TAMPA, Fla. — If you win a shootout in a North Dakota practice, you’re going to pay the price — and you know it.

“It’s kind of tradition here at North Dakota when we do a Thursday shootout before the weekend series,” said junior defenseman Troy Stecher. “At the end, when there’s a winner, we all sort of dog pile him. Luke Johnson was the lucky victim this week.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s a tradition that we have and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Said Gage Ausmus, another junior defenseman, “That’s why I never win shootouts, so I never get dog piled.”

Stecher delivered the explanation of the dog pile in the most businesslike manner, sounding as though he was defending the practice after the Fighting Hawks left the ice Wednesday afternoon. By contrast, Ausmus played the moment for laughs.

And that, in a nutshell, is this North Dakota team — absolutely focused on the business at hand but able to enjoy any given moment.

In Wednesday’s practice, the Fighting Hawks looked loose but not unfocused. That, said coach Brad Berry, was part of the plan.

“I think there’s a balance,” said Berry. “This is a very special group. We’ve said it all year long. The three guys that were to the right of me and a bunch of juniors and seniors in that locker room, we’ve been here before. We’ve experienced a little disappointment the last couple of years in Philadelphia and Boston.

“They’re hungry, but they’re focused, they’re committed, they’re dialed in. But at the same time, there’s a little bit of levity there as far as being a human being, too, and enjoying it. We’re all about that. Tomorrow is the game day and they’ll be ready to go.”

TAMPA, Fla. — When the Denver Pioneers took the ice for the last practice of the day Wednesday at Amalie Arena, it seemed the intensity level was up compared to the practices of the other three teams.

At one point, Denver rotated through all of its lines and defensive combos in five minutes of back-and-forth simulated game play.

“That’s just the way we practice,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery. “I think a lot of our personality on the ice in games comes from our personality in practice. And a lot of it emanates from me. Intensity is what I was about as a player. And as a coach, I think to get these guys to realize that all this type of stuff, it’s awesome that we have so many journalists here and that we’re on so many different websites, but we’re not used to that. So we’ve got to get back to what matters most, and that’s our preparation, and if we’re business-like, and especially if I’m business-like, I think it gets our players on the right page.”

From an experience and success standpoint, Boston College coach Jerry York leads the way, as he was won five national titles — four with BC and one with Bowling Green. BC also has 14 players with previous Frozen Four experience who were on the 2014 squad that lost to Union in Philadelphia. North Dakota has been to three straight Frozen Fours, and has 16 skaters from those teams, as well as coach Brad Berry, who was an assistant the last two years. Quinnipiac played in its only Frozen Four in 2013, losing the national championship to Yale, and has seven seniors who played on that team.

Denver, by contrast, hasn’t made a Frozen Four since 2005, the last year it won the national championship, so none of its players have been to this stage. However, they can draw on the experiences of their coach, who was a captain at Maine in 1993 when the Black Bears won the national championship.

“The biggest contrast I guess is what I was just talking about … I’ve got to get everybody on the right page,” said Montgomery. “I’ve got to get everyone’s focus and mentality channeling in the right direction. When I was a captain, I had to do that a little bit at Maine, but we had such an easy group, and to be honest, we were better than everybody else, so it was a little bit easier. It was just about yourself.

“And now, as a coach, you come back — the only thing I do like about my playing days that I can draw to the team is sharing the experience with them about how it’s a great event, but when it’s time to play, you’ve got to be in the moment.”

TAMPA, Fla. — In their third straight run at a national title, North Dakota brings a team that has some experience on the national stage. But with 11 freshmen on the roster and only four seniors, this Fighting Hawks team is significantly different from the squads that bowed out in the 2014 and 2015 semifinals.

“We started the season as a young team with 11 freshmen, and we tried to get those guys up to speed as fast as we can,” said junior defenseman Troy Stecher. “I’m really confident that we have. We’re a really mature group now and we understand the task at hand.”

While the Fighting Hawks are led in scoring by freshman Brock Boeser (26-28–54), coach Brad Berry said that it’s the locker room leadership of the upperclassmen that has given North Dakota a chance to compete for another NCAA championship.

“You look at the Brock Boesers and the younger players in our group and it’s no coincidence,” said Berry. “They’re very good players; they’re very gifted and talented. But … a lot of the leaders in the locker room have been a big part of his development.”

It’s not just in nurturing the newcomers that the character of this North Dakota team has been defined. In the first half of the season, both of UND’s scholarship goaltenders were injured and a junior walk-on who’d never played a game, Matt Hrynkiw, stepped into the cage. The team rallied around him, and from Oct. 10 through Nov. 21, Hrynkiw played every game, going 9-1-2 with two shutouts to his credit. This, from a player who practiced with the team for two years previously never even expecting to see game action.

Berry said that the coaching staff calls this team “a special group.”

“We talked about it in the mid part of the year when we went through all the injury problems … and a third-string walk-on being our No. 1 goalie, reeling off nine wins in a row — it’s that special bond, that team-first mentality. The next man up has to do the job. It’s because of the leadership. It’s been a big part of us not only staying on the rails this year but for the development of freshmen.”

The leadership and team-first mentality extends to playing passionate but disciplined hockey, said Berry. “We take our lunch boxes and we go to work every day and it’s all about the work and the humility and getting after it,” he said. “In saying that, we want to be aggressive on the ice but we do talk about discipline.

“That’s a great word we use every day in our locker room, about playing with tenacity but playing disciplined. Again, it’s going to be an important factor this weekend going forward.”

The Fighting Hawks take an average of 11.3 penalty minutes per game, down from 13.4 a year ago. In the Midwest Regional, North Dakota took a total of four penalties — two per game — for eight total minutes in the box.

“I thought we did a really good job in Cincinnati and even in the Frozen Faceoff of limiting our penalties. That’s playing with heart, but playing with discipline.”

TAMPA, Fla. — When Denver faces North Dakota on Thursday in the second semifinal game of the Frozen Four, fans of college hockey will get a chance to see two of the top lines in the country square off. Denver’s Pacific Rim Line of Danton Heinen, Trevor Moore and Dylan Gambrell will try to match North Dakota’s CBS line of Drake Caggiula, Brock Boeser and Nick Schmaltz.

The teams have faced each other five times this season, and so far, the success of each squad’s top line has dictated the results of a 2-2-1 season series.

In the first two games Dec. 4-5 in Grand Forks, N.D., Boeser, Caggiula and Schmaltz scored six of North Dakota’s nine goals in 5-1 and 4-0 wins while racking up 10 points total. Gambrell, Heinen and Moore were held without a point.

In the rematch in Denver on Feb. 12-13, the Pacific Rim Line dictated the play with 18 points and six goals in 6-4 and 4-1 wins. The CBS Line was held to six points and two goals. That was indicative of an overall strong second half for Gambrell, Moore and Heinen, who struggled at times in the first half.

“I think in the begriming of the year we weren’t doing the little things right, I think, being on the right side of the puck and winning our battles,” Heinen said of the way the Pacific Rim Line caught fire in the second half. “As the season has gone on, I feel Coach Monty has really stressed that with our line and I feel like we’ve done a better job of that lately, and it leads to more offense.”

In what was originally thought to be the rubber match in Minneapolis in the consolation game of the NCHC Frozen Faceoff on March 19, it seems fitting that in 1-1 tie, the two lines matched each other, each getting a goal and two assists.

“It’s kind of like our power play — when we’re working, things seem to work,” said Moore. “When we are working hard our skill takes over, so we just need to make sure we are working hard. I really think we got a lot more comfortable with talking to each other and being open about things. If we didn’t like something that happened, we talked about it and just worked through some stuff.”

Asked about any plans to control North Dakota’s CBS line, Denver coach Jim Montgomery expressed confidence in all of his players ability to battle, while also subtly teasing North Dakota coach Brad Berry.

“We have four good lines that can play 200-foot hockey,” said Montgomery. “We don’t have last change. They’re going to be able — and I’m sure every time there’s an offensive zone draw, they’ll be out there two out of every three. And we’ll expect that and put out the line that we think can win the faceoff on that side of the ice. Besides that, I’ve already kind of publicly tried to challenge Coach Berry to go head to head, CBS against Pacific Rim. It would be a helluva show, but he wants to go with his defensive line against them. Maybe he’ll bite halfway through the game.”

TAMPA, Fla. — Although Denver and North Dakota have gone 2-2-1 against each other this season, one area where North Dakota has ruled the Pioneers is special teams: Denver has been held without a power-play goal in 19 tries and has given up three power-play goals to the Fighting Hawks.

Denver’s top line, the Pacific Rim Line of Danton Heinen, Trevor Moore and Dylan Gambrell, will be counted on to provide some offense, especially on the special teams, as the two times Denver beat North Dakota this season, the Pioneers scored more than a goal. In its two losses and one tie, Denver was held to a goal twice and shut out once.

“I think our power play just wasn’t where we wanted it to be and it has improved as the season has gone on,” said Heinen. “The main thing is we have to have a shot-first mentality and off that create seams and more shots.”

“I think when we’ve played them before we’ve been outworked; their penalty kill has outworked our power play,” said Moore. “If we outwork and get the puck more, we’ll be fine.”

TAMPA, Fla. — The most-often-used phrase by Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold and his players during the postseason has been “focus.”

Pecknold has preached the importance of staying the course as his team racked up a school-record 31 wins, the ECAC Hockey regular season and playoff titles, and an NCAA East Regional crown.

“For us [it’s about] continuing to play to our identity,” said Pecknold. “We’ve had success all year long because we’ve done that, and if we continue I think we’ll be rewarded for that.”

It’s especially true for the seven seniors, who made it to the national title game in Pittsburgh in 2013.

“Playing in the Frozen Four my freshman year was an unbelievable experience,” said senior captain Soren Jonzzon, who had a pair of goals and an assist in the East Regional in Albany, N.Y.

“We definitely learned a lot,” he said. “I think the biggest role our seniors have is to really make sure that all the other players are focused on the game rather than all the excitement, whether it be coming off the plane and there’s music playing and people greeting us and things like that.”

There’s that word again. And again:

“In the end we’re here to play a hockey game, said Jonzzon. “Hopefully two hockey games, and we just got to make sure that everyone’s got their focus on that.”

What was that word again?

“One of the things I try to do as a coach with my players, and I believe in it, is we stay in the moment and we focus at the task at hand,” said Pecknold. “When you walk in our locker room, you see on the door it says: ‘Attack the day.’ We’re going to attack the day.”

TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa is a lovely spot for the Frozen Four. There are many reasons that the NCAA chose to award the city another championship tournament soon after it hosted its first in 2012. The hospitality here is outstanding, and who among the college hockey faithful would question the weather? Or the gulf breezes?

On top of that, Amalie Arena is great venue, one that holds 20,500 people but feels nearly as intimate as a field house.

“It’s a first-class, world facility,” said North Dakota coach Brad Berry. “It’s state-of-the-art. It’s a perfect arena to have a Frozen Four in.”

The players, too, seem to be enjoying the setting. “We got a warm welcome from the folks in Tampa with a band and stuff,” said senior forward Bryn Chyzyk. “It was nice of them to do that and it was great to see.

“We checked into our hotel and had a nice meal, went for a little team walk on I think it’s called the river walk there and it was cool. We got a little stretch in.

“But for the most part, we’re not trying to be tourists here. I think we’ll come back and be tourists one day, but I think it’s a business trip for us and we’re trying to dial in for that game.”

In their third straight Frozen Four appearance, the Fighting Hawks have a greater sense of purpose born of consecutive, close NCAA tournament semifinal losses. In Boston last year, the Fighting Hawks lost to Boston University 5-3 after scoring two goals late in the third period to make it a one-goal game; BU’s final tally was an empty-netter in the last minute of regulation.

In Philadelphia in 2014, North Dakota lost 2-1 to Minnesota, with the Golden Gophers’ game-winning goal scored short-handed with 0.6 seconds remaining in regulation.

They’re a hungry team, said Berry, and Chyzyk said that the Fighting Hawks have been eager to get to work since winning the Midwest Regional.

“We’ve been excited to get down here,” said Chyzyk. “That week off, you just want to fly down … but we got a good week of preparation, did a lot of things that we needed to improve on to be successful, so it was a good week of preparation. I know all the guys were happy to fly down here yesterday and we’re ready to get at it.”

TAMPA, Fla. — Having enjoyed success in Atlantic Hockey and ECAC Hockey, Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold was satisfied for a few seasons, but eventually realized he and his team wanted more.

“In 2009 we dramatically changed a lot of the things that we did,” he said. “I made that decision. The previous five or six years to that, we were always like [ranked] 18 through 25 in the country, which was great. It was great. Everybody was happy at Quinnipiac to be where we were, coming from Atlantic Hockey and moving to the ECAC.”

But it wasn’t enough.

“I just felt what we did, we were never getting over that hump to be a top-15 team,” said Pecknold. “So I stepped back and asked myself a lot of questions: How can we change? What do we need to do to be better?

“And we did make a lot of changes that summer of 2009, and we’re reaping the rewards now.”

Pecknold, his coaches and players made a list of areas for improvement and worked it, establishing a relentless focus on everything from the way practices were conducted to the role of the upperclassmen.

“I think a lot of that obviously has come from the coaches,” said junior forward Sam Anas. “But it’s come from past players, and whether it’s been three years ago or four years ago, I think a lot of that has just been driven into us. Mainly off the ice. Incorporating guys into everything.

“When we do something, we do it as a team.”

And Pecknold continues to make changes in his approach. He said he has changed over time by being more open to suggestions by his coaching staff.

“There’s no question I’ve evolved as a coach,” he said. “I think in my early years I had a very fixed mindset. It was very stubborn, didn’t use my assistants enough, and then gradually over time got more of an open mindset or growth mindset.”

The Bobcats’ recipe for success at a higher level has come down to the simplicity of not getting ahead of themselves. And they’re finally here in Tampa.

“I think we’ve had a belief in [ourselves] the whole year,” said Anas. “And the thing that I think was most important for us, we didn’t focus on the big picture. We just focused on what was right ahead of us.

“We took every game one by one, and we didn’t really look at if we were ranked No. 1 or stuff like that. We just focused on playing the best we can play and playing Quinnipiac hockey. We knew if we did that each game, that good results would come our way.”

TAMPA, Fla. — Denver coach Jim Armstrong and players Danton Heinen, Trevor Moore and Grant Arnold, took questions from the media after their Wednesday practice at Amalie Arena in preparation for Thursday’s national semifinal against North Dakota.

(Video: NCAA On Demand)

TAMPA, Fla. — In Thursday’s late semifinal game, NCHC rivals North Dakota and Denver will be meeting for the sixth time this season, and this game will be the rubber match in more ways than one. The Fighting Hawks swept the Pioneers at home, 5-1 and 4-0, on Dec. 4-5. Denver returned the favor in the Pioneers’ barn Feb. 12-13, winning 6-4 and 4-1.

The teams last met in Minneapolis in the NCHC third-place game March 19, a game that resulted in a 1-1 overtime tie.

“We’re pretty familiar with what they have on their team and how they’re going to play,” said junior defenseman Gage Ausmus. “They’ve got some skilled players on that team. We’ve just got to play our game, play a full 200-foot game, make the game hard on them and get pucks past their defensemen, make them chip the puck in our zone instead of skating it — just making it hard on them.”

“Everyone knows it’s a rivalry game,” said senior forward Bryn Chyzyk. “We’ve played them so many times through my career here, and every time it’s a great game and a high compete level and it’s always very intense. I expect none different tomorrow.

“We definitely respect them as a team. They have a lot of skill up front. We also respect our ability over here. We have a lot of confidence in what we can do. We’re just going to play our game and take care of business.”

Thursday’s semifinal game will be the 276th meeting all-time between the Fighting Hawks and the Pioneers and their seventh match in the NCAA tournament.

Coach Brad Berry called the Pioneers a “dangerous team off the rush.” North Dakota outscored Denver 15-12 in their five meetings this season, and each team is capable of finding the net independent of playing the other; North Dakota has the seventh-best offense nationally, averaging 3.64 goals per game, but Denver isn’t far behind with 3.30 for 11th.

“Again,” said Berry, “we know what they’re going to do. They know what we’re going to do. But the biggest thing we’ve got to be aware of when they’re on the ice and what they’re doing — but we have to accentuate, what we have to do and what got us here — [is that] we have to play our game, just like these guys said.”

TAMPA, Fla. — When teams get to the Frozen Four, their physical abilities are often so closely matched that the outcomes come down either to the proverbial bounces of the puck or to teams’ mental abilities to handle those bounces.

“We’ve played almost 40 games now,” BC coach Jerry York says. “So you’re going to [hold] early leads. You’re going to be in early deficits. You’re going to have swings in momentum. You’ve got to be able to handle it mentally.

“Mental strength is so important in all sports, but especially at this level. You can be down 3-1 and you can come back and win. You can be ahead 4-1 and you can almost lose a game because your attitude is ‘Hey, we’ve won the game,’ and all of a sudden the [other] team comes on strong.

“The mental strength you have is going to play for 60 minutes. And despite the way the momentum shifts back and forth, you have to stay on an even keel. I’ve seen three-goal leads switch so you can win a
game.

“[The attitude needs to be], let’s play through the 60 and give it our best, honest shot.”

Sometimes that mental ability only comes through experience, and not just the players but also the coach and staff.

“I’m more prepared now as we go into these Frozen Four [than in my first few times],” York says. “[You get better] the more you’re into high-pressure situations, similar to a golfer with a one-stroke lead going into 17 and 18 at Augusta. Can you withstand the pressure and just get par in and win the game?

“The more you’re involved in those type of situations, you get a little calmer, you handle the stress better. And it’s a carryover from year to year.

“The longer you’re in this thing, as teams, you get better. You know what was successful, what wasn’t successful.”