Frozen Four: 2OT Classic
Denver survived a double‑overtime semifinal to beat Michigan and will face Wisconsin — who edged North Dakota — in the national championship on Saturday, April 11. ( ).
Denver needed 92 minutes and 35 seconds to get past Michigan on Thursday night, and the winning goal came from defenseman Kent Anderson with 7:25 left in the second overtime at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The 4-3 result sent the Pioneers into Saturday’s national title game. (ncaa.com; reviewjournal.com) Michigan came in as the top-ranked team, and it still spent the two overtime periods firing 22 shots to Denver’s 8 before one Denver rush finally ended it. That is the kind of game where one bounce decides whether a season looks dominant or cruel. (mgoblue.com; reviewjournal.com) The other semifinal was the opposite kind of stress. Wisconsin scored twice in the first period, then spent the final two periods protecting a 2-1 lead against North Dakota to reach the championship game for the first time since 2006. (uwbadgers.com; jsonline.com) That sets up a final with two very different paths in the same building. Wisconsin arrived by jumping ahead early and hanging on, while Denver arrived by surviving nearly five full periods against Michigan. (uwbadgers.com; mgoblue.com) The Frozen Four is college hockey’s version of the Final Four in basketball: the last four teams in a single-elimination bracket, with two semifinals and one championship game. In 2026, those games are being played on April 9 and April 11 at T-Mobile Arena, home of the National Hockey League’s Vegas Golden Knights. (ncaa.com; mensfrozenfourlv.com) Las Vegas is a new setting for this event. The local host site says this is the first time the Division I men’s championship has been staged there, which gave this year’s semifinals a neutral-site, big-arena feel instead of the old pattern of campus-heavy crowds in the Upper Midwest or Northeast. (mensfrozenfourlv.com) Saturday’s championship is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Eastern time on April 11 on ESPN. Denver and Wisconsin are the last two teams standing out of a 16-team national tournament that began on March 26. (ncaa.com; espn.com) So the final now has a clean contrast: Wisconsin is chasing its first men’s hockey title-game win in 20 years, and Denver is trying to turn one exhausted, chaotic night into another championship. After a 4-3 double-overtime semifinal and a 2-1 grinder in the first game, the last matchup in Las Vegas has already been shaped by survival. (jsonline.com; ncaa.com)
