TEWKSBURY, Mass. — After a long travel day (one made longer when you cross a time zone and lose an hour), we’re settled in out east.
For this edition of UMD, it’s a completely unfamiliar foe, one the Bulldogs are playing on a return trip that is four years overdue.
Here’s what happened.
UMass-Lowell was in Duluth for the opening weekend in 2019-20 (the teams split, by the way). UMD was slated to make a return trip early in the 2020-21 season, but a certain pandemic you might have heard about got in the way. With the teams’ other scheduling commitments, that return trip was eventually put off until this weekend.
So here we are. No one on the UMD roster was around to face the RiverHawks back then. Hell, UML has seven fifth-year seniors, and not a one of them has ever faced UMD as a member of this team.
9 THOUGHTS
1. UMD will be without a member of this standout freshman class for a while. Forward Max Plante suffered an upper-body injury in the third period of Saturday’s 4-3 overtime loss to Bemidji State. Plante is on the trip, but head coach Scott Sandelin said at his Wednesday media conference that the Red Wings draft pick will be out four to six weeks.
It’s a loss, no doubt, and we’ll see how UMD fills that void in the lineup starting on Friday. The Bulldogs sat veteran forwards Joe Molenaar and Carter Loney for Sunday’s exhibition game, so we really don’t know yet what the lineup will look like without Plante in it.
For reference, UMD put Callum Arnott on the right side of Zam Plante and Jayson Shaugabay on Sunday, keeping that an all-freshman line.
2. While Saturday was not a perfect game, you sure could see the promise that this freshman class offers. And UMD’s coaches weren’t afraid to put the young guys in some key spots. Freshmen dotted UMD’s power play units, and the eight who played Saturday got no shortage of ice time.
“I think there were some really positive things with a group that can create offense,” associate coach Adam Krause said this week. “On the flip side of things, some areas that we knew we were going to have to clean up in terms of decision-making and game situations and things like that.”
Shaugabay (two) and Zam Plante (one) had UMD’s goals, with Zam’s first career goal forcing overtime with 1:42 left in regulation. Younger brother Max had already left the game, but was standing on the bench to see his brother’s goal. That felt fitting when you consider how close they are.
“I think they’re just all getting better,” Sandelin said. “I think each week they’re getting better. And it was important for those guys to get in the game situations.”
3. Freshman goalie Adam Gajan had to wait one more day to make his college debut. The NCAA ruled that Gajan had to sit out the Bemidji game as a result of playing in a portion of a professional game in Europe during COVID.
“It’s very different in Europe,” Gajan said. “There are some good hockey players who are playing pro when they are 15, so it’s hard not to play pro when you are just in Slovakia. But I knew that my goal was to go to college hockey, so I wasn’t playing pro.”
Gajan went on to explain that during COVID, there was what he termed an extra game, an “exhibition game,” set up where a junior team played in professional jerseys, and it was deemed by the NCAA to be a professional game. He played half the game, he said.
Even in a column like this that can often feel never-ending to the reader, there isn’t enough space for me to go in-depth about how dumb these rulings are. And they’re all over the map. Some guys sit equivalent to the number of games they played, some sit more than that, some don’t sit any games.
4. Luckily, it’s about to go away. There are parts of the overhaul of college athletics that likely bug you.
The old way wasn’t perfect. The new way won’t be, either. Utopia is a difficult and usually-moving target, after all.
More changes are coming, however, and they will lead — in part — to Gajan’s situation not repeating, certainly not as often as it does now.
The NCAA Division I council introduced legislation on Tuesday to change the longstanding “CHL rule,” which deemed players from the WHL, OHL, and QMJHL ineligible for NCAA hockey.
The proposal enables prospects who participate in major junior ice hockey or on professional teams to retain NCAA eligibility as long as they are not paid more than actual and necessary expenses as part of that participation.
If enacted, the rule would go into effect on Aug. 1 of next year, meaning that CHL players would be eligible to play college hockey in the 2025-26 season.
Sandelin wasn’t ready to laud the move yet, though he has spoken in favor of expanding the player pool in the past when this topic has come up. He said there are still unanswered questions on how this will work.
“I’ve always been for guys that players had lost eligibility because they were tainted as a young player,” he said. “They get brought up and play a game or whatever. Used to see that when I started recruiting all the time, it was frustrating, right?
“Could be a good thing. I don’t think it’s ever gonna be a bad thing.”
“I think we’ve had a lot of conversations,” UMass-Lowell coach Norm Bazin said, “but until something has gone through, has materialized, I don’t think there’s any sense doing too much ahead of time. It’s just one of those things that we’ll adapt to and evolve with.”
Sandelin then expanded on the issue with European players.
“Nice to see them also though looking at the, you know, what is and isn’t a pro in Europe as well. Yeah, they all should be included. It shouldn’t just be CHL. It shouldn’t just be major junior. There’s a lot of guys. We just went through with Adam, right? Played half a period of an exhibition game in COVID and had to sit. And it’s been all over the map with that stuff. That’s probably the frustrating thing. There’s guys that are played, we know they’ve played.
“They’re eligible immediately, some are sitting. Just clean it up, right? But it definitely should apply to European players as well. Because that’s always a hard thing for them over there, too, because they’re getting pulled in that direction a lot. So just like some of the kids in the CHL.”
Common sense has never been a strong suit for the NCAA, I guess.
5. UMD faces another older, physical adversary this weekend. UMass-Lowell has been known as an older team that plays a heavy style. We’ve seen that in each of the previous weekends these teams have met with Sandelin and Bazin in charge of the programs.
Lowell struggled mightily last season, battling “injuries and multiple surgeries,” as Bazin put it, and winning just eight games. Bazin has seven fifth-year seniors on his roster, and they expect to get back closer to the top of Hockey East as they’re accustomed.
“It was disappointing, but we own it,” Bazin said of last season. “The guys are anxious to Make amends and make sure everybody knows that we’re not dead in the water.”
Lowell is opening its season on Friday, having a 6-5 come-from-behind exhibition win at Bentley Sunday to show for last weekend.
“We had a lull,” Bazin said of Sunday’s game. “We didn’t put three periods together, certainly, that we needed to. But at the same time, we clawed back and showed some resiliency.”
“I think Norm’s team kind of went through what we went through last year,” Sandelin said of the RiverHawks. “It wasn’t a normal year for a Norm Bazin-coached team. They picked up some guys and they are older. I watched some of the Bentley game, it was very physical. So I’m going to expect this to be a very physical (series). We’ve got some big bodies and hopefully we can use our speed and transition to counter that.”
6. Aiden Dubinsky is the youngest returning player on UMD’s roster. He’s also in the leadership group.
“It’s an honor to be recognized as a captain for my teammates,” Dubinsky said recently. “I take that role very seriously, but I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from a lot of older guys that have taught me how to play here and what it means to be a Bulldog.”
Sandelin said it’s been an impressive maturation by the 20-year-old, both on and off the ice.
“Second half of last year,” Sandelin said, “he became a more vocal guy, trying to get this team on track. I think he had a great summer. He’s the guy when we’re doing skating drills, he’s the first. Maybe two years ago, he’s been in the middle, right? He wants to be that guy. I think with the voting, it was a great choice, just based on some of the things we’ve seen in the past year. You start seeing some leadership qualities in certain guys and so do the players. I think he’s going to have a really good year for us and I think it’s going to be a carryover from his second half last year.”
7. By Saturday night, the entire NCHC will have at least one game under its belt. North Dakota will be the last of the so-called Fine Nine to play, as the Hawks take on Providence in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game Saturday in Grand Forks. We’ll see how UND looks after it got pasted 4-1 by Augustana in an exhibition game last weekend. My guess is everything will be fine, and everyone who posted their “AARGH FIRE BERRY” crap will have forgotten all about it by the end of the game.
Elsewhere, St. Cloud State plays a home and home with Bemidji State that starts Friday at The Herb before they head to the lakeshore on Saturday. Arizona State plays the rare late Friday afternoon (local time) game (they get Michigan) because the Sun Devils football team has a Friday night home game not far from Mullett Arena (against Utah, so it’s a significant game at that).
Western Michigan goes home and home with Ferris State, starting in Kalamazoo. Miami hosts Alaska-Anchorage. Colorado College is home to face Northern Michigan. Finally, Omaha is partaking in the Ice Breaker at Orleans Arena in Vegas, facing UMass Friday and either Air Force or host Minnesota Saturday.
8. The UMD women have jumped into the fire twice already, and now here comes another doozy of a road weekend. The Bulldogs took down Ohio State Sept. 21-22, then split at Colgate last weekend. This week, it’s off to Madison for a Saturday-Sunday series against the Badgers.
Head coach Laura Schuler doesn’t mind her team getting these strong tests right out of the gate.
“We were tested last weekend a lot,” she said. “I think playing a top team like Colgate helps us to be able to identify areas that we need to continue to be better at, as well as continue to hone in on the things that we did do a good job with. So I’m excited about that.”
Schuler noted that the two Saturday-Sunday series UMD will have played in after this weekend (and don’t forget that postponed Syracuse series would have been played on a Saturday and Sunday) mean her players have only gotten one true day off in the last few weeks, between travel, practices, games, and of course school.
“That’s really tough on them,” Schuler said. “The last three weeks have definitely been hard. But they’re doing such a good job of making sure that they’re taking care of their health and their bodies.”
(Matt Wellens of the Duluth News Tribune led Schuler down the rabbit hole about Saturday-Sunday series, but I think the point here is legitimate, even though it’s not one I’ve thought much about. And we’ve seen a lot of schools go towards having games on Fridays and Saturdays a lot more often than not, which is probably a good thing in the big picture.)
9. The Badgers sport some of the best players in the country, perhaps none better than junior defender Caroline “KK” Harvey.
I asked Schuler, assistant coach Ashleigh Brykaliuk, and co-captain Nina Jobst-Smith about the challenges that come from defending a player like Harvey who has the puck as much as she does. Sometimes, the goal is to deny a player the puck as much as possible. But in Harvey’s case, she’s so involved in Wisconsin’s 200-foot game that you know she’s going to have it.
“As a defender, obviously there’s not as much we can do to control what she’s doing with the puck,” Jobst-Smith said, “but we just have to worry about our work in the D-zone and take up forwards, pick up sticks where we can and then trust in our forwards that they’re going to get their job done.”
“She’s a phenomenal player,” Brykaliuk said. “She’s huge too. Very successful since she’s been there. It’s being aware when she’s out there. Where she is and how she moves the puck and just getting ahead of it, how to take away her time and space.”
“Our angling and steering is going to be really, really important,” Schuler said. “I feel like from our last series, one of the things that we did is we started to cheat offensively and our offense has to come from defense first. That sort of a mentality and that’ll be critical for us this weekend.”
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We’ll hit the air at 5:30 on Friday, 4:30 on Saturday, then it’s a long day Sunday to head home and start a stretch of six straight home games over four weekends (Minnesota, Stonehill, bye, North Dakota). Big ones in there, too.
Join us this weekend on KDAL! Back pregame Friday with lines and maybe another couple nuggets on this weekend.
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