SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — It wasn’t the ending anyone around the Merrimack program had in mind.
But North Dakota weathered a late surge from the Warriors and skated away with a 3–0 victory Thursday night, closing the book on Merrimack’s season in the NCAA Tournament.
The push came hard in the third, which had defined Merrimack for much of the second half of the season. The Warriors tilted the ice in the third period, outshooting North Dakota 14–4.
In a game that demanded a difference-maker, North Dakota found one in Jan Špunar.
Špunar turned aside 31 shots, many of them of the high-danger variety, including a drive from Nick Pierre in the slot and a partial breakaway by Justin Gill in the second period. When Merrimack pushed, he pushed back. It was one of his best games of the season.
He was, in many ways, a reflection of what Max Lundgren had been for the Warriors all season — timely, and capable of stealing momentum when it mattered most.
Five days earlier, Lundgren authored a 49-save performance to deliver Merrimack its first Hockey East championship. On this night, Špunar thwarted the Warriors the same way Lundgren did to the Huskies.
Merrimack’s season had been defined by resilience, and that thread ran through Thursday night. Even in the face of adversity, the Warriors kept coming, wave after wave.
The biggest adversity of the night game in the second period, when a disallowed goal kept the Warriors behind on the scoreboard.
With Merrimack trailing 1–0, Ryan O’Connell appeared to have tied the game during a net-front scramble, only for the play to be whistled dead after the official lost sight of the puck.
“I don’t think they felt good that they blew the whistle themselves,” Merrimack head coach Scott Borek said. “The referee thought it was covered. That’s what he said to me, and he has to go with that. Unfortunately, that didn’t go our way. He actually felt bad saying that to me. It was a big point in the game.”
Instead of the game drawing even at 1–1, the deficit remained — and soon doubled. North Dakota extended its lead to 2–0 early in the third period, capitalizing on one of its few looks in the second half of the game.
Still, Merrimack pushed.
From the midpoint of the second period through the final horn, the Warriors held an 18–6 edge in shots. The ice was tilted, the pressure constant, and the belief never wavered.
“A hallmark of our team all season is that we come back,” Borek said. “Until they scored the third goal, I thought the game was ours. I’m just very proud to coach at Merrimack. I love our team, and I love our guys.”
Captain Caelan Fitzpatrick echoed that sentiment, pointing not to the scoreboard but to the identity his group forged over the course of the season.
“We did a good job in the room of keeping our belief,” Fitzpatrick said. “We had a constant pursuit. The result didn’t go the way we hoped, but we didn’t quit at all. I’m proud of this group. I’m proud of how hard we worked tonight.”
The underlying numbers reinforced the eye test. Merrimack generated 3.6 expected goals — more than enough to win on most nights — but couldn’t solve Špunar. Every look seemed to find a pad, a glove, or a stick at the last possible moment.
And in the quiet that followed, in a locker room that had grown tight over the course of a demanding, but rewarding season, Borek reflected not on the final score, but on what his team built along the way.
“I walked into the room after the game, and the feeling with our team was just different,” Borek said. “The way these guys speak and care about each other is our biggest success, at least to me. I think these guys love each other. We started the year talking with everyone about the worst day of your life, and we all shared that as a group. We were so close after that.
“End of the day, for the first time in 37 years, we’re Hockey East champions, and we’ll celebrate that at some point. Every guy in that room, in a suit or in uniform, deserves a ton of credit for that happening. I’m just really proud of them. Each and every single one of them.”