Ashton Gerard/MDN Minotauros forward Austin Dollimer (12) skates to find an open shot past Minnesota Wilderness defenseman Ondrej Trejbal (5), Friday at Maysa Arena.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Shrugging off the excess pressure that comes with being the top overall seed in the ACHA Division I National Tournament, the Minot State men’s hockey club picked up a 5-1 opening round victory over the No. 16-seeded University of Arizona Friday evening at the OhioHealth Ice Haus rink in Columbus, Ohio.

The No. 1 Beavers (37-2-1) didn’t run the Wildcats (23-12-4) out of the rink, but they did enough to advance to the national quarterfinals without breaking too much of a sweat.

A resounding eight out of 10 performance, as judged by MSU head coach Wade Regier and a couple of the players.

“From a game standpoint and how we controlled the tempo, I was very pleased,” Regier said. “But, unfortunately, there was some discipline stuff. You can’t get away with that at nationals. Against a team with a really good power play, they would make us pay.”

MSU’s penalty kill held up and limited the Wildcats to 1-for-5 on the power play.

“That’s a momentum changer for sure,” forward Sam Briscoe said. “Our penalty kill has been good all season. It puts a jump in your step and you’re able to go back to 5-on-5 and continue to dominate the play.”

Slowly getting their skates under them to opening the game, the Beavers got a key breakaway save from junior goaltender Holden Kurtz to keep the contest scoreless.

Two MSU seniors, Shain Scheschuk and Briscoe, put the Beavers up a pair quickly with goals coming a minute and five seconds apart in the middle of the first period.

“It’s nice to poke it in and get that first one to get things rolling and get the boys going,” Scheschuk said. “But, there is still a lot of hockey to be played.”

Austin Yano and goaltender Kurtz picked up the assists on Briscoe goal.

“Yano basically did all the work,” Briscoe said. “He made a nice play and I was able to get the puck on my stick and shoot it past the goalie.”

The physicality picked up in the second period, and so did the penalties. While the Beavers were mostly the aggressors, it came back to bite them when junior Dylan Gejdos was issued a five-minute major and a game misconduct for delivering a crushing hit against the boards.

MSU had about as many scoring chances as Arizona had on the Wildcats’ lengthy power play. Yet, with a mere two seconds left on the man advantage, Arizona’s Raymond Rowe snuck the puck past Kurtz with traffic in front of the net.

“Our penalty kill on that five-minute major played really strong,” Scheschuk said. “They just happened to squeak one in with two seconds left… But, we are big boys. We can take a deep breath and go back out there.”

Three minutes later, the Beavers got that goal back on their own power play.

With Arizona scrambling to recover defensively, Scheschuk held his shot as a Wildcat defender slid across the ice in front of him. Having created a clean shooting lane, Scheschuk got the puck to the net and junior Dylan Johnson was there crashing the back post to clean up the rebound.

After MSU started the third period by going down a man, which they did near the start of each period, Arizona flipped the situation around by getting called for two penalties. That allowed Briscoe to net his second power play goal of the game on a puck thrown to the front of the net from the corner.

“It was just a fortunate bounce off the defenseman that ended up going into the net,” Briscoe said.

The Beavers capped the scoring at 5-1, as senior Lyndon Lipinski notched MSU’s fourth power play goal on its sixth power play opportunity of the evening.

“Our power play was clicking and we were rewarded by being patient at key times,” Regier said. “They block a lot of shots, so you can’t just be systemic. You got to make plays.”

The Beavers outshot Arizona 37-20 with Kurtz making 19 saves in net for the victory.

Next up, the Beavers get a day off before having to face the winner of Saturday’s game between No. 8-seeded Michigan-Dearborn (21-5-2) and No. 9-seeded Colorado (22-8-1). That quarterfinal contest will be played Sunday at 7:30 p.m. (central time) at the Ice Haus rink in Columbus, Ohio.

Alex Eisen covers Minot High School, Minot State athletics and high school sports. Follow him on Twitter @AEisen13.