Samu Salminen slammed his stick on the ice in frustration, snapping it in two at the heel. If only the junior forward knew what the next 10 minutes of hockey were going to be like.

Denver kept knocking and knocking and knocking at the door all night, but the equalizing goal never answered and the No. 6 Pioneers dropped the series finale to St. Cloud State by a final of 2-1 on Saturday at Magness Arena.

It’s another weekend split at home for DU, who missed an opportunity to grab  third place in the NCHC standings heading into the final weekend of the regular season.

“We did a lot of really good things out there tonight,” senior forward Jack Devine said. “I thought we had a lot of good chances, especially there in the third. Kudos to their goalie, he made a lot of good saves. I think for us, it was obviously a disappointing loss, but we know we’ve got a lot of hockey left and we know how good of a team we are.”

It was also a familiar script for the Pios, who continue to find themselves on the wrong end of some outstanding goalie play as the Huskies’ Isak Posch finished with 38 saves on 39 shots, including some demoralizing ones as DU made a frantic push in the third period.

“Challenging night, certainly,” Pios coach David Carle said. “It’s not our first time through it, unfortunately. The message isn’t much different than what it’s been (after) a few nights here at home in the second half. Our challenge is to stick together as a group in the room. Everything we want to do is still in front of us.

“Feeling sorry for ourselves is a wasted emotion.”

Daimon Gardner opened the scoring in the first period, beating DU goalie Matt Davis from a ridiculous angle.

Devine scored the only Pios goal of the night on the power play in the second period, but the Huskies regained the lead less than a minute later.

DU peppered 20 shots on net in the final 20 minutes, including some golden chances in the middle of the ice, but in the end it was just the fourth regulation loss at Magness Arena this season.

“You can’t get too frustrated,” Devine said. “If you stay like that, it’s not gonna help. You just gotta stay positive and know it’ll come. We’ve had games where we scored 11 and (then) a game like tonight. It’s one of those games where we outplayed them and they got a bit lucky.”

It wasn’t all luck for St. Cloud State as the Pios committed four penalties in the first two periods (five overall) and, despite killing all of them off, all that time spent playing down a man prevented Carle’s team from ever really getting into a rhythm in the first 40 minutes.

“It certainly made things a little disjointed,” Carle said. “I thought our (penalty) kill was excellent all weekend long. Certainly made it challenging to find a rhythm when you have to kill two (penalties) in the first, two in the second and the one in the third.”

Now DU turns its attention to the final two games of the regular season and a fight for the Gold Pan trophy, with the Pioneers needing just one win next weekend to keep the trophy for another season.

But there’s even more on the line than just silverware as Carle is just trying to ensure his team earns as high a seed as possible  gets into the NCAA Tournament (DU currently has a 94% chance to make the 16-team field) and start playing its best hockey heading into the postseason.

“I think they know (what’s ahead), Carle said. “It’s hard a tournament. Our job is to get into the tournament. It’s (about) sticking to our process, sticking to our daily prep. I know there’s a lot of teams hoping that we lose, so that we don’t make the tournament because I know a lot of teams won’t want to play us.”