooley prematurely. Cooley made 15 saves on 19 shots before being pulled with 7:03 to go after Nick Poehling‘s goal made it 4-1. Kevin Fitzgerald scored twice for the Huskies (13-12-6).

Magnus Chrona relieved Cooley and stopped eight shots. DU was without freshman forward Bobby Brink (lower body) for the fourth game in a row.

©First Line Editorial 2020