St. Norbert boasts the rare distinction of having both the No. 1 scoring offense and No. 1 scoring defense in NCAA Division III.
How unusual? No other team can say it’s ranked among the top five in both categories.
Coach Tim Coghlin says the two concepts are closely related. The Green Knights are a blue-collar team without star power that generates most of its offensive opportunities from tenacity in its defensive zone.
The numbers exhibit those qualities. Twenty players have scored a goal for St. Norbert (26-3-1). Cullen Bradshaw leads the team with 40 points, and second-leading scorer Mason Baptista has spent most of the season on the fourth line.
Six of senior Joe Perry’s team-high 21 goals have been game-winners, and 10 have come on the power play.
Senior defensemen Reid Campbell and Zach McDonald led the lockdown effort in front of junior David Jacobson, who was NCHA player of the year with a sterling 22-1-1 mark, a 1.24 goals-against average and .935 save percentage.
St. Norbert won its fifth consecutive NCHA title with a convincing 5-1 victory over St. Scholastica. The Green Knights’ quarterfinal triumph in the national tournament was equally one-sided, 7-2 over an Adrian team that dealt St. Norbert one of its regular-season losses.
Ranked No. 1 in both the USCHO.com and D3hockey.com polls, St. Norbert posted eight shutouts, including three consecutively for the fifth time in school history.
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- Joe Perry, left, of St. Norbert, looks to shoot the puck during a game earlier this season.
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