As you read this (thanks for that, by the way), the 2026 Winter Olympics are underway, with women’s hockey among the events that get going before the opening ceremony Friday night, Italy time.
Plenty of UMD flavor in the hockey tournaments, especially on the women’s side of things.
Oh, and UMD hosts its final scheduled weekend of hockey doubleheaders at Amsoil Arena this weekend.
9 THOUGHTS
1. UMD is well-represented in this year’s women’s hockey Olympic tournament. The Bulldogs have four players on Sweden, including current UMD forward Thea Johansson and defender Ida Karlsson. Former UMD goalies Emma Soderberg and Tindra Holm are also on Team Sweden. Future UMD Athletic Hall of Fame inductee Jocelyne Larocque is back on the Canadian blue line for one more shot at a gold medal. Former Bulldogs Katrina Mrazova (Czechia) and Lara Stalder (Switzerland) are back in the Olympics, and former UMD co-captain Nina Jobst-Smith (Germany) made her Olympic debut Thursday morning, scoring the only goal for Germany as Sweden won 4-1.
If that’s not enough, the UMD women’s program has ties on a few coaching staffs. Hall of Famer Caroline Ouelette is an assistant coach with Team Canada, Saara Kivenmäki (formerly Tuominen) is on Finland’s coaching staff, Satu Kiipeli is team leader for Finland, and Jennifer Harss is the strength coach for Germany.
On the men’s side, sophomore goalie Adam Gajan is on Team Slovakia as one of its three goaltenders. He left the Bulldogs after Saturday’s game to join his Olympic teammates. The men’s tournament starts in Milan on Wednesday.
2. While that is going on, both the men and women have six games left in their respective regular seasons. And as crunch time hits, neither is having the second half they wanted.
The problems — besides the won-loss part of things — are not shared. The women are struggling to put the puck into the net with the necessary consistency to support normally-strong defensive play and goaltending. The men are giving up too many goals, often at very bad times.
The similarities come on the results side. The UMD women are 1-6-3 since the second half started, going 0-4-1 against teams currently ahead of them in the NPI (swept by Ohio State, loss and tie to Wisconsin, loss to Quinnipiac). The UMD men are 1-5 in NCHC play, 3-5 overall in the second half, and the Bulldogs have lost four straight games after not losing back-to-back games at any other point this season.
These are still good hockey teams, but they both need to find a way out of this. Quickly.
3. While there has to be urgency, there can’t be panic.
Coaches will tell you. Urgency = good. Panic = very bad.
“There’s definitely a fine line between kind of going too hard and kind of being rambunctious with it,” UMD sophomore defenseman Ty Hanson said. “You got to be able to compete. You got to be able to work. And I think that’s something our group does really well. We work really hard, but sometimes we’re not working the smartest. And I think that’s where it can kind of get away from us sometimes.”
“I feel like once you stress out and panic and you aren’t making tape to tape passes, there’s that difficulty of getting shots on net and getting those goals that we need,” said UMD women’s senior defender Tova Henderson.
Scott Sandelin isn’t ready to panic about his men’s team.
“I’d be more disappointed if I don’t think our effort was there,” he said. “These kids all year have had effort. Now, again, is it perfect? Is it great all the time? No, but nobody is. They’re working. They’re trying.”
4. The UMD men have lost four straight, every one of them by one goal, three of them 4-3, two of them in overtime.
But it’s important for the Bulldogs to recognize that they’re in all these games, and they’ve given themselves a chance to win them. The wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented.
“So we’ve been in a lot of the games, right?,” Sandelin said this week. “We need to find ways to win. And it’s a fine line because every mistake seems to be a big mistake.
“Early in the year, we made the same mistakes. Maybe those pucks weren’t going in. Now, goaltending can be better. Adam (Gajan) had a great game for us on Saturday, which is a great sign. Unfortunately, he’s gone. But it was a good game for him. Probably one of his better games. Gave us a chance, especially in the first period when we weren’t as good as we needed to be.”
Sandelin is hopeful his team can continue to learn from its experiences.
“Hopefully we can turn that table a little bit moving forward and be in a position to win more of those games than we’re losing right now.”
5. Addressing the large elephant in the room that was Saturday. UMD got Denver to overtime in a 0-0 game that probably deserved to be 0-0. Both goalies, Gajan and DU’s Johnny Hicks, were good, but the grade-A scoring chances were pretty minimal for both teams.
“Defensively, we were better,” Hanson said. “And we’ve given up a lot of goals this second half and only give up, basically, we gave up no goals five on five. That’s big for us going forward, especially going to North Dakota this weekend.”
Of course, what happened in overtime got some fans’ attention. Denver got away with a clear case of interference at the top of the UMD zone, as Kieran Cebrian picked off UMD’s Zam Plante after Cebrian had given the puck off to Eric Pohlkamp. Plante’s guy, Rieger Lorenz, made a beeline for the front of the net and was wide open for the winning goal.
Everyone knew it was a penalty. It wasn’t called. Oh, and Denver was likely offsides on the zone entry, which Sandelin admitted was an error on the part of the staff not to challenge it.
(It’s dumb that these things aren’t automatically reviewed at this level. Teams shouldn’t be left to challenge potential game-ending goals, as it opens the door for every overtime goal to be met with a challenge of some description, since there’s no valid penalty at that point for a failed challenge. But the rule is the rule, and we all know that going in.)
“It’s the way years go,” he said. “You’ve got to deal with stuff. You’ve got to deal with stuff within the game. You can’t dwell on it. You can’t let it ruin your game. And that’s something I think this group is still learning. There’s going to be segments of games, periods, five-minute segments, bad goals, bad calls, mistakes. You’ve got to quickly move on from it.”
6. The Bulldogs match up with first-place North Dakota this weekend. Surely, Sandelin will be drilling into his guys the importance of a good start on Friday. It’s the second time in three weeks that UMD will face a team that was off the previous weekend. Against Western Michigan, Sandelin made it clear he wasn’t happy with his team’s Friday start, one that he thought allowed the Broncos to “get to their game” rather quickly.
The Fighting Hawks took four of six points from UMD to open league play Halloween weekend in Grand Forks, a good series that saw UND pull away from UMD in the third period of the Saturday game after the teams took turns throwing haymakers at each other in the Friday game, a game UMD won in overtime on a goal by Hanson.
“They’re well-coached, and we know they beat some good teams,” Hanson said. “They’ve been on a hot streak recently, so we’re just hoping to end that.”
First-year coach Dane Jackson has the Fighting Hawks in position for a league title and a high seed in the NCAA Tournament, which will likely mean a regional in somewhat-nearby Sioux Falls.
“I just think we got a real good group of guys that are playing hard and playing selflessly,” Jackson said. “So I’d say that would be the biggest thing for us is we put a lot of effort into trying to find guys that have a kind of a blue collar mentality and a selfless team first mentality. I’d say that’s been the best thing about our group this year and that’s what’s made it so much fun to coach these guys.”
“They’ve grown,” Sandelin said of North Dakota. “They’ve found a goaltender. Play aggressive hockey. Playing with a lot of confidence.”
That goalie is freshman Jan Spunar, who has gotten the bulk of the work in goal for the Fighting Hawks lately.
“He wasn’t our best practice player, so he didn’t still have ton of confidence in us early,” Jackson said. “When we put him in the game, he’s poised. He plays the puck really well as well. That helps us on our breakouts quite a bit. Jan’s been really strong, he hasn’t had many bad starts. He’s just been consistently strong. And then he’s made a few really, really big time saves along the way as well. I can’t say enough about how he’s come in and just been such a stabilizing force back there for a freshman.”
7. It’ll be Ethan Dahlmeir’s net for the next couple series for UMD. Gajan is in Italy, and Dahlmeir will get the start Friday night, backed up by freshman Cole Sheffield.
Sandelin said he was tempted to go to Dahlmeir Saturday in Denver, but decided to give Gajan that start before he left. That went well, and now UMD has to turn the page for the time being. Dahlmeir started two games in January, helping the Bulldogs to Saturday wins over Lindenwood and St. Cloud State on back to back weekends.
“It’s a new chapter,” Sandelin said. “So build off what you did. And you know what? If he plays like he can and keeps winning games for us, we’re going to have a good goalie dilemma when he (Gajan) gets back. A really good problem. So I told him I’m excited for him.”
For his part, Dahlmeir said last month that the starts he did get helped his confidence after he played in just one game and faced only ten shots in the first half (he played much of the third period of that loss at North Dakota on Nov. 1).
8. The NCHC will have four league series every weekend until the regular season ends, and while UND appears to have a good hold on first place (yes, the lead is three points on DU, but UND has two games in hand), the race to avoid the bottom of the league is heating up.
Miami is fifth with 22 points, then it’s St. Cloud State at 20, Colorado College and Arizona State both at 19, and Omaha is last with 18 points. Remember, ninth place doesn’t qualify for the league playoffs.
Two of those bottom five teams will meet when St. Cloud State travels to the desert to match up with Arizona State. The Huskies were showing some signs of life, but got swept at home by resurgent Miami last weekend.
Colorado College finishes the Gold Pan series with Denver, starting Friday in Colorado Springs. The Pioneers will keep the traveling trophy if they get a point in the series, as they won in overtime and then in regulation against CC in the first half.
The other league series sees Miami host Western Michigan. The Broncos’ ten game winning streak was snapped by Omaha on Saturday, and we’re about to find out how “for real” this Miami team is.
(SPOILER: Miami might not beat Western, but they’re 13 wins ahead of last season. They’re plenty real.)
9. The UMD women get Bemidji State this weekend. The Bulldogs will play their final four home games of the regular season over the next two weeks, with St. Thomas visiting next weekend. UMD has slipped to tenth in the NPI and absolutely can’t afford to lose any of these games. Frankly, the Bulldogs probably need four regulation wins before finishing the regular season in two weeks time at Minnesota.
“Sometimes, these games test your belief,” UMD coach Laura Schuler said this week. “You’ve got to buy into the process and believe in what you’re doing. Bottom line is our team has to do better at putting the puck in the net. That’s been definitely a struggle for us.”
Schuler pointed out that their proprietary data showed the Bulldogs outchanced Ohio State last weekend, but were outscored 9-3 in the two-game series, including 4-0 in the first period of Friday’s 6-2 defeat.
“We’ve got to continue to focus on finishing at the net, playing tough around the net, and keeping our foot on the gas pedal.”
If UMD gets six points this weekend and St. Thomas doesn’t get at least three from Minnesota (also, Minnesota State can’t more than four points from St. Cloud State), it will clinch home ice for UMD in the first round of the WCHA playoffs Feb. 27-Mar. 1.
The Beavers are last in the WCHA, but Saturday’s win over Minnesota State snapped a seven-game losing streak.
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And we’ve got all four games at Amsoil Arena on the radio this weekend. Coverage starts Friday at 2:45 for the women, 6:30 for the men, one hour earlier for both on Saturday.
As usual with doubleheader weekends, we’ll have nothing more than the quick-hit lines posted for the men’s games both nights on the blog. Follow on BlueSky for all the in-game updates, as usual.
Enjoy!
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