Scott Sandelin has been looking for a little bit of an offensive spark.
At least for one night, he found it.
Strong from the start of the game, the new third line of Jackson Cates, Kobe Roth, and Koby Bender struck four times in total, including a Cates natural hat trick in the third period, as UMD pulled away from Western Michigan, 5-1 Saturday night at Amsoil Arena.
Cates’ goals came 7:58 apart in the third period, turning a 2-1 lead into the final four-goal margin. It’s the first hat trick for UMD in nearly two years, with Nick Swaney getting the last one on Jan. 25, 2019, in a 7-2 win over Omaha. It’s the first natural hat trick for a UMD player since JT Brown accomplished the feat in Anchorage on Feb. 3, 2012, on his way to an All-American season. The last UMD natural hat trick at home was by Mike Connolly, during his legendary five-goal performance on Feb. 5, 2011, against Minnesota.
The three connected for a couple great passing plays, including one in the first period that led to a tap-in goal by Roth and a 2-0 lead, just 1:17 after Swaney’s pass ricocheted off a defender and by Western goalie Alex Aslanidis. Bender set that goal up with a sweet pass while the 150 assembled humans and dozens of assembled cardboard cutouts probably all thought he should shoot. He had another great dish, for the third of those three Cates goals in the third period.
Two of those goals were fantasic shots by Cates, the third a tap-in off the Bender pass. The timing couldn’t have been better. Drew Worrad stuffed home an Ethen Frank rebound to get Western within a goal at 2-1 early in the third period. It wasn’t a 2-1 game for three minutes before the first of Cates’ goals. The game was a runaway when he finished his natural hat trick.
Cates and Bender each had four points, while Roth had two. Seems to be a safe bet the trio will stay together for Sunday’s rematch.
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UMD controlled much of the game five-on-five, but Frank’s speed created a couple good chances for the Broncos, along with their only goal, which came during a four-on-four. The Bulldogs struggled to consistently generate much of anything during seven power plays, getting a fortuitous bounce on Swaney’s goal to open the scoring and flip what could have been a “missed opportunities” narrative in the first intermission. In that sense, the goals by Swaney and Roth were gigantic. Western was five minutes away from escaping a first period where the Broncos had little to nothing going on outside of the play of Aslanidis in goal. But WMU took one too many penalties.
(The penalty theme could have engulfed this game. Heck, it almost did at one point, as we saw the rarest of rare in hockey: 24 seconds of 3-on-3 hockey during regulation time. It was virtually a celebration for me, I loved it.)
Sandelin tried to make some personnel changes, but it didn’t feel like things were clicking, and the power play is scored four times in its last 33 chances. The Bulldogs have to find a way to get this going, as there’s no doubt the talent is there for it to be good. The 1-for-7 game dipped UMD’s season percentage under 20 percent. For reference, the power play hasn’t finished at under 20 percent success since the 2015-16 season (14.9 percent), a year where UMD adversarial goalies posted a completely impossible .923 cumulative save percentage.
The lack of high-danger chances on the power play Saturday was admittedly a bit distressing. But there were some positives. Puck movement was pretty good, and UMD did a better job on faceoffs, allowing for more offensive zone possession time. Now the Bulldogs just have to find a way to do more with that zone time, generating chances and getting pucks/bodies to the front of the net.
Outside of a couple pushes by Frank, UMD did a pretty good job keeping Western from stretching guys behind the defense. That will continue to be a point of emphasis Sunday afternoon. Ryan Fanti made 17 saves and was pretty good in goal, in his first action in 15 days. In a weird stat, NCHC teams are 3-0 post-pod after COVID-related pauses. Maybe that’s a coincidence, and let me be the first to say I hope we don’t find out because we are able to stop having pauses.
We’ll see if there are any lineup changes coming, maybe there won’t be after a fairly solid performance.
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I’ll be back pregame with the lines. 3:30 pregame on KDAL, as I try to watch the NFC Championship Game (Packers and Buccaneers kick off at 2pm).
