Though four games separate the UMD men from the “halfway mark” of their 2025-26 regular season, the physical halfway mark happens Friday.
The series opener in Kalamazoo against Western Michigan will be game 17 for the Bulldogs, out of 34 scheduled in the regular season. Friday is the first of four UMD will play before the Bulldogs get a two-week break for Christmas. They’ll reconvene after the holiday and prepare for a Jan. 2 home exhibition against Manitoba while two UMD players play in the IIHF World Junior Championships.
We’ll dive more into the World Juniors later this month. Wednesday’s weekly media conference featured sophomore forward Max Plante and sophomore defenseman Adam Kleber, the two current Bulldogs who are on the preliminary roster for Team USA. Both players were part of last year’s gold-medal repeat, and now will get a chance to play in the tournament not only on home soil, but in their home state.
But both Plante and Kleber talked about being where their feet are for the next two weekends, and we will do the same, at least for now. I’m amped beyond belief for the World Juniors, and look very much forward to taking in practices and pre-tournament games in Duluth before the tournament starts Dec. 26 in the Twin Cities. For now, let’s focus on UMD.
9 THOUGHTS
1. UMD was the last team in the NCHC to take a bye week. The Bulldogs went into a quiet weekend with 16 games played, while some teams in the league had played only 12. It’s going to be a mad sprint to the finish line, with the Bulldogs only having one weekend off (Feb. 13-14) after they return from break. They’ll play 15 games (counting the exhibition) over nine weekends before the postseason begins.
Players want to play. But was this a good time for a bye week?
“I think it was,” UMD coach Scott Sandelin said. “A lot of guys have been sick, and I think it was a good time to have it. I like that they (Western Michigan) had one, too. Usually we’re going into this, playing Denver, North Dakota, and we’re coming off a bye week, but at least both teams are in the same situation.”
(Not that we want to spend a lot of time looking ahead, but UMD benefits in sense from the schedule next weekend, as Arizona State will visit Amsoil Arena coming off a bye this week.)
Kleber was a bit back-and-forth on the topic.
“I think after Saturday (Nov. 22 against Colorado College), there’s a week to think about it. And maybe that’s not the best thing. You don’t want to overanalyze maybe our last game. It’s tough to end on a loss. And we’re not happy about that. It kind of left a bitter taste going into the bye week, so from that sense we wish we would have played last weekend. But I guess it’s a good chance to reset and get a couple days off for Thanksgiving. Always good go see the family, so I guess there’s some good and bad to it.”
(We also found out that Zam Plante seems to enjoy moving snow and jumping cars when the batteries die. What a guy!)
2. UMD should like where it’s at through 16 games. Only Michigan (15-3) has more wins than UMD’s 12, and the Bulldogs’ 12 wins and .750 winning percentage lead the NCHC.
Perfect? No, but that should be encouraging. UMD has 12 wins in 16 games without having truly played its best hockey yet (there have been patches of it, but the best is yet to come from this group).
From the sounds of it on Wednesday, Sandelin’s chief focus is on some little things that can become big things. Things like managing the game.
“We’ve got to be willing to do the little things, the simple things better,” Sandelin said. “Take kind of what the game’s giving you instead of trying to force too many plays. Some of that comes with a little better puck support, a shorter puck support, and just making better decisions. I think when we get in trouble, I feel like a lot of it’s self-induced, throwing pucks away, just forcing plays. Not willing to play the simple game, because some games everything’s clicking. You can zip it around and you’re going. Then you get into games where that’s not as easy. But you can’t keep trying to fit the square peg into the round hole. Maybe it’s OK to get a puck behind the defenseman on a one versus two instead of trying to beat a defenseman.”
Sandelin has said it before. Games can sometimes take on a different personality. Part of any team dialing its game in is understanding that and adjusting accordingly.
3. So, about Saturdays. The facts are clear. UMD is 8-0 on Friday, 4-4 on Saturday.
Looking at that can make it easy to forget a few key things. For starters, winning is harder in college hockey than it’s ever been. There are more good teams and more good players than ever, thanks to the influx of talent from the CHL, along with the ability for teams to even pluck players with ECHL and AHL experience (within certain parameters that we don’t fully understand but trust someone does).
It’s also not the biggest sample size. There have been games (Augustana weekend comes to mind immediately) where UMD played better on Saturday than it did Friday, and the results don’t show that.
Yes, there are weekends where the Bulldogs’ best game of the weekend came on Friday. But even simplifying it like that isn’t necessarily fair.
“There’s two teams on the rink every weekend,” Sandelin said. “People forget there’s another team. People forget our league is very difficult to win one, let alone two games. Do I think that we’ve played our best? No. Do I think other teams have been a little bit better at times? Yes. I’m not going to make a bigger deal out of it. It’s hard to win two games. Everyone gets spoiled like everyone thinks you should win every frickin’ game. It’s hard. Some of the Fridays we haven’t played great either, but we found a way to win. And that’s what I want to see this team continue to do over the course of the year.”
UMD is 12-4 overall. UMD is in the top half of the NCHC. The start has been very good, and the Bulldogs just need to keep stacking points as much as possible. On both nights of the weekend, as each game is worth the same.
4. Next up for UMD is a trip to Kalamazoo to play two against Western Michigan. The defending national champion Broncos have won four straight, all in league play, and they’re scoring goals at a high rate, as usual.
Western’s frenetic pace of play will test UMD all weekend. The Broncos make a heck of a living out of turning defense into offense, and one of the big tasks for any WMU adversary is not feeding that elite transition game with unnecessary mistakes.
These are the champs. They’ve got the banner to prove it. Does that add a bit of juice to the matchup when you go in there?
“I think there’d be a little more,” Kleber said. “Especially this is the first time that a lot of guys on this team have been to this building. So I think there’s a little bit of juice there. And yeah, they’re the national champions of last year. So we kind of want to see how we stack up against them and see how we can do.”
Kleber is one of 23 players on the trip for UMD who have never before seen the inside of Lawson Ice Arena. Only junior defensemen Riley Bodnarchuk and Brady Cleveland (while at Colorado College last year), senior blue-liners Joey Pierce and Aaron Pionk, and junior forward Braden Fischer have played against Western Michigan in that building.
“Sandy (Sandelin) was saying that everything’s two times the speed there,” Kleber said. “I’ve also heard from Brady Cleveland. CC went there last year and he was saying number four or five or something, whatever number that is, they get chirped super hard by the (Lawson) Lunatics. He was saying he’s number five this year, so it’s probably going to be him (it’s usually No. 4, but UMD has retired that number). So he’s saying to watch out for that. He was just saying, it feels like a tight rink, feels like they’re on top of you, great atmosphere. So nothing but good things. It sounds like the Ralph a little bit, where if you go to the penalty box, they’re going to be chirping you and be a little ruthless. So I’m excited. It sounds fun.”
Western Michigan coach Pat Ferschweiler doesn’t buy into there being any extra juice for teams playing the defending champions.
“I don’t believe that for one second,” he said this week. “I don’t buy into that at all. I assume that every team is trying as hard as they can in every game against us. Maybe it affects people on the other side, there’s a motivation or billboard up, but we don’t talk about that our locker room one bit.”
(Along those lines, Ferschweiler said they had been keeping last year’s national championship trophy — and their NCHC trophies — in the Broncos’ locker room until a group of older players asked that it be removed. “This team hasn’t won any of those,” he said his players told him. Ferschweiler said they “didn’t really have a place for them here at Western, but we do now.”)
5. The Broncos are playing without top defenseman Joona Väisänen. The sophomore suffered an injury Halloween night in St. Cloud, and Ferschweiler said this week that Väisänen won’t play again this season. Losing him was a big blow to the Broncos’ defense, and it coincided with a bit of a wobble in their play. Starting Halloween night, which ended with a 6-5 Western Michigan win, the Broncos conceded 19 goals over their first four NCHC games, losing the last three.
In the four wins since, Western has outscored Miami and Omaha by a 23-8 aggregate.
“It took us a hot second to adjust and our D corps adjust to different roles,” Ferschweiler said. “But overall, I really like our forward lines. We started to connect offensively and we started to score again, which is nice.”
Two-way standout Liam Valente leads with eight goals, while sophomore Ty Henricks and Michigan transfer William Whitelaw each have seven. Henricks, who is 6-foot-5, has really impressed Ferschweiler since the start of practices in September.
“Ty came in here. He’s a massive human being. He’s six-five (too bad he isn’t two inches taller, I guess), but he’s also thick. He’s got size 15 skates, this guy’s just a big rig. And at times last year, the pace of college hockey for the entire 60 minutes was almost too much for Ty, but you could see his skill. You can see his hockey sense. It’s elite. Credit to Ty, he stayed all summer long, really invested in his body. And you can see the change night and day of this year. He’s ready to play at pace. He’s ready to attack with his feet. So when that big six-five, 225-pound body’s coming at you and he’s got great hands, great hockey sense, an elite shot and he can move his feet, he creates real problems.”
6. This is a big weekend in the NCHC, even though three teams (Arizona State, Omaha, and Colorado College) are off.
Miami heads to Denver. The RedHawks have been one of the stories of this college hockey season, now 10-4 after a three-win campaign. Miami beat Sacred Heart and Union last weekend to win the Friendship Four in Belfast, but the RedHawks return to league play this weekend in ninth place with five points and a .278 points percentage. Denver is no gimme, and you have to think David Carle is looking for more out of his group after the Pioneers dropped a crazy 6-5 overtime decision to Minnesota in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game Saturday at Ball Arena, the home of the Colorado Avalanche.
A huge rivalry is renewed in St. Cloud, where the Huskies are home to face North Dakota this weekend. The Fighting Hawks swept Bemidji State non-conference last weekend, while the Huskies haven’t played since snapping a four-game slide by beating Miami 4-2 on Nov. 22. St. Cloud, which has left the state of Minnesota just once (for two games at Miami Nov. 21-22), will play UND and Denver at home to wrap up the first half of the regular season. The Huskies then play 10 of 16 in the second half of the season on the road, starting at the Acrisure Cup in Palm Springs, Calif., on New Year’s weekend. My point, and I do have one, is that SCSU best bank some points the next two weekends if it wishes to remain a real player in the home-ice race for the NCHC playoffs.
7. The season of stops and starts continued for the UMD women last weekend, as they were once again off. It’s the price paid for starting the season on Sept. 19, I guess.
Head coach Laura Schuler talked this week about how her and her team have gotten through bye weeks while trying to maintain the rhythm and routine that come from playing every weekend.
At the crux of it, Schuler said, have been scrimmages on the weekends.
“We don’t have off weekends,” she said. “And it’s important, right? We want to continue to make sure that our training loads are where they need to be so that when we do have that bye weekend and we go into another series, we’re ready to go. We stay on top of things, stay on top of our habits and how we want to play as a team. And this past weekend was really exciting hockey, during our intra-squad scrimmage. I think the benefit for us is we get to practice all types of specialty team situations that sometimes throughout the week you might not get to.
“I actually enjoy them. We have a really good culture. The girls love being together. They they want to play, and when we provide them with those game like situations, they come dialed and ready as if it is a game.”
“I think it helps in multiple aspects,” said forward Caitlin Kraemer, “helping us stay in game shape and also working on special teams, those three on three situations, four on four situations. It just really helps us like dissect the game and help us in areas that we need.”
Assistant coach Ashleigh Brykaliuk talked recently about how the weird schedule has helped them work more with the Bulldogs’ younger players.
“I think kind of blends well with the makeup of our team this year,” she said in a conversation before the Ohio State series Nov. 21-22. “Being so new, a lot of new faces, I think the stoppages have allowed us to catch up on different systems, different areas that we need to catch up a lot of the new guys on to get up to pace to the rest.”
8. It’s been a back-and-forth kind of season for Kraemer, who will be heading back north next week. She’s on the Team Canada roster for next weekend’s Rivalry Series games, scheduled for Dec. 10 and 13 at Rogers Place in Edmonton against Team USA.
While the sophomore standout is accustomed to big minutes at UMD, it’s a different story on the national team, where Kraemer was in the bottom six for the Rivalry Series games in Buffalo and Cleveland last month, and that’s where we expect her to be next week.
I’ve heard coaches talk about this with players who come into college from high school or junior hockey. They might be playing 20-30 minutes a night on those teams, then they show up in college and are in a third- or fourth-line role that might feature limited (if any) special teams ice time. It’s an adjustment.
But it’s one that Schuler herself has made as a player, and she feels Kraemer is well-suited for it right now.
“I think Kraemer, first of all, can play with any line on any team,” Schuler said, “because she is that talented and she also has the maturity to play wherever. She’s a great kid, a great person. Her speed is the one thing that continues to stand out for me, and her physical play. She’s big, she’s strong, and especially as you play for the national team and you’re playing international hockey, that strength and physicality is a real important part.”
Schuler relayed her own experiences as a player, going from top minutes at Northeastern to a bottom-six role with Hockey Canada.
“It can be hard going from being top two lines in NCAA, then when I went to the national team, I wasn’t. I was a third, fourth line player. That was challenging. I’ll say Kraemer is more mature than I was at the time.”
9. The UMD women wrap up their pre-Christmas schedule in Bemidji this weekend. The Bulldogs will be back together the day after Christmas, and on Dec. 28, they make the trip across the pond to Ireland and the Friendship Series Jan. 2-3, where UMD will be joined by Harvard, Boston University, and Quinnipiac.
Bemidji State is 4-10-2 overall, 2-9-1 and last in the WCHA with six points. But the Beavers continue to show improvement under second-year coach Amber Fryklund. Bemidji has wins this season over St. Thomas and St. Cloud State, along with a tie against Minnesota State, all three of whom have been ranked this season (SCSU and MSU are now).
“They play similar structures to us,” Kraemer said. “We want to make sure we’re having good offense. That’s something that I think we’ve been kind of lacking is that scoring touch. We’ve been working a lot on that this week.”
We know UMD’s struggles to get points from Wisconsin, Ohio State, and Minnesota (zero so far in two games against each). But the Bulldogs are 6-0 against other WCHA adversaries (Minnesota State, St. Cloud State, and St. Thomas so far), and they need to continue that this weekend.
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We’ll be on the air from Lawson Friday and Saturday at 5:30pm Central. Saturday’s game was bumped back an hour from its original 5pm Central start time because of Western’s football team playing in the MAC title game Saturday afternoon in Detroit. Evidently, it was desired that the door be kept open for fans/students to attend both games if the spirit moved them.
Anyway, back pregame with lines and my annual Red Rider joke (look it up, kids, it’s their only song anyone knows).
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