Bemidji State Beavers took on North Dakota Fighting Hawks in an NCAA fixture on Saturday evening, and the visitors claimed a 2:3 victory on home ice. The match finished with the scoreline reflecting a hard-fought contest between two sides meeting on the same day.
Both teams enter this weekend's action sitting in fifth place, though the gap in games played tells part of the story. Bemidji State have completed thirty matches with twelve wins and eighteen draws, while North Dakota have twenty-nine games under their belt with twelve victories and sixteen draws. By then, the visitors had already faced one defeat, a detail that could matter in the final standings.
The Beavers came into this game riding a mixed run of results. They had beaten St Cloud State Huskies 3:2 on October third, but before that they suffered 1:2 and 2:5 losses to Augustana Vikings in early March. A 2:3 defeat to Saint Thomas Tommies on March first and a 3:1 win over the same opponents on February twenty-eighth rounded out their recent outings.
North Dakota's form looked sharper in the latter half of their last five fixtures. They secured a 2:1 win against Wisconsin Badgers on April ninth, followed by dominant 5:0 and 3:0 victories over Quinnipiac Bobcats and Merrimack Warriors respectively in late March. A 1:5 loss to Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs on March fourteenth and a 5:1 win over Omaha Mavericks on March eighth completed the picture.
And here's the thing — we had backed the visitors with sixty-three percent confidence going into this one. The prediction held up, though the margin of three goals suggests the home side made us work for it. The result keeps both teams level on the table, but North Dakota's solitary loss gives them a slight edge in the tiebreakers.