This was best-on-best.

Two of the best offenses. Two of the best defenses. Two of the best possession teams. Quinnipiac lost three games all year. Just six for North Dakota. Over the last four seasons, no teams have won as many games as these two have.

An incredibly entertaining, physical, three-goal first period gave way to a still-physical but far quieter second. But North Dakota's top line ran the show, and though the Quinnipiac pushback was respectable enough, the hole was too deep. The Fighting Hawks cruised to a 5-1 win, and won their eighth national title, and first since 2000.

“It feels great,” said first-year North Dakota coach Brad Berry. “We openly talk about winning championships and trying to be the best that we can be every single day. And finally to complete that and do that it's a team award that we'll cherish for a long time. As much as this group is going to enjoy it, I think the city of Grand Forks, the state of North Dakota, the University of North Dakota, the athletic department, the Ralph Engelstad family, they'll all enjoy it.”

Rand Pecknold, the masterful Quinnipiac coach, had a whopper of a decision to make coming in. North Dakota's ultra-dominant CBS line that both drove the bus and parked it in the Fighting Hawks' win over Denver on Thursday needed to be in some way corralled or at least quieted, and thanks to the Bobcats having last change as the No. 1 seed in the tournament, it fell to Devon Toews and Kevin McKernan to get the job done. But it quickly became apparent that this was a job for which no man was worthy.

Brock Boeser finished with the game-winner and three assists and was clearly the best player on the ice for the full 60. Drake Caggiula had the two absolute daggers 2:20 apart early in the third. Nick Schmaltz had an assist on the insurance goal. That was on top of the combined six points they piled up against Denver on Thursday. Just an unbelievable weekend from the unstoppable CBS line, at both ends of the ice, on and off the puck.

“Everybody gets caught up in the offensive side of the game as far as their skill,” Berry said. “You know what: they have NHL skills, special skills, but the intangible is their work ethic away from the puck.”

On the other bench, Quinnipiac was a little more of a “next man up” type of a club this year (10 guys cleared 20 points this year, compared with “just” eight for the Fighting Hawks.) Sam Anas, Landon Smith, and Travis St. Denis is their top line, but the following two not really being that much worse. Particularly because Anas — who's been nursing a shoulder injury for weeks — was very clearly not in good shape, going to the room twice in the first period. By the end of the game, Anas was clearly playing with only one arm.

In the early going, things were more or less a stalemate, insofar as there weren't any truly good scoring chances. But the Fighting Hawks were at the very least doing a better job of keeping Quinnipiac to the outside, and had an easier time moving through the neutral zone with the puck.

As the first went on, the North Dakota advantage grew, as they got to every loose puck and were far more eager to throw the body around (not that Quinnipiac was unhappy to return the favor). The message from the outset was clear.

“Stay with our game plan, stay with it,” Berry said. “I thought we got into some penalty trouble in the first part of the game. That's tough, gets you out of momentum. Gotta kill penalties in a great power play in Quinnipiac. And our guys stuck with it. They dug in found a way to get through it. The biggest part was getting on the rails again and again it goes to the leadership in the locker room.”

And indeed, Shane Gersich finally opened the scoring at the very end of a two-minute 4-on-4 situation. He successfully fronted Quinnipiac goalie Michael Garteig and banged home a rebound on a seeing-eye point shot. But everything, not surprisingly, was facilitated by Brock Boeser, who dug out a 50-50 puck deep in the attacking zone and got it back to Gage Ausmus on the blue line.

Just 2:20 later, Boeser added what seemed to be the backbreaker on a Quinnipiac power play. He capitalized on a not-good decision by Garteig to try to clear a puck that got caught in no-man's land. Garteig bounced it off Boeser's torso, and left 24 square feet of net wide open for one of the most proficient forwards in the nation. He, of course, did not miss.

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