Denver Pioneers take No. 1 seed to star-studded NCHC Frozen Faceoff – The Denver Post

The National Collegiate Hockey Conference has seen one of its teams capture four of the last five NCAA championships, and once again, a slew of Frozen Four candidates will take the ice at this weekend’s NCHC Frozen Faceoff in St. Paul, Minn.

The University of Denver Pioneers, who won the 2017 national title, are the conference’s No. 1 seed and will play No. 4 Minnesota Duluth — the 2018 and ’19 NCAA champions — in Friday’s first quarterfinal at Xcel Energy Center. That game will be followed by No. 2 North Dakota, the 2016 national champion, against No. 3 Western Michigan.

The winners will meet in Saturday’s conference title game, with the winner securing an automatic bid to the 16-team NCAA Tournament. The three other teams are all-but assured of at-large berths. The national PairWise Ranking — the system that mimics how the NCAA fields its national tournament — has Denver at No. 3, Western Michigan at No. 5, North Dakota at No. 6, and Minnesota-Duluth at No. 9.

The Pioneers (27-8-1) have advanced to each of the previous seven Frozen Faceoffs, the only NCHC program to do so. They won the tournament in 2014 and ’18; it was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic and was played a year ago in Grand Forks, N.D., where DU lost in the title game 2-1 in overtime to North Dakota.

“We’re an excited group. We didn’t really get to do this last year; it was obviously in Grand Forks,” DU fifth-year senior forward Ryan Barrow said. “Guys are really excited to get to play in the X in a more normal experience this time around.”

DU and Duluth split their four-game regular-season series, with each team splitting a two-game series on the road.

“Really good hockey team,” Carle said of the Bulldogs (19-15-4). “They don’t give you a lot of time and space. Obviously, we know them well. There’s mutual respect. It’s a fun game to be a part of because you’re going to have to earn everything you get. So our guys are looking forward to that challenge and Game 5 of our series on a big stage.”

Regardless of this weekend’s results, DU will advance to its record 14th consecutive full-season NCAA Tournament and host next week’s West Regional at the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland. The Pioneers, who have reached 20 wins in each of their past 20 full seasons, will be looking for their ninth national title.

DU finished 10-13-1 and did not make the NCAA Tournament in the abbreviated 2020-21 campaign — a season in which there were only conference games until the national tournament.

Carle is proud of how his juniors and seniors have thrived in diminished roles to accommodate what could be the country’s best freshman class.

“Our leadership group has done an incredible job of bringing the youth along and making them feel included from Day 1 and being a real good team that gets along at the rink but away from the rink more importantly,” Carle said. “I think it’s all led to the nice product being what it is.”

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