Does more need to be said? It’s the postseason.
Let’s go.
9 THOUGHTS
1. We aren’t blind, we understand math is on UMD’s side. We’re going to discuss the whole .0001 thing a bit here, sorry if you aren’t into national championship nostalgia.
But the reason .0001 happened was because a young-ish UMD team limped through conference championship weekend and needed help to make the NCAA Tournament.
That help arrived at the last minute, thanks to an overtime goal by Cam Morrison to clinch the Big Ten playoff title for Notre Dame. UMD made the national tournament by .0001 in the RPI over Minnesota.
The rest, of course, is history. But one of the lasting memories for me is the look on the faces of UMD coach Scott Sandelin and captain Karson Kuhlman when they spoke with the local media after the selection show aired. Obviously, the Bulldogs knew they were in the tournament the night before, the only question was where would the committee send them, and they had just found out that the answer was Sioux Falls.
Sandelin and Kuhlman looked like UMD had missed the national tournament, and they were stuck with six months (or more) of regret over the lost opportunity. They were grateful for a second chance (and clearly, they took full advantage of that second chance), but they were, frankly, pissed off about the sequence of events that left them watching for their fate to unfold on the Big Ten Network.
No one wants to get in the national tournament that way, basically backing in. Everyone wants to get in there playing their best hockey.
So, yeah, we know that UMD is probably (okay, more than probably) playing on beyond this weekend, but Sandelin and his staff are going to do what they can to make sure the Bulldogs are ready for battle this weekend, and are ready to try to take another step in their development.
2. What did Sandelin think of the 34-game body of work his team just put in?
“We’re in a good position,” he said. “Number one, I’m happy that we got home ice. That means we finished in the top half of our league, a very difficult league. I think we’ve had some really good moments. I think we’ve played some pretty good hockey in the last month. The results might not show it. But moving forward, it doesn’t matter. We’ve got to focus on Friday, and we’ve got to play like our lives are on the line.”
A 20-win season, even while finishing the NCHC season slightly under .500, is nothing to sneeze at. The Bulldogs have improved by leaps and bounds over the last three years, all 20-loss campaigns. They’ve done it mostly on the backs of one of the strongest sophomore classes the program has ever seen (more on that to come).
“We’ve hit some of the goals we had this year,” said sophomore forward Max Plante, a finalist for NCHC Player of the Year. “Second half, not as good. But obviously our conference is hard. I think we’re getting better. We know we can play a full 60 with any team in the country. So as playoffs come, I think we’re ready to go. And I think we have a belief inside the locker room, too, that we can go a long way. I think that’s the biggest thing. And we just got to play our best hockey now.”
3. Plante leads the way for UMD when it comes to NCHC award finalists. In addition to Player of the Year, Plante is up for NCHC Forward of the Year. Sophomore Ty Hanson is a finalist for Offensive Defenseman of the Year, while his primary partner Adam Kleber is up for Defensive Defenseman of the Year. That will do nothing to push aside the Perunovich/Wolff comps that we have all floated out there.
But in talking to Plante this week, all I saw was a guy focused on the task at hand, for himself and the Bulldogs’ special top line.
“I think we’re not getting the bounces we had earlier,” he said about the line’s more inconsistent production through the second half of the season. “I think if we just keep hitting the pedal down, it’s going to go in. Sometimes hockey’s just like that.
“I feel like I’ve been playing good. I think it’s just such a close fine line, and hopefully we can get the bounces in the playoffs.”
UMD senior defenseman Riley Bodnarchuk up for the NCHC’s Outstanding Senior Student Athlete award, and he’s UMD’s representative on the league’s new Academic All-Conference Team, which features the best student on each team in the conference.
Speaking of awards, he won’t talk about it, but tip of the cap to our friend Matt Wellens of the Duluth News Tribune, who is up for the NCHC’s Media Excellence Award. Matt covers both UMD hockey teams and does a damn good job. The league is announcing the winner next Friday, with St. Cloud State radio/TV guy Jim Erickson (also the TV voice of the state tournament) and Western Michigan broadcaster Robin Hook being the other finalists. Can’t go wrong with that trio!
4. UMD freshman forward Hunter Anderson, who missed last weekend’s series with an illness, has been practicing this week, and Sandelin deemed him good to go for the playoff series against St. Cloud State this weekend.
(To be fair, Anderson also deemed Anderson good to go.)
The California native has emerged as a key part of UMD’s offensive depth and second power play unit. His absence was felt last weekend, especially on PP2, which wasn’t as effective as it had been previous weekends.
“I felt like we were just keeping it simple,” Anderson said of the success we’ve seen from that power play group (he’s with Kyle Gaffney, Scout Truman, Grayden Siepmann, and Aaron Pionk). “We were shooting the puck and good things happen when you shoot and when you go to the net. I feel like we know it works, so we’re kind of sticking to that.”
Sandelin has been pleased with Anderson’s line, which features center Daniel Shlaine and wing Luke Bibby, all freshmen.
“I think all three of them are learning,” Sandelin said of that line. “I think Bibby’s gotten better. I mean, certainly he’s gotten better with the puck, but he has always brought speed and physicality, so that’s good. Danny’s had some ups and downs, but seems more comfortable in the middle and very defensively responsible, almost probably to a fault. I think he’s a better player offensively than his numbers have shown.
“It takes time. You’re freshmen, it’s a hard league. And I think whether you want to admit it or not, they all probably want to come in here and have instant success right away. Maybe that was a problem early in the year where it did happen. And then it became harder. You got to learn through the process. you got to learn through some adversity and hopefully those guys are continuing to learn, because we’ve seen better play out of them.”
Is this going to become more of the rule than an exception when it comes to freshmen adjusting to the NCHC?
“I think I’ve started to see it the last couple of years,” St. Cloud State coach Brett Larson said. “It’s hard for a freshman to dominate this league right away. They can do it non-conference, but when they get into the league, it’s a whole other level. I’m seeing that year after year. You know they’re good players. You know they’re going to have to go through some tough times, but it makes them better.”
5. You can’t talk about UMD and St. Cloud State in the playoffs without chronicling their rich and mostly recent history.
The teams have two triple-overtime playoff games this century, one in St. Cloud (2007) and one in Duluth (2011) that were both won by the home team to end the visitor’s season.
But if you go back to 2019 and start moving forward, there are some great games between the Huskies and Bulldogs.
In 2019, Nick Swaney scored in double overtime as UMD beat SCSU 3-2 to win the NCHC title in St. Paul. Still goes down as one of the best games I’ve seen in 21 years on the job. Looked like St. Cloud was going to run UMD out of the building in the first ten minutes, but the Bulldogs steadied themselves and found a way to win the game.
“You go back over these eight years and it’s been a lot of really big battles and then really fun to play in,” Larson said. “And I expect the same this weekend.”
Of course, nothing is likely to top 2023 in St. Cloud. Physical, emotional, well-played series that the Huskies won in three games while the referees mostly just watched. They called basically nothing, especially in the third game.
“I thought the referees did a good job letting the guys decide the game,” Sandelin said of that series. “Hopefully that’s the case moving forward. The players need to decide the games.”
“I don’t know what happened, but those two refs decided they’re not going to call a penalty,” Larson said about that 2023 barnburner. “Usually when I coach, I tell the guys, ‘Hey, after the whistle, don’t let anybody drag you into any crap. Somebody punches you in the face, you take it. We’d rather be on the power play.’
“I literally told the team that Sunday I said ‘Somebody punches you in the face, punch right back, we’re going toe-to-toe.’ And they didn’t call a dang penalty the whole weekend. It was unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen it again. All I can tell you this: We’re not going to be punching people back after whistle this weekend because we don’t want to put them on the power play.”
(It’s a fine line for referees, right? You don’t want the game to get out of hand, but you also don’t want to be calling 15 penalties in an elimination game.)
6. It was encouraging to see UMD win 60 percent of its faceoffs last weekend against a Colorado College team that was second nationally in faceoff percentage entering the weekend.
In my eyes, it was more encouraging to see how they were won. UMD won a lot of 50/50 puck battles on faceoffs, battles the Bulldogs were losing a lot more than they were winning for much of the second half.
“It’s something we harped on before the weekend,” Plante said, “just knowing, coming into the weekend, how good they were at face-offs. And if we can do better at that, like that’s one of the big things in their game is limiting time they have with the puck. I think that helped us. We had the puck a lot. I think a big part of that was just winning faceoffs, getting chances off faceoffs. Obviously, we only scored three goals, but I think we produced offense.”
“I thought we were more competitive,” Sandelin said. “There were a lot of 50-50 battles that we came out with puck. So yeah, that was good. They’re all details like anything in the game. Your faceoff details and everybody doing their job, battling. It’s nice if you can run some plays both offensively, defensively or special teams where you start with possession.”
7. The challenge on the dot doesn’t get much easier. Led by their big No. 1 center, junior Tyson Gross, the Huskies enter the weekend in the top ten nationally in faceoff percentage. Gross is up over 40 points to lead the way for SCSU, and he’s a name you’ll hear a lot about as the season winds down, as Gross will be a top candidate to sign a pro contract as a free agent whenever St. Cloud State is done playing.
Larson said Gross is having a great season, and notably has handled the extra attention that comes with being a top college free agent very well.
“I’ve been fortunate to go through it with a lot of kids,” Larson said. “And it does add a little bit of extra pressure. There’s almost a guilt feeling sometimes. They don’t want to think about it too much. They don’t want their teammates to think they’ve got one foot in, one foot out. He’s done a great job with all that. He’s talked to me about the stress of it. We’ve had good conversations. I know where he stands, he’s included me and our staff in with his advisor. We know what the conversations are with NHL teams, so it’s been good that way, but you’re right it adds a little pressure to these kids for sure.
“They’re laying in bed at night thinking about it, and their dream is to play in the NHL and now he knows that that dream is close to reality. I think the thing I appreciate the most about him is he’s just continued to do the same things every day as far as his preparation and his compete. His teammates respect him a ton so there’s no worry that he’s already gone in his mind.”
8. Both teams have key players they are trying to ramp up into this weekend, for different reasons. St. Cloud State freshman defenseman Tanner Henricks missed three months after a freak injury suffered Halloween night, of all times, against Western Michigan. He returned at the start of February, getting into six games before the Huskies wrapped up their regular season Feb. 21 at North Dakota.
Henricks, a top recruit for the Huskies, has three goals and six points in 12 games. He did not face UMD in the regular season.
“He’s been really good for us,” Larson said. “We kind of eased him in early, and now he’s back and playing a big part of our power play and five on five and all those things. He’s just a special player so obviously huge for us to get him back. It was tough to have him out for three months but it’s kind of a shot in the arm here going down the stretch.”
For UMD, sophomore goalie Adam Gajan played Saturday’s game against Colorado College, his first game action of any kind in 28 days after he was part of Team Slovakia for the Olympics, but did not suit up for a game there.
“It’s real important,” Sandelin said of being able to get Gajan in a game before the postseason. “Especially when you haven’t played for a month. He’s only practiced, and that doesn’t replicate a game. They might have shooters in practice that shoot the puck a little harder, but it doesn’t replicate a game. I think that you know showed maybe a little bit early too (on Saturday). You gotta get into the game part of it, because things happen lot differently than practice.”
Neither coach would reveal a starting goalie for Game 1 on Friday, with Ethan Dahlmeir having played well in Gajan’s stead. I believe (without asking, because they wouldn’t tell me anyway!) Gajan will start the opener, but I’ve been wrong before. Freshman Yan Shostak and sophomore Patriks Berzins have split time for SCSU, with Shostak getting the net three times against UMD in the regular season. Don’t be shocked if you see both of them this weekend.
9. The other NCHC quarterfinal series this weekend include top seed and Penrose Cup winner North Dakota hosting Omaha. The Mavericks won the last meeting, and that was in Grand Forks, but it was also in December. Simon Latkoczy has been better down the stretch, but he can’t cover up all that ills the Mavericks, including a lack of scoring depth.
Kaidan Mbereko will try to extend his college career as Colorado College visits defending national champion Western Michigan. Mbereko has won a playoff series in Kalamazoo before, taking down the Broncos as the No. 7 seed in his freshman season. And the way he played down the stretch, including holding Western to three goals two weeks ago in Colorado Springs, you can’t rule that out.
Miami heads to Denver in the other series. It’s nice to see Miami back in a degree of relevancy, and while they might not be ready to march on just yet, the RedHawks are bound to be more competitive than they were in Denver Dec. 5-6, a series Denver swept by a 9-2 aggregate. See, Miami was back from its Northern Ireland trip that week, and because the overseas journey was a late add to the schedule, the RedHawks couldn’t get a bye on either side of it.
Also, keep in mind that only the top four in the league appear safe for the NCAA Tournament. And if any of those four teams lose this weekend, they’re staring at a layoff of close to 20 days before they play again because the NCHC playoff is now conducted over three weekends. That hasn’t gone well for the Big Ten teams that have run into it, to the point that the conference condensed its playoff. We’ll see what happens this week and what that might lead to down the road.
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We’re also keeping our fingers crossed for the UMD women, who need a no-Cinderella conference tournament weekend to make the NCAAs themselves. We will update that situation as the weekend goes on. Hopefully UMD can find its .0001 moment and make the most of it, but last weekend’s loss to Minnesota State means the Bulldogs’ fate is in the hands of others.
6:30 pregame for Game 1 Friday, then 5:30 Saturday and Sunday (if need be). Back pregame with lines.
Playoff hockey is here. Enjoy!
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