One of the low-key really weird things about this 2020-21 NCHC season is the frequency of opponents. It’s something Scott Sandelin talked about Wednesday on his weekly Zoom session with local media.
During a “normal” 24-game NCHC season, teams will play five of the seven other NCHC teams four times each (two home and two away), the other two twice in one venue. In order to make this pandemic-hampered season work as well as possible, the league divided into divisions and took care of all the cross-division play at the NCHC Pod.
UMD played North Dakota, Denver, and Omaha twice each in the pod. The Bulldogs would have played Colorado College twice had the Tigers not been late due to a team quarantine (the second of those games will be played in two weeks, if all goes well). Also, UMD saw Miami twice in Omaha.
Since then? Four against St. Cloud State, two against Western Michigan, and two vs. Miami. The Bulldogs have seven games left in the regular season: the aforementioned makeup with CC, this weekend’s home series with Miami, a trip to Western Michigan next week, and a home-and-home with St. Cloud State to finish the campaign.
In other words, there will be a lot of familiarity in the second half. This is the second time since the Bulldogs returned from the pod that they will see the same team in consecutive weekends. So does this type of schedule anomaly change the week of preparation?
“You’re looking at your past games with them, which are recent so it’s much like playing a team on a weekend,” Sandelin said. “We go from Friday to Saturday and look to see if we need to make any adjustments. The intensity of the series picks up.
“We were fortunate to win the games last weekend. That doesn’t make it any easier and all that for sure, but you’re always looking for things you can do better or maybe a ways to exploit different teams.”
Does this type of a schedule allow the coaches to focus more on their own team (something they might be inclined to do during the first part of a season)?
“This is it,” said Sandelin, “we basically have three opponents in the second half with St. Cloud, Western, or Miami. I think, really, most of the time your focus has to be on yourself. And I think this does help, but there’s things that they did to on Saturday that were a little bit different. So, for the most part, yes, I like to try and really get our guys focused on what we need to do, versus what other teams are doing. I think when we do those things right as a group, we can be a pretty good team.”
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Two more games with the RedHawks loom at Amsoil Arena, which will host just four more UMD games in the regular season (Sandelin said Wednesday he still doesn’t know what the NCHC playoffs will look like, but one has to assume something is coming on that before too long, since there’s only about a month left of the regular season).
After 2-1 and 6-3 wins in Oxford last week, Sandelin cited defensive play (35 shots conceded on Saturday after only 15 on Friday) and discipline (Miami had five power plays, including a five-on-three, on Saturday) as big areas he’s been wanting to work on with his team this week.
(To add some context to the defensive play, UMD allowed 31 even-strength shots, a season high and nearly double the average of 16 allowed in UMD’s previous eight games. That’s only one measure of UMD’s defensive play, and it’s admittedly a flawed one, but it’s also a measure of the Bulldogs’ puck possession dominance. Simply put, the best defense is puck possession. That leads us to the next topic.)
Sandelin also talked about what he likes to call the ground game.
“We have to be willing to play in the tough areas a little bit better,” he said. “Those are things that are gonna help us. It’s not always to necessarily score goals, but sometimes it’s an opportunity to grind teams down and hopefully create a mistake or an opportunity. It’s not going to be every single time, but I think those are important.”
When UMD has generated offensive zone possession and worked to wear teams down, the Bulldogs have seen plenty of success. It’s a winning formula for a team that’s already pretty strong defensively.
Sustaining that pressure has not been a consistent presence in UMD’s game this season. If Sandelin and his staff can find a way to get that going on a more regular basis, it will only help a team that’s won four straight.
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UMD’s win streak has coincided with some of the top guys heating up. All three members of the Bulldogs’ top line — Noah Cates, Nick Swaney, and Quinn Olson — have points in four straight games. Cole Koepke has goals in three straight and points in four in a row. He has, in particular, really been getting going as of late.
“When he plays with that determination where he wants the puck, he can be a dominant player,” Sandelin said of Koepke. “Not just speed wise but physically, because he’s a strong, strong kid. It’s not just about scoring to me. It’s those things where he’s being first on pucks and knocking guys off pucks and not floating around, waiting for things to happen. I think that’s what he’s done here the last three or four games, better than maybe he was doing, and I think it’s ultimately led to him contributing more offensively.”
To add to this, UMD has seen some very good contributions from its so-called fourth line, which has been centered by Ben Almquist in the four games since the team returned from a COVID-driven pause.
(I say “so-called” because it’s the line that’s fourth on the line chart, and Sandelin likes to playfully chide the media for calling it the fourth line.)
A lot of times, a fourth line is looked at as the group that’s thrown on the ice to not get scored on. But UMD’s fourth line, as currently constructed, can be more than that. It’s a group that Sandelin has wanted to see contribute a bit more offensively, and guys like Almquist, Luke Loheit, and Blake Biondi are certainly capable enough at that end of the rink.
“That line on the weekend with Blake and Ben and Luke,” Sandelin said, “they scored a goal and they gave us good offensive zone time. I think they were responsible defensively, so they’ve been doing a good job.”
Luke Mylymok has played on that line, as has Jarrett Lee. All five of them are available this weekend, as is freshman goalie Zach Stejskal, who sat out last weekend’s games in Oxford with an injury. Sandelin talked last week about a goaltending competition, so it’s reasonable to assume Stejskal has a chance to play soon — if not this weekend — since he’s good to go again.
Don’t think for a second Sandelin is upset about seeing competition for playing time at all three positions — forward, defense, and goalie.
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5:30 pregame Friday on KDAL. I’ll be on the KQ Trainwreck with Kevin and Tom at 5:10 (listen at 95kqds.com). The game will be streamed, as usual, on this here website. Remember, Saturday’s game starts two hours earlier, at 4pm.
I’ll be back in here pregame with the lines.
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