Since the University of Minnesota Duluth won the national title on an overtime goal last April, the Bulldogs have played into an extra session on seven occasions. But it wasn't until Friday night that UMD was able to come away with another sudden-death victory.
Sophomore right winger J.T. Brown made sure of that with a one-time blast off a faceoff exactly three minutes into overtime to send the Bulldogs to a 4-3 Western Collegiate Hockey Association victory before a crowd of 6,346 at AMSOIL Arena.
"(The game-winning goal) felt good," said Brown, who returned to the lineup after missing last weeken'd series at Minnesota State-Mankato with an upper-body injury. "We had a big lead and then they got a couple clutch goals, but we did what we needed to do to close this one out."
After a scoreless first period, the defending NCAA champions scored three times in a span of 4:35 on goals by two-time All-American senior center Jack Connolly (his 18th of the year, equalling a personal best) rookie left wingers Caleb Herbert and Justin Crandall.
The Tigers (16-3-2 overall and 13-11-1 WCHA) struck with 24 seconds to go in the second before knotting the game at 3-3 on a power play goal Michael Boivin at the 7:48 mark and Rylan Schwartz at 9:00. Brown's game-winner came off a faceoff feed from senior center Travis Oleksuk, who had two assists on the night and now has 14 points in his last seven games, and was the only shot on goal by either team in overtime.
Senior goaltender Kenny Reiter -- who earlier in the evening received the 2011-12 Stauber Brothers Fan Favorite Award -- finished with 22 saves while Colorado College's Josh Thorimbert made 27 stops, including 29 in the final two periods.
No. 4 UMD improves to 21-7-5 and 15-6-4 in the WCHA and remained two points behind league-leading University of Minnesota with three games left in the regular season.
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