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By Pat Sweeney
Mar 17, 2021 5:21 PM
After leading his team to back-to-back National Collegiate Hockey Conference regular season titles and last night’s NCHC Frozen Faceoff Tournament championship, UND sophomore forward has been named a Hobey Baker Award finalist. Pinto was the unanimous selection as the league’s Player of the Year and was also picked the forward and defensive forward of the year by the conference’s head coaches and select media members.
North Dakota has a Hobey Baker finalist for a second consecutive year after Jordan Kawaguchi was in the Hobey Baker Hat Trick last season. Overall, UND leads college hockey with 26 Hobey Baker finalists in its program’s history.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. University of North Dakota senior forward
(Abbotsford, B.C.) was named the National Collegiate Hockey Conference’s December Player of the Month, announced Friday.
Kawaguchi led North Dakota to a 7-2-1 record in the NCHC pod, emerging as the first-place team after the grueling 20 days. The senior captain recorded a point in all 10 games and is tied for the conference lead with 13 points in the month of December.
The returning Hobey Baker Hat Trick finalist from a year ago again had a flair for the dramatic, scoring a pair of overtime goals in the pod. It extended his school record for OT goals to five and he was in on five of the game-winning goals in December (2 GWG, 3 GWA). His current 10-game point streak is tops in the country. He is the only active NCHC player with 100 career points, cracking that mark Dec. 16, and currently sits seventh in the NCAA among active players in career points.