Something about the smell of the ice in an empty building a couple hours and change before puck drop. It’s nice to be back. This offseason felt especially long.
UMD got off to a good start last weekend in Alaska, but now comes the challenge of defending home ice. One of the points of emphasis for this group is to be a better team at home. UMD went 7-9-3 here last season, its first losing season on home ice since going 5-10-3 in 2013-14, the first season of the NCHC.
“You want to be a good team, you got to learn to win on the road,” head coach Scott Sandelin said. “We had a good start to that last weekend. You still got to make this a hard place to play. I don’t think last year or the year before was a really hard place to play.”
(For context, UMD was 8-6-3 at home in 2023-24, so the Bulldogs are a .500 team here over the last two seasons at 15-15-6.)
Augustana, a third-year program that’s already made plenty of noise, is here. The school hired then-Minnesota assistant Garrett Raboin in April of 2022, giving him a full year to begin the process of building a roster. Raboin hit the portal hard, but he did so with the importance of a balance in mind.
You’d expect a third-year college hockey program to have a lot of juniors. But the Vikings only have ten. The current 27-player roster includes four seniors, ten juniors, eight sophomores, and five freshmen.
“That’s a big part of it,” Raboin said this week when asked about trying to create that balance among classes. “You put on your GM hat, you’re managing a budget and trying to turn some guys over and offer new opportunity. With freshmen comes the excitement, and we felt like we could upgrade our talent as some understanding and visibility of our program continues to grow. Now you look at this year’s class, we have seven new players, two through the portal, five freshmen. Now in year three, we feel like there’s some continuity.”
For UMD, sophomore forward Harper Bentz, who made his season debut Saturday and scored in the first period, will be out for at least a month with an injury suffered during the third period. Freshman forward Luke Bibby becomes the third different left wing on Kyler Kovich’s line when he makes his college debut in this series opener. The Bulldogs didn’t make any other lineup changes from last weekend.
Adam Gajan vs Josh Kotai.
Lines?
Lines.
UMD forwards
Plante (Max) – Plante (Zam) – Shaugabay
Truman – Gaffney – Arnott
Zaremba – Shlaine – Anderson
Bibby – Kovich – Bechen
UMD defense
Hanson – Kleber
Pionk – Siepmann
Cleveland – Pierce
Bodnarchuk
UMD goalies
Gajan – Dahlmeir – Sheffield
Augustana forwards
Friesen – Burtch – Bischoff
Meerman – Langus – Hennen (Tyler)
DelGreco – Jastrzebski – Rudrud
Drotts – Howard – Troumbly
Gau
Augustana defense
Svenddal – Hennen (Hayden)
Baumgartner – Young
Meritahti – Chakrabarti
Augustana goalies
Kotai – Manz – Hay
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