Michigan's Luke Moffatt celebrates a 2-0 Frozen Four win over North Dakota Thursday night. Coach Red Berenson said the Wolverines will need to reduce penalties if they want to celebrate a national championship on Saturday night.

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BY JEFF SHELMAN Special to AnnArbor.com

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Too many penalties. Too much time without the puck.

Those are the things Michigan hockey coach Red Berenson wants to see cleaned up before the Wolverines face Minnesota-Duluth in Saturday’s national championship game.

“We can’t play our whole game in our own zone,” he said. “We can’t rely on our goalie to be the first star of the game. We have to play better than we played. So we won the game, but I can’t tell you that this is the kind of game we can get away with playing again.

“We have to be better with the puck and definitely have to be better in the offensive zone and hopefully our power play can kick in one.”

Before the game against North Dakota, Michigan wanted to do what it could to avoid taking penalties and playing shorthanded. That didn’t happen. The Wolverines took a pair of penalties before the game was seven minutes old and North Dakota had seven power play chances on the night.

“I always say your goaltender is going to be your best penalty killer, and he was that this evening,” Ben Winnett said. “As far as the rest of the guys, they just worked hard and I think we out-worked their top players.”

But Berenson knows that can’t continue against the Bulldogs.

“The one thing we didn’t plan was taking as many penalties as we took against their power play,” he said. “I thought we were lucky.”

MORE WCHA: It will be two more seasons before the Big Ten becomes a hockey conference. But if it seems that the Wolverines have already changed conferences, there’s a reason for that.

Each of Michigan’s NCAA tournament regional opponents -- Nebraska-Omaha and Colorado College -- came from the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. Thursday’s semifinal was against WCHA champion North Dakota.

And, now, the Wolverines will play a fourth WCHA team in a row when they face Minnesota-Duluth.

Dating back to December’s Great Lakes Invitational, Michigan has won five consecutive games against teams from the WCHA and is 6-2-1 against the league on the season.

SCARY MOMENT: With 12:28 to play in the first period, Michigan’s Luke Glendening checked North Dakota freshman Brock Nelson in the Wolverine zone. Nelson slid hard into the boards at the end of the ice and was very slow to get up.

While Nelson was moving, play was delayed for several minutes. After trying to get up on his own, Nelson was taken off the ice on a stretcher. Nelson, who suffered a lower body injury, was taken to nearby Regions Hospital.

EMBELLISHMENT?: Everyone knows that items such as tripping, cross-checking and holding will land a player in the penalty box. Apparently exaggerating the impact of an opponent’s action can do the same.

Kevin Lynch was penalized for that at 19:01 of the first period after being interfered with by North Dakota’s Andrew MacWilliam. Lynch’s penalty turned what would have been a Michigan power play into simply coincidental minor penalties.

ANN ARBOR TIES: This weekend’s Frozen Four features 19 players who played for the U.S. National Team Development Program in Ann Arbor as teenagers. All four of the teams have alumni of the program.

END QUOTE: Replays of the celebration following Scooter Vaughan’s empty-net goal showed an upset North Dakota fan near the glass displaying the least polite finger toward several Michigan players. Vaughan certainly saw it. His reaction?

“To silence their fans, that was the best feeling,” he said.