Progress is not always linear, especially in sports.
There are peaks and valleys, ups and downs. Sometimes, you get gains in some areas, while others don’t progress as quickly.
Such is the case for UMD. The Bulldogs wanted to win the special teams game Saturday. They did. They wanted to win the faceoff game. They did not.
UMD has been looking to get its offense going. The chances were there all weekend against Omaha, but the finishing was not.
That said, these were two strong performances over the weekend, and UMD can build off what we saw against the Mavericks.
Of course, a stiff test awaits in a tough building. It’s the kind of test that will show how much progress this young group is making.
8 THOUGHTS
1. UMD needs to score more. Barely topping two goals per game through 12 games, basically one third of the season, is not what anyone had in mind. But let’s try to take the 30,000-foot view.
The players UMD wants to have the puck are getting the puck.
Blake Biondi has 38 shots. Three goals (one empty-net).
Ben Steeves has 36. Six goals.
Dominic James has 34. Three goals.
Isaac Howard has 28 shots. One goal.
Quinn Olson has 27 shots. Saturday’s overtime winner was his first goal this season.
There are guys on and off this list who could stand to shoot more (coach Scott Sandelin mentioned Olson as being one of them after Saturday’s game, saying they had just conversed on the topic Saturday morning). But these five players are each averaging over two shots per game (Biondi is over three per game) and none of them are hitting the back of the net with the kind of regularity you’d expect from this shot volume. As a group, they’re under 9 percent shooting, and it goes to barely 8 percent when you discount Biondi’s empty-net goal in Colorado Springs.
This isn’t a criticism of any of the players. Actually, here’s hoping they keep shooting. Eventually, this will turn around for UMD, because the right guys are getting chances to the net. The dam will break, and these early-season struggles will quickly hit the rear-view mirror.
“I felt with the (scoring) chances, if we keep working, getting those, we’re going to get more than two (goals),” Sandelin said after Saturday’s game.
2. There was a lot to like again on Saturday. With no James (upper body) or defenseman Aiden Dubinsky (lower body), UMD had some guys step up, something Sandelin talked about postgame.
“There were a lot of things that got better,” he said. “You need guys to step up, missing Dom and Duber, and I thought it was a good team effort.
“Jack Smith’s line was good. Spicer did a good job in the middle with that line (Steeves and Luke Loheit). I thought the 120 minutes, it was a good step.”
3. Without Dubinsky, UMD leaned heavily on a few guys. I don’t have access to the official TOI (time on ice) numbers, but you can bet your bottom dollar that Wyatt Kaiser logged 30-plus minutes Saturday, while Derek Daschke and Owen Gallatin were close. Kaiser and Daschke rotated through with a couple of the younger defensemen, Will Francis and Joey Pierce, who did what they could to keep things simple when they were on the ice (Pierce has stood out in this regard over the first few games of his college career).
Gallatin, by the way, was named the NCHC Defenseman of the Week for his efforts, which included three assists, six shots, four blocked shots, and a plus-three.
This obviously isn’t a recipe for long-term success, because a team needs its depth. We’ve seen incremental improvement from Riley Bodnarchuk, while Pierce and Francis are getting their feet wet. Remember that Francis played only five games last season and also couldn’t practice at full speed every week. He’s a heck of a talent and this will come for him, even if it takes time. Dubinsky has clearly been the top newcomer on the back end, and Sandelin has trusted him with big minutes in key situations early, quite the accomplishment for an 18-year-old. But he’s been dealing with a lower-body issue and the time came Saturday to take a night off. Hopefully he will be back soon, and hopefully an NHL team sees fit to draft him next summer, if you know what I mean. 😉
4. There were some more striped-shirt related frustrations Saturday. UMD took three straight penalties from the end of the first into the middle of the second period, all three of them were at least potentially disputable. Most notable was a hit by Kyle Bettens in the neutral zone that was whistled and called indirect contact to the head, but appeared to be clean as they come, the penalty an unfortunate product of big guy hitting smaller guy.
Sandelin said he didn’t want to get fined, but he liked his his team responded to the adversity.
“The bench hasn’t freaked out too much,” he said. “Some of the things you can’t control are a little frustrating.
“I thought there were some missed calls, I didn’t agree with a couple of them.”
The penalty kill responded after a tough night (Sandelin said associate coach Adam Krause was “pulling his hair out” after Friday’s game) to finish perfect on four tries Saturday. Steeves scored a power play goal for the second straight Saturday, allowing UMD to win the special teams game 1-0 after losing it 2-0 on Friday.
And as Sandelin has said a million times (maybe not literally), you’re going to win a lot of games if you can win the special teams.
5. Sandelin did touch on game management a bit, not thrilled with what he saw in the closing minutes Saturday. He’s talked about this before, the idea that you have to tighten up when defending a lead late, and you have to be sharp on defensive zone exits. UMD was not, and got burned for it. A blind pass led to a turnover, and the Mavericks got it into the UMD zone. The Bulldogs didn’t manage the puck well from there, leading to some sustained zone time, and Omaha tied the game right as the extra attacker got established in the zone.
That said, Sandelin also said he liked his team’s third period up to that point, a third period where Omaha could barely get a sniff of UMD goalie Matthew Thiessen and had to spend a lot of time defending. The Mavericks, however, held on and got the tying goal to steal a point, giving them four points on a weekend where UMD deserved at least that many but only got two.
(This, by the way, is why you never, ever, ever apologize for a win, no matter how the game went. Every game takes on its own personality, and there will be nights the team wins when it shouldn’t, nights where it doesn’t win and should. This was a weekend where UMD deserved more than it got. The hope is that these weekends balance with weekends where a team gets more than it deserves. No guarantees, but if UMD keeps playing like it did against Omaha, chances are things will be just fine.)
6. When you have a guy like Steeves, you have a chance. The freshman scored twice Saturday, once finding a loose puck at the goalmouth after a shot from up high hit Omaha goalie Jake Kucharski and dropped to the ice, and the other on a gorgeous one-timer during a power play.
He’s a shooter.
“I always want to be shooting pucks,” he said. “That’s what’s been working for me, shooting pucks.”
Sandelin lauded Steeves for stepping up in light of James’ absence.
“I look at him getting a couple goals,” said Sandelin. “That’s stepping up.”
Sandelin didn’t have an update on James or Dubinsky after Saturday’s game. James did finish Friday’s game, literally, as he was on the ice when the game ended. Dubinsky didn’t suffer anything obvious during the game and was out quite a bit during the five-minute penalty kill late in the third period.
7. For the first time in a long time, UMD is unranked in the national polls. These human polls don’t have any bearing on the PairWise or the NCAA Tournament process, but they’re a fun discussion piece during the week. UMD coming in outside the top 20 of both polls marks the first time since late February of 2016 that the Bulldogs have gone into a weekend unranked.
That’s a span of 154 straight polls that featured UMD, the longest streak in men’s college hockey. In fact, that streak was 30 polls — more than a full season — longer than the next longest run, which belongs to Minnesota State Mankato at 124 straight polls ranked.
It’s not something I expect to hear from anyone inside the program about, but it is something fans and media will discuss. And a friend of mine out west made probably the best point about this news once it was official Monday.
There's definite validity to discussing the fact that UMD's 154 poll streak that spanned six and a half years just came to an end. Sure, polls don't mean anything in terms of the postseason but they do offer helpful context and quantification to long periods of national success!
— LetsGoDU (@LetsGoDU) November 14, 2022
For UMD fans, this should be celebrated. There were weeks along the way where the Bulldogs weren’t necessarily ranked because they needed to be listed in the top 20 on merit, but instead because Sandelin, his staff, and the players who have come through here have created a culture and a method that works. In an era of unprecedented parity in the sport, UMD did something quite remarkable.
8. Now comes a big-time test. I mean, Western Michigan is a good team playing on Mars. The Broncos are a load to handle when playing at Lawson Ice Arena, which is where UMD heads for its last road trip of 2022 this weekend.
Western lost its season opener in Anchorage, but the Broncos are averaging 4.5 goals per game since, with a power play hitting over 26 percent, and they’re outshooting adversaries by a wide margin (over nine shots per game). Freshman Ryan McAlister is averaging over an assist per game, and sophomore center Max Sasson picked up where he left off last season, already with 18 points in 13 games after a strong finish to his freshman campaign.
The Broncos play at an incredible pace, turning turnovers into offense like no one in the league outside of maybe Denver. Western Michigan has feasted on discipline issues, scoring three power play goals in Friday’s win at St. Cloud State.
Can UMD slow the game down in that building, where it’s incredibly tough to slow the game down? The Bulldogs will need to make good decisions, be clean on zone exits, and establish their ground game to have a lot of success.
Back Thursday from Kalamazoo with a preview.
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