DULUTH, Minn. — UND freshman Cole Reschny had a step on Minnesota Duluth’s Brady Cleveland.

Reschny skated toward the net with 3:51 to go in the second period, Cleveland slashed him and they both crashed into the end wall.

Reschny didn’t get up.

Silence fell over AmsOil Arena. Ben Strinden and Dylan James immediately checked on their teammate who was in obvious pain. Athletic trainer Mark Poolman rushed onto the ice.

And everyone wearing green in Duluth, Grand Forks or wherever they follow their favorite team held their breath as Reschny left the ice without putting weight on his left leg.

But after UND’s 4-1 win over Minnesota Duluth on Saturday in AmsOil Arena, UND head coach Dane Jackson gave a positive update.

“Positive thing is I don’t think there’s anything major structurally,” UND coach Dane Jackson said. “It’s early but I think it looks more like a contusion than ligament damage, so that’s the initial look, it’s positive. But we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. Doc did a basic evaluation here. I’m sure we’ll get some images of it. But I think that’s the positive — it didn’t look like there was any ligament damage.”

After the game, Reschny was walking gingerly on his own power — without a brace or boot.

Reschny, a first-round pick of the Calgary Flames and one of the best prospects in all of college hockey, is having a standout rookie year with the Fighting Hawks.

He’s centering one of the top lines and playing in every situation — power play, penalty kill. He has four goals and 25 points in 23 games, while winning 55% of his faceoffs.

UND could use Reschny back as soon as possible, especially for the Penrose Cup chase.

The Fighting Hawks are at home the next two weekends for series against Miami University and St. Cloud State. Then, they close the regular season on the road at Western Michigan.

“Obviously, it sucks watching one of your best players go down like that,” Wiebe said. “It’s unfortunate. Hope that he can come back soon. I really don’t know what he’s got. But I think it kind of sparked something in us to play for him. I think that’s exactly what we did. We responded well after that. We played well, we got a couple of big goals and it obviously led us to victory there.”

The game was scoreless when Reschny left with an injury, but UND scored four times in the third to grab four National Collegiate Hockey Conference points on the weekend and a series split.

Mac Swanson and Will Zellers each scored a goal and added an assist during a five-minute major power play. Wiebe tallied three assists. Dylan James scored twice, including an empty-netter to clinch it.

“When (Reschny) went down, obviously, he’s a great player for us, one of our better forwards,” Swanson said. “You kind of just automatically think you’ve got to pick up the slack a little bit. We talked about it between periods going into the third period that we’re going to have to pick up some of his minutes and stuff, and I thought we did a really good job.”

Goaltender Jan Špunar stopped 25 of 26 shots, including 16 in the first period as UND took three minor penalties.

“We came for six points, we got four,” Špunar said. “Not bad.”

UND clinched home ice for the NCHC quarterfinals.

“Tough seeing Resch go down, obviously,” Jackson said. “But I liked the fact that we kind of settled in and said, ‘Hey, we’re all right here. Let’s just play our way and get back to it a little bit better. I thought we did a nice job of getting a little simpler with our puck management. Special teams were outstanding.”

Clint Austin / Duluth Media Group

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Schlossman has covered college hockey for the Grand Forks Herald since 2005. He has been recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors as the top beat writer for the Herald’s circulation division four times and the North Dakota sportswriter of the year twice. He resides in Grand Forks. Reach him at bschlossman@gfherald.com.

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – Expect seasonable temperatures on Saturday with a nice warm-up starting on Sunday. 

Saturday forecast

Local perspective:

Clouds slowly increase throughout the day with a little breeze out of the southeast this afternoon. 

Temperatures stay chilly to the north and east, with mid-20s expected for the Twin Cities. 

A southeast wind will help boost temperatures to be a touch warmer in southwestern Minnesota this afternoon.

Extended forecast 

What’s next:

Temperatures stay mild on Saturday night for all of Minnesota and then trend warmer on Sunday. 

The warm trend will be the theme of this forecast, with peak temperatures reaching into the lower 40s on Monday, then near 40 on Tuesday, followed by the mid-30s to close out the rest of the work week.

Federal officials are calling on counties to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Several sheriff’s offices in Minnesota have what’s called a 287(g) agreement with the agency. The agreement can be controversial. Different models allow departments to help enforce ICE operations and to serve warrants on people inside their jails. Crow Wing County has both. 

The county also houses detainees for ICE. Sheriff Eric Klang agreed to allow WCCO into the jail to talk about the agreements.

“We have the 287(g), the warrant model,” Klang said.

Klang signed two agreements with ICE last year.  

“When I signed that thing back in March, that was really about operational efficiency, meaning that if we had arrested somebody, or we had a detainee here, we couldn’t serve them the detainee paperwork. So I said, ‘Hey, why can’t we serve it? What’s the big deal?’” Klang said.

So far, it hasn’t been used. The other agreement is a task force model allowing deputies to help enforce ICE operations. Seven deputies went through online training.

“I’ve been in law enforcement for 30 years, and I’ve always supported our local, state and federal partners. And I wasn’t going to change because of political winds or because of the emotionally charged, you know, commotion going on around the country. I mean, that’s just not me. I’m gonna, I’m staying steady on that,” Klang said.

Mayerle asked what the task force model looks like.

“If you have a felony warrant against you and you’re a target of an ICE operation, you can bet that we’re going to be a part of that. But if you are just here simply because you cross the border, we are not going out with ICE going after people like that,” Klang said.

He says they were called in to assist on what he calls a targeted arrest for the first time last week. 

It was at El Potro restaurant in Brainerd, Minnesota.

“Was basically just standing by and taking a perimeter and transporting of individuals to our, to the jail, which they immediately took and they brought them to Duluth, to the federal detention facility,” Klang said.

He said the people ICE was targeting had a criminal record.

“They had criminal records, and there just happened to be a couple of them that ended up, as far as I know, have just crossed the border, so civil penalty, and they got scooped up in that arrest that we did as well,” Klang said.

The restaurant is now closed, with signs of support on the outside.    

Klang says that only more recently has he started getting hate mail over the ICE agreements. 

“I would say the majority of the population supports what we’re doing here in Brainerd. There are a few that are, you know, aren’t happy with me cooperating, collaborating with our federal partners,” Klang said.

Klang told us he thinks more departments should cooperate with the feds. He says he doesn’t like to see how the agents are being treated in the Twin Cities. And feels if locals were standing alongside them, some of the treatment of community members could also have been avoided. 

“Who knows the community better than the local law enforcement? A lot of these guys just got deployed here. They didn’t get a chance to finish their field training. I mean, they got 40 hours in the classroom. They don’t know anything about the mobile field force. And then you compound that by people yelling, screaming, throwing stuff at them. I mean, you know, it’s no wonder they don’t know that they’re acting out. Not typical that we would act out or respond by somebody doing that. So if we were standing alongside him, we could say, ‘Hey, no, no, we don’t do that here. We can’t do that. No, you don’t. You don’t. You don’t, you know, flip them back off because they’re flipping you off.’ You know, we can’t just randomly stop a car, you know, we could. We could be helping them and we wouldn’t be in this situation, this crisis that we’re in now,” Klang said.

The Department of Homeland Security responded to WCCO’s request about the January arrests:

“On Jan. 26, ICE agents in Brainerd, Minn., executed judicial criminal arrest warrants for Jose Baraja Farias and Javier Francisco Montoya-Barboza, both illegal aliens wanted on federal immigration charges. Montoya is a criminal illegal alien with a conviction for driving under the influence. Illegal aliens have killed and maimed far too many Americans while doing just that. Baraja is an illegal Mexican national who was previously removed from the United States in 2007 and subsequently reentered the country without authorization, a felony, in 2010. Two additional illegal aliens, Alberto Core Vidal Neri from Mexico and Nilo Fernando Piruch Tsenkus from Ecuador, were also arrested for unlawful presence in the United States. Both Baraja and Montoya were transported to Douglas County for judicial proceedings, while the others are pending removal proceedings. ICE will continue its efforts to uphold immigration laws and ensure community safety. Those who are in our country illegally have a choice—they can leave the country voluntarily or be arrested and deported. The United States taxpayer is generously offering free flights and a $2,600 to illegal aliens who self-deport using the CBP Home app. If they leave now, they preserve the potential opportunity to come back the legal, right way. The choice is theirs.”