We celebrated my birthday this past weekend with days full of college hockey action. Denver hosted the west regional for the NCAA tournament at the Pepsi Center. The first game of the weekend started early Saturday afternoon and featured the Golden Gophers of Minnesota and the Falcons of the Air Force Academy. This was the first tournament for Air Force and they were a huge underdog as they took on the number one seed in the region. What Air Force may have lacked in experience and size, they made up for with smart play and high endurance. With most of the crowd behind them, Air Force had the lead for most of the game. That was until the last four minutes or so, when Minnesota scored three unanswered goals to win the game 4-3.

The second game of the afternoon featured the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota and the Wolverines from Michigan. This games was much different than the first. In the first period of the first game, only one goal was scored. In this game there were seven goals in the first, including two from Michigan within the first minute of play. The second period featured five additional goals. Things started to slow down a bit, but Michigan still managed to score another two goals within the first minute of the second period. Going into the third period, North Dakota had the lead 7-5. During the break the screen showed that the record for regulation goals in a regional game was 13. Obviously everyone thought that this record was going to be broken, but the third period was much different from the rest of the game. Only one goal was scored in the third period, and North Dakota came away with the 8-5 win.

Sunday’s game was between the winners of the previous day’s games. Minnesota and North Dakota are no strangers to each other. They play in the same conference in the regular season, the WCHA. The teams played twice during the season and North Dakota won both. They also played a game in the conference tournament with Minnesota winning that one in overtime. Everyone was expecting a great game of hockey, and that’s what we got with another game ending in overtime. Things were tied 2-2 at the end of regulation, but North Dakota eventually came out on top once again nearly halfway through the 20 minute overtime period. With this win North Dakota moves on to the Frozen Four and will face Boston College.

One record was set during the weekend. The three game combined attendance of 33,549 set an NCAA regional attendance record. I was glad to be a part of it all.