LOWELL, Mass. - The UMass Lowell Hockey team was defeated by No. 7 Denver in non-conference play on Saturday night in front of 5,363 fans at the Tsongas Center.

The River Hawks drop to 8-8-1 overall, while the Pioneers improve to 10-4-2 overall.

"I thought we started off pretty well, we hit a couple of mini goals, but at the end of the night that team was opportunistic," said UMass Lowell Head Coach Norm Bazin. "17 shots is even too much to give them, obviously they are very good and they scored on four of them."

Denver scored three goals in the third period, on two power play goals by Jarid Lukosevicius and a goal by Ryan Barrow to close out the scoring in the game.

Freshman defenseman Seth Barton (Kelowna, B.C.) scored his second career goal for the River Hawks on the power play at 12:39 of the third stanza.

The Pioneers got on the board first in the game in the second period on a goal by Cole Guttman at 17:09, after the River Hawks had a goal disallowed in the opening stanza.

Junior goalie Tyler Wall (Leamington, Ont.) stopped 13 shots in his 12th start of the season, while Filip Larsson recorded 20 saves in his second win of the season for the Pioneers.

The River Hawks won 30 of 47 face offs on the night, including eight face off wins (80%) from sophomore forward Charlie Levesque (Russell, Ont.). Freshman forward Reid Stefanson (Winnipeg, Manitoba) totaled a game-high five shots on goal for UMass Lowell in the losing effort.

UMass Lowell returns to action on Friday, January 4th against No. 2 ranked UMass in the first meeting of the Kennedy Cup Challenge. Game time from the Mullins Center in Amherst, Mass. is 7 p.m.