In their first year of Division I hockey, the University of North Dakota posted a 11-5-0 record. The first win of the season was an 8-0 victory over the Grand Forks Amerks on December 12, 1947. The game was played in the Winter Sports Building, "The Barn," as it was affectionately called. The Barn would be home to Sioux hockey until 1972.
On January 10, 1948, UND crashed into big-time college hockey when it stunned the Michigan Wolverines 6-5 in Ann Arbor (Michigan went on to win the first ever NCAA Division I hockey tournament). Strong defense and a pair of goals each from John Noah, Gordon (Ginny) Christian and Jim Medved keyed the big win. Noah scored the winning goal at 19:14 of the third period. Bob Murray stopped 34 Michigan shots in the UND nets. The Sioux would go on to defeat Michigan Tech, Minnesota, and Colorado College for the first time during the season.
Bill Sullivan and Gordon Christian led the Sioux with 24 points each. Sullivan scored 18 goals and added six assists while Christian netted 12 goals and 12 assists. Just one point off the pace was Jim Medved who had 23 points (14 goals and nine assists). Other top goal scorers included: Milton (Prince) Johnson with 14 goals and John Noah with 13 goals. Bob Murray played 14 games in goal while Al Forman backstopped the Sioux in a pair of games.
Hockey in 1947-48 was fast-paced with not as much emphasis on defense as in later seasons. UND averaged only 6.8 penalty minutes per game. On the scoring side, the Sioux averaged 6.4 goals per game while giving up 4.3 goals per game. The penalty leader that season was Joe Silovich with 18 penalties for 39 minutes in 16 games. Silovich also played the French horn in the Grand Forks Symphony and had a golden retriever "Bruiser" who followed him all over campus, even into classrooms.
All of the players were from North Dakota, Minnesota and South Dakota. There were two sets of brothers on the team: Daniel and Paul McKinnon from Williams, Minn., and Milton (Prince) and Russell (Buzz) Johnson from Webster, S.D.
UND had two hat tricks in the inaugural Division I season, the first by Medved on February 10, 1948, against the Wichita Beechcraft Flyers in a 13-5 win and the second by Sullivan (eight goals) against North Dakota State in the final game of the year on February 27, 1948, in a 17-6 Sioux win. The record of eight goals in a game by Sullivan still stands today.
Don Norman was the coach for the first and second Division I seasons, posting an 11-5-0 record in 1947-48 (with a salary of $50.00 per month which was increased to $100.00 per month in February 1948) and a 9-12-1 record in 1948-49.
