Friday nights, overtimes and visits to the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center have not been kind to the University of Minnesota Duluth in recent times.

But with one flick of the wrist, Cal Decowski changed the Bulldogs' fortunes on all three of those fronts. The junior center took a backhanded feed from sophomore Kyle Osterberg and pumped in his second goal of the season with 2:54 in overtime to give the Bulldogs a 3-2 National Collegiate Hockey Conference victory over St. Cloud State Friday night. The win was UMD's first in five Friday night games this season, its first at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center since the opening round of the 2007 playoffs (1-8-2) and just the second in its last 14 overtime outings (2-4-8).

"Austyn Young did a great job of keeping the puck inside the blue line and Kyle did all the work," said Decowski, who extended his scoring streak to a personal-best four games and joined sophomore left winger Alex Iafallo as the only two Bulldogs' with a career overtime goal to their credit. "All I had to was finish."

The No. 17 Bulldogs (5-4-0 overall and 3-2-0 in the NCHC) scored the lone goal of the opening 43 minutes of play at 12:22 of the first period when junior right winger Justin Crandall redirected sophomore center Dominic Toninato's pass past St. Cloud State netminder Charlie Lindgren. No. 7 St. Cloud State (3-4-0), which was making its 2014-15 NCHC debut, took its first, and only, lead of the evening by striking on back-to-back power play opportunities at 4:07 and 8:56 of the third. A little over a minute after that first Husky goal (by Jonny Brodzinski), the Bulldogs had 1:51 of a 5-on-3 advantage, but were unable to even muster a shot on net during that stretch.

With 5:46 to go in regulation and the Bulldogs on a 4-on-3 power play, Andy Welinski got the equalizer with a bomb from the high slot. It was the junior defensemen's fourth goal of the season and third on special teams. UMD rookie goalie Kasimir Kaskisuo (4-3-0), in his sixth consecutive start, finished with 33 saves while Lindgren made 18 stops.

"It was a nice win for us," said Scott Sandelin. "We played great the first half, but then gave them too many opportunities after that. They have too many good players and they eventually capitalized. But we held our ground when we needed to. Hopefully, we can build off that and play a solid 60 minutes tomorrow.

UMD, which is 14-7-1 away from Duluth since the start of the 2013-14 season, and the Huskies will conclude their NCHC series Saturday night at 7:07 p.m.