North Dakota University Hockey Advances From Cincinnati

Cincinnati is famous for the Flying Pig Marathon, Saturday night another marathon happened in the form of an NCAA Hockey game.

North Dakota University faced off against Ferris State for a shot at a trip to the Frozen Four in Philadelphia. What these two teams didn’t know is how long they would need to determine a winner.

A double overtime game saw the the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota net the game winning goal 90 seconds in the second overtime. 81.5 minutes of hockey absolutely drained both teams, 60 minutes of hockey in regulation is enough to absolutely exhaust yourself.

Both teams scored in the second period, from there it was a stalemate for the next 40+ minutes. That was until Connor Gaardner from North Dakota netted the game winning goal.

North Dakota continues their dream run in the Froze Four as an at large team to get into the tournament the #4 seed is headed to Philadelphia after defeating the Badgers of Wisconsin and now Ferris State.

The game was played in Cincinnati’s US Bank Arena in front of a relatively crowded lower bowl. Miami University hosted the tournament, had the RedHawks made a tournament run the arena would surely have been packed. Overall the arena and the city did a decent job of selling the games. Although a little more advertising would have done wonders.

Hopefully Cincinnati can attract more tournaments like this in the future.