Box Score OMAHA, Neb. -
Juho Olkinuora (Helsinki, Finland) made 26 saves for his second career shutout as No. 9/10 Denver cruised to a 3-0 win over Nebraska Omaha in WCHA action Friday night at CenturyLink Center Omaha.
The Pioneers improve to 20-11-4, 15-8-4 WCHA with the win, while Nebraska Omaha falls to 14-15-6, 11-11-6. DU has now won 20 or more games for the 11th consecutive season.
Shawn Ostrow (Calgary, Alberta), Jason Zucker (Las Vegas) and Drew Shore (Denver, Colo.) scored and Scott Mayfield (St. Louis, Mo.) added two assists.
"We played as good as we've played for an entire 60 minutes in a long, long time," DU head coach George Gwozdecky said. "We had a good start, scored first and built on the lead."
Olkinuora, making back-to-back starts, won his eighth game with a sparkling effort in net. Olkinuora keyed the penalty-kill unit to a 4-for-4 effort and lowered his goals against average to 2.14 during his rookie season.
Ostrow staked DU to a 1-0 lead after he buried a one-timer from Mayfield at 6:07 of the first period. Nate Dewhurst (Johnston, Iowa) earned the second assist.
Zucker made it 2-0 at 13:22 with a bad angle wrist shot off a Chris Knowlton (Colorado Springs) rebound. Mayfield started the play and earned his second helper of the night.
Drew Shore jammed in a power-play goal from his brother Nick Shore (Denver, Colo.) at 4:55 of the second. Joey LaLeggia (Burnaby, British Columbia) earned his third assist on the Drew's 11th power-play goal of the season.
The Pioneers outshot the Mavericks 29-26 and went 1-for-3 with the man advantage.
DU and UNO close out the regular season tomorrow night at 6:07 p.m. MT.
Notes: DU improves to 2-0-1 against the Mavericks this season. Drew Shore and Zucker have tallied 20 or more goals in each of the last two seasons. Zucker has a six-game goal streak. The Pioneers clinched third place in the WCHA with 34 points. DU is 13th in the latest PairWise Rankings.
