It’s nice to be at home for a few weeks. This job is phenomenal, but back to back trips to Omaha and Grand Forks will take a lot out of the most enthusiastic soul.
Of course, being at home doesn’t necessarily mean anything gets easier for UMD. The men or the women. Excited for a doubleheader weekend, four games over two days on KDAL. Excited for what should be fun atmospheres at these games, as UMD hosts probably its biggest single home weekend of the season.
8 THOUGHTS
1. Ladies first. UMD hosts Minnesota at 3pm Friday and Saturday. These games are critical for a number of reasons, most notably the standings (both the WCHA and the PairWise). In the WCHA, UMD is fourth, five points back of third-place Wisconsin, which broke a five-game skid last weekend by sweeping Minnesota State. Second place Ohio State is 12 points clear of the Bulldogs, so that’s likely unattainable with just eight games left in the regular season. In the PairWise (use this link for the PWR, as it’s the only place you’ll see accurate standings), UMD is seventh, but could see some upward movement with a good weekend here.
UMD has ripped off six straight wins since break ended, while going unbeaten in nine straight and 12-1-1 over the last 14 games. In those 14 games, UMD has conceded a grand total of 12 goals, six of them coming Dec. 2-3 in a split against Ohio State. While some of the opposition hasn’t been top-notch, UMD players and coaches are very happy with the improved commitment in the defensive zone.
“Something we talk about a lot is defense leads to offense,” said fifth year senior forward Gabbie Hughes. “So making defense our pride and taking pride in the D zone will lead to our offensive opportunities. Making that our number one focus I think has definitely led to us having great defense and being able to go into the O zone and create there.”
2. Both UMD and Minnesota have kept a good approach as their schedules lightened a bit. The Gophers have won ten in a row, but have only played one ranked team (St. Cloud State) in that stretch. UMD is 12-1-1 over 14, with games mixed in against SCSU, Ohio State, and Wisconsin that have added to the schedule strength. But UMD swept Bemidji State and St. Thomas the last two weekends. While UMD coach Maura Crowell has talked about those opponents presenting “different challenges,” there’s no denying neither is at the level of the Minnesota team UMD will face this weekend.
“I think our number one opponent is ourselves,” said Hughes. “When we practice each other, we practice each other hard. So being able to have that experience in practice I think prepares us for whatever team we’re gonna face.”
Asked about ramping up for Minnesota this week, Crowell smiled and said her team would be ready, and “we know who’s on that team.”
The reigning Patty Kaz winner is (Taylor Heise), as are two returning Olympians (Grace Zumwinkle and Abbey Murphy). Led by Skylar Vetter, Minnesota’s team save percentage is at .926 (UMD is at .936). This should be really good hockey, with two teams that can play with pace and are very good at puck possession.
“Anytime our two teams play one another,” Gophers coach Brad Frost said, “we both bring out the best in each other. I would expect both teams to be playing well, and it will be an exciting weekend up there.”
3. Meanwhile, the UMD men face a huge challenge this weekend, hosting a St. Cloud State team that is now tied for first in the NCHC and No. 1 in the national polls after a two-game home sweep of Denver last weekend at the Brooks Center.
“We’ve got to be on our A game,” said UMD coach Scott Sandelin this week. “An older veteran team playing very well right now, well-coached.”
The Huskies have won three straight since a home loss to Colorado College allowed the Tigers to tie them for second place in the league standings. UMD sputtered back into league play out of break, but Sandelin is hopeful that Saturday’s 2-1 win at North Dakota gave his team a lift. He was really pleased with UMD’s first period performance that night, which saw the Bulldogs lead 13-3 in shots in a game that stayed 0-0.
“I’d like to bottle that first period for three, but that’s hard to do,” said Sandelin.
4. While St. Cloud State has gotten a lot of scoring, and some timely goals along the way, the Huskies also have gotten stellar goaltending from the tandem of Jaxon Castor and Colorado College transfer Dominic Basse. They’ve basically split the games, and are at a combined save percentage of .930.
“Coming into the season, it was kind of the biggest unknown for us,” said St. Cloud State coach Brett Larson, who you might have heard is from Duluth, went to Denfeld, and played/coached at UMD. “Jaxon hadn’t played a ton, and Dom went into CC pretty young. He went in as an 18 year old in this league. They’ve just pushed each other all year. We’ll need to keep that going.”
Larson likes how Castor and Basse have handled the timeshare to this point, a situation he’s keenly familiar with.
“My freshman year at UMD,” he recalled, “my best friend, Rod Aldoff, and I were battling to be in the lineup. I’d play Friday night, he’d play Saturday. And I remember telling him, ‘Hey, I love you, but I hope you stink Saturday, because I’d like to play two.’
“I think that healthy competition is a good thing, and these two have handled it very well.”
5. It hasn’t been all duckies and bunnies this year for St. Cloud State. In the Huskies’ season opener, defenseman Josh Luedtke was taken off the ice on a stretcher at St. Thomas after crashing into the boards. Larson said it was scary, because the game resumed with little clarity on Luedtke’s condition. He would return to the lineup after an eight-game absence.
Larson’s three-year captain, defenseman Spencer Meier, returned last weekend after missing eight games, an absence that was certainly felt by SCSU, but one that Larson wasn’t sure wouldn’t be longer. Meier, a Hockey Humanitarian Award nominee, is one of the Huskies’ biggest minutes-eaters and has been for a long time.
The adversity hasn’t stopped. On Saturday, senior defenseman Dylan Anhorn, a Union transfer, went down with a lower-body injury during the team’s off-ice pregame warmup. Larson had to call Brady Ziemer, who was slated to be scratched Saturday, and “get the Doritos out of his mouth to get over to the rink to get his gear on” to take Anhorn’s spot in the lineup.
Larson is happy with how players stepped up during prior long-term absences, but he recognizes that this will be a challenge.
“He’s been unbelievable for us,” Larson said of Anhorn. “Looking at our lineup, losing a guy like Nick Perbix (now with the Tampa Bay Lightning), and the point production he had. It’s tough to ask a freshman or sophomore to do that, and to have Dylan come in and pick up that slack has been huge.”
6. I made a note on Twitter this week, not trying to make excuses for a UMD team that has struggled to pick up wins, but to try to provide some context.
Analytics can be a valuable tool, but it can be frustrating when a team that has good analytics isn’t getting wins. Reality is that a 34-game college hockey season is really not long enough to flesh out statistically good and not good teams. And we’re 24 games in at this point.
But UMD’s possession numbers — which are derived in hockey from shot attempts and not actual time of possession like you see in soccer — are up from last year. The Bulldogs are averaging slightly more shots on goal per game, while giving up slightly more shots. But the shot attempts themselves for UMD show an uptick of a couple percentage points in Corsi, both overall and at even-strength. UMD’s expected goals — a stat that comes from charting every shot attempt in a game and assigning it a value based on where it comes from and the kind of shot it is — are way higher than the actual goals.
And the Bulldogs have scored on a measly 7.4 percent of their shots on goal, a number that ranks them fifth from the bottom in Division I and dead last in the NCHC (nearly a full percentage point behind Miami at 8.3 percent).
Is shot selection a problem? To an extent. I thought UMD did a mediocre job funneling pucks and traffic to the net during the last couple Friday games, but did a better job in both Saturday games. The result? Three total goals in the Saturday games.
The play that won UMD the game Saturday, where Dominic James threw a puck to the goal mouth and Luke Loheit got there, is a play we need to see more of. It won’t always work, but if the Bulldogs continue to commit to getting to the dirty areas, the shooting percentage is bound to go up.
7. We might be down to ten games in the regular season, but there’s still time to make some noise here. And Sandelin believes he has the group to do it.
“I like our team right now,” he said. “I think we’ve played some pretty good hockey. I think we’ve have moments where we’ve got to eliminate some of the lapses. I think we’ve got to pare it down a little bit and have a little more discipline but other than that, I think there’s some really good things.”
It starts with what we saw Saturday. 1-1 game into the third, and UMD got an ugly goal late to win. Sometimes, you just have to find a way.
“I don’t care if it’s pretty or ugly,” said Sandelin, “but I thought we played a pretty good game on against a team that’s desperate to in a tough building. And we found a way to win the game. That’s how we’re going to win. We’re not going to probably win pretty all the time. We’re going to work to get games where it’s like that. And this group has got to find ways to win. We’ve found ways to lose. We got to find ways to win and we found a way to win that game.”
8. If UMD is going to taste success, it’s going to need more production out of its veterans. Yes, once we get into the second half of the season, the cliche is that freshmen are no longer freshmen. But it’s just really hard to win in college hockey on the backs of freshmen.
That said, Sandelin really likes what he’s been seeing out of a lot of his young players. We talked a lot in the first half about the defensemen, especially Aiden Dubinsky, who has started really emerging with his stick and skating, reminiscent of a right-handed Mikey Anderson.
But up front, we’re seeing some big steps from a lot of young guys. Kyle Bettens had two goals last Friday at UND and has taken advantage of getting elevated in the lineup after holiday break.
“Coach (Sandelin) has put a lot of trust in me,” said Bettens, “and moving me up in the lineup (with Carter Loney and Quinn Olson) has really helped me.”
And the so-called Diaper Line — with Cole Spicer centering Isaac Howard and Luke Johnson — has emerged big-time the last couple weekends.
“They’re just gaining confidence,” Sandelin said. “The more you play, put in a lot of different situations. Some are having success. Some are scoring, making plays. They’re doing a really good job. Like I said, I’m excited about that group, I think bodes well for our future and I think those guys are having more of an impact here in the second half.”
Of course, putting it all together has been problematic, but there’s been a lot of promise so far in January, even in the losses. The next two opponents — SCSU and Western Michigan — will be huge tests of UMD’s progress. Get some wins, and the stretch run gets much more interesting.
2:45pm pregames Friday and Saturday for the women, 6:30 for the men. Join us on the radio if you aren’t making it down to the arena!
