DENVER — From a results standpoint, the UMD men had their toughest weekend of the season against a very good Western Michigan team last weekend at Amsoil Arena.
But success in the regular season isn’t always measured by the pure result of the game. Saturday is a good example of that.
Sometimes you have to, well, you know …
9 THOUGHTS
1. Scott Sandelin was surly after Friday’s 4-3 loss, and even still before the rematch Saturday. He felt his group had let an opportunity slip away by not playing a strong, consistent game.
“We had a fairly stern discussion in the morning on Saturday,” he said this week. “To me, it shouldn’t take a lot of those if you have a team that understands. I do think we have a team that understands. Hopefully we won’t have more of those. But sometimes it’s a good reminder.
“Sometimes guys think they’re playing hard and you got to play harder. Sometimes the intensity, they think there’s intensity, but the intensity has to be higher. Those are all things that players can control. And hopefully our guys learn a little bit.”
I talked about it on the air during the game Friday. It felt like one of those games where the shot board said one thing (UMD led 26-9 in shots through two periods), and the eye test told you something completely different. The eye test said those shots were deceiving, that Western had the more dangerous scoring chances, including looks that found iron or missed the net completely, and the eye test said UMD didn’t make Western goalie Hampton Slukynsky work enough for the saves he was making.
Yeah, UMD made it interesting late, getting the deficit from three to one with two goals inside of 40 seconds of each other, and the Bulldogs still had 37 seconds and a couple looks to try to tie the game.
But the 60-minute sample size wasn’t nearly good enough, and Sandelin made sure his players knew it.
2. The score line was identical Saturday, only requiring overtime to get there. But Sandelin was much more pleased with his team’s performance.
“Played a really good game on Saturday,” he said. “It’s a fine line in this league. Our guys, we asked them to play a better game, we did. Tight checking game, back and forth. We had a chance in overtime, we didn’t score, they do. That’s the game. That’s the fine line. If we played more (Friday) like we did Saturday, as the game went on, I thought we got better and better and better.”
UMD had three separate leads, at 1-0, 2-1, and 3-2, but gave up an equalizer each time. The last of those might sting a bit more, as it came off a clean Western Michigan offensive zone faceoff win that was precipitated by an unnecessary icing.
(Sandelin used his timeout after a long shift led to an icing, Zam Plante won the faceoff, and the puck went down for another icing. A clear miscommunication, but one that came at a bad time.)
In overtime, UMD got a power play quickly as Max Plante was taken down. Two minutes of 4-on-3 with UMD’s personnel, I’d take my chances any day. However, the Broncos held UMD to just one shot, got a power play late in overtime (grr), and converted to win the game.
As Sandelin said, that’s the fine line in the NCHC.
3. Coaches talk constantly about the process. Every team has one. Loosely defined, the process is how a team wants to play the game. It’s the details that coaches want players to play with. It’s things that are important (like, for example, how to kill penalties) and things that might not resonate with casual fans (routes after a faceoff win or loss).
After a tough game Friday, was Saturday a good step for UMD in its process?
“I don’t know, time will tell,” Sandelin said. “If we can have a good weekend here playing good hockey, doesn’t guarantee you’re gonna win, but we’ve got to get back to playing better hockey for three periods. You’re gonna always have stretches.
“I think Western Michigan coming out the bye week was maybe a little rusty. I think we allowed them to get in it real quickly. They capitalized on some opportunities, but it wasn’t like they dominated us. We never dominated them.”
4. Sandelin isn’t the only coach preaching process. They all do it, and Denver coach David Carle is no exception. They just spell it differently at DU.
With ten freshmen, Denver has experienced plenty of highs and lows. They swept Western in Kalamazoo, then got swept at home by the Broncos earlier this month. They have losses to Lindenwood and Alaska-Anchorage, but a huge Saturday win at North Dakota two weeks ago.
Carle has been riding the roller coaster with this group, and he admitted this week that he wished the Pioneers were farther along than they are at the moment.
“The learning here has been a little slower in the last month than we would like,” Carle said. “It’s a part of it. Some of our best teams have gone through some challenging times during the year and found their way out of it. That’s what we’re working through right now. It doesn’t get any easier.
“I think we’re a better team today than we were in November and October. I do. But the results haven’t necessarily been there to prove that out yet. And we need to continue to, like I said, continue to get better, continue to get healthy and find our way through this.”
5. One thing Denver has figured out is how to generate offense from the back end. And for a program that’s been as good or better than anyone in the country at that over the last decade and change (think about names like Joey LaLeggia, Matt Benning, Will Butcher, and that Zeev Buium guy, among others), Eric Pohlkamp has done it better this year than any of them.
With eight games to go in the regular season, Pohlkamp is up to 16 goals, setting the NCHC record for goals in a season by a defenseman. He leads the nation with 125 shots on goal.
“It’s so hard to generate offense and even harder on the back end,” Carle said. “But when you look at his shot, how dynamic it is and really how we’ve had to adjust stylistically and as coaches to try and use that weapon as much as we can.”
His partner, junior Boston Buckberger, has eight goals and has already thrown 95 shots on goal.
“We’re trying to make sure that we’re getting those two in as many situations and areas to have success as we can,” Carle added, “given the results that they’ve been able to put up.”
(To put these shot totals from defensemen in perspective, Max Plante leads UMD with 92 shots on goal this season.)
“I think it’s not a secret everyone knows that those guys are doing,” UMD junior Aaron Pionk said. “I know it’s gonna be our goal and our mission is to shut them down.”
“You can’t over pursue, you gotta still be aggressive on them,” Sandelin said of defending Pohlkamp and Buckberger. “You have to respect that. You have to respect who’s on the ice. You can’t just go running around, they’re gonna make you look stupid. You can take time and space away and smartly. You can get in shot lanes and block shots, but you have to be aware of all of their D corps because they really look to find that second wave a lot.”
6. Of course, UMD has its own matchup nightmare with the Plantes and Jayson Shaugabay. And Sandelin made it clear last weekend that he isn’t afraid to play them. A lot.
Zam Plante played 29:56 Friday, 25:52 on Saturday. Max played 26:01 on Friday, 24:05 Saturday. Shaugabay totaled 22:15 of ice time Friday, 22:55 Saturday. Without looking through every box score, I’m going to guess all three hit season highs last weekend.
“The three of them just work so well off of each other,” Carle said. “You really can see the chemistry and how they have real comfortability and confidence in knowing where each other are on the ice.”
But they aren’t your typical top line, where players might see 20 minutes of ice time in a tight, down-to-the-wire game. Zam and Max both average over 20 minutes a game, and Shaugabay is at 19:18. For perspective, only Arizona State (Bennett Schimek and Cullen Potter) and Miami (Kocha Delic) in the NCHC have forwards over 20 minutes a night, and Potter is out for the season with an injury.
It does create a bit of a unique challenge, because as Carle pointed out, there isn’t one line or one defensive pairing that will be glued to UMD’s top line because of how much they play.
“I think the biggest thing is managing the puck,” Carle said, “having an awareness of when you’re on the ice against them. They play so much that everybody’s got to play against them. We’re not going to play one line 24 minutes.”
7. With league-leading North Dakota taking the weekend off, everyone else is playing this weekend and aiming to gain ground on the Fighting Hawks.
Western Michigan takes a nine-game winning streak into a two-game home series with Omaha. The Mavericks split with Colorado College last weekend, but senior goalie Simon Latkoczy appears to be rounding into form after missing significant time with an injury.
Elsewhere, Miami is back from a bye and at St. Cloud State. The Huskies came out here last weekend and took the Friday game from Denver before losing freshman goalie Yan Shostak and dropping the Saturday game 6-0.
(Per Mick Hatten, Shostak didn’t practice Tuesday and we don’t know his status for this weekend.)
The other NCHC series this weekend sees Arizona State head to Colorado College. The Sun Devils are reeling from the loss of Potter, which came after they lost fellow center Jack Beck for the season. Colorado College has Kaidan Mbereko playing at a high level, but the Tigers’ offensive struggles have them near the bottom of the league.
8. UMD women’s coach Laura Schuler also talked about process this week.
Last Friday, the Bulldogs played to a 0-0 draw in Mankato, before a Caitlin Kraemer shootout goal gave UMD the extra point in the WCHA standings. On Saturday, Eve Gascon shut out Minnesota State for a second straight day, and the offense got going to give her some run support.
At her media conference Wednesday, Schuler talked about liking what she was seeing from her team before they got the puck into the net.
“The process showed up before the goals started to go in, and that matters,” she said. “That’s really important. I think what’s sometimes challenging is even in game one against Mankato, I thought we had a fantastic first period and all the little pieces were there, but we weren’t getting rewarded. Sometimes those situations can really challenge your belief in terms of what you’re doing. I’m so proud of our kids because they stuck with it.”
Schuler referenced Friday’s process as leading to Saturday’s result.
“Those goals don’t happen unless we’re playing the way that we want to play,” she said. “So I was really, really proud of our girls and it was nice to be able to finally put the puck in the net.”
9. UMD heads to Ohio State this weekend, beginning a stretch where they will be missing senior forward Thea Johansson and junior defender Ida Karlsson, both of whom have joined Team Sweden for the Olympics.
But as much as Schuler has to adjust to those losses, her counterpart this weekend will feel no sympathy (not that Schuler is one to ask for such a thing).
Nadine Muzzerall’s Buckeyes will be missing five players. Joy Dunne is with Team USA, Mira Jungåker, Jenna Raunio, and Hilda Svensson are all with Sweden, and Sanni Vanhanen is with Team Finland.
“They’re still an incredibly gifted hockey team,” Schuler said of the Buckeyes. “Their forecheck is tenacious. They come at you hard. They pinch down the walls on you and so we’ll still attack the same way that we always have attacked against them.”
Those games are 5pm Saturday and 2pm Sunday in Columbus.
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A bit later starts for our Central Time peeps than normal this weekend, as we’ll hit the air at 7:30pm Friday, 6:30pm Saturday from Magness Arena.
Back pregame with the lines and a few other notes. Enjoy the games!
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