The schedule maker was kind this season, giving UMD hockey supporters plenty of chances to see both the men and women on home ice in the same weekend.
The teams are both home this week — marking the second so-called doubleheader weekend of the season — as the men host Colorado College and the women play reigning champion Ohio State. Both teams will stay at home next weekend for their final games before holiday break, with the women playing St. Thomas and men hosting defending champion Denver.
These are fun weekends, and we’re excited to bring you all four games this weekend on KDAL. If you’re planning to attend, we hope you can make a doubleheader out of one of the days. The women’s games in the afternoon should be fantastic, as the Bulldogs and Buckeyes are somewhat evenly-matched teams that always seem to play good hockey against one another.
While the men are trying to get healthy on the fly here (more on that coming up), we know they always play fun hockey with Denver, and next weekend should be a great way to finish the first half of the season.
(Yes, we’re that close to the halfway mark. Man is that weird to think about.)
8 THOUGHTS
1. Health is a major story for the men. It’s admittedly somewhat strange to hear these kind of health concerns for a team that’s coming out of a bye. Even stranger is that we knew there were some potential issues going into the bye, when Luke Loheit had to miss the Western Michigan series due to illness. He was the only player out sick, but he was not the only player trying to fight some sort of illness that weekend.
“An interesting week,” said UMD coach Scott Sandelin on Wednesday, declaring only that freshman defenseman Aiden Dubinsky — out since Nov. 12 with a lower-body injury — will sit out this weekend with the hope of returning to the lineup next week against the Pioneers. Sandelin said “a little bit of both” when asked if the practice absences Wednesday — which included defenseman Wyatt Kaiser, forward Dominic James, and goalie Matthew Thiessen — were because of injury or illness.
(Sophomore forward Kyler Kleven remains out long-term with an upper-body injury suffered in the preseason.)
“I thought we had some good days (last week), then the guys got away from it,” Sandelin said of the off-week. “We haven’t had a full complement of players since Monday.”
The goal was to have a better idea by Thursday of who could play this weekend, and we’ll learn more when the lineups are released before Friday’s game.
2. Health has, unfortunately, been quite the topic this season. It’s had quite the impact on a UMD power play that is over 20 percent on the season, 4-for-15 over the last five games, but still hasn’t hit its stride at all.
If you draw up what one would think are UMD’s ideal power play units, it probably would look like this:
PP1: James, Quinn Olson, Blake Biondi, Isaac Howard, Kaiser
PP2: Carter Loney, Ben Steeves, Luke Loheit (or Cole Spicer), Derek Daschke, Owen Gallatin
They’ve rarely had all ten of these players available at one time. Steeves missed some time with injury, Kaiser was suspended for a game, Howard for two, James was out for a game, Spicer went down and missed most of the Nov. 19 game at Western, and Loheit missed the whole WMU series.
With new assistant coach Cody Chupp running the power play, UMD has tried to do some different things. Sandelin has talked previously about Chupp having a few ideas for the power play, but with players almost constantly cycling on and off the power play, or from one unit to the other, it’s been impossible to get any continuity.
“It’s extremely frustrating,” Chupp said of the issues. “If you’re the guy at the top, and you’re passing to a different guy every other week, it’s just hard to find that consistency. Great power play units are, a lot of times, guys who have been together over long periods of time. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to take that extra second to look and make sure who you’re passing to. You just know the spot, where that guy’s going to be and where he wants it. It’s hard to build a ton of consistency when it’s a shuffle of players.”
As of Wednesday, the Bulldogs hadn’t really done any special teams work in practice this week, a result of the inconsistent lineups they’ve had. Associate coach Adam Krause, who runs the penalty kill, has said a lot of the teaching there comes from video, but certainly he wants to be able to get his killers some practice just as much as Chupp wants it for the power play.
How the special teams perform this weekend — given all of the upheaval — will be a big, big key for UMD.
3. Sandelin has not allowed his team to forget what happened in the league opener. Less than a month ago, UMD was blitzed by a four-goal first period in a game the Bulldogs ended up dropping 5-0 in Colorado Springs. The veteran coach called it “embarrassing,” while fifth-year senior captain Tanner Laderoute threw himself on the grenade, saying the team wasn’t ready to play and that was his responsibility.
“I think that first period was embarrassing,” said Sandelin on Wednesday. “Probably the second half of that game, we were a little bit better, but in a 4-0 or 5-0 game, I don’t know what you can call better. I liked our compete level Saturday, but yet it still took a fluky goal at the end to win.
“We got what we deserved Friday because we weren’t ready to play. Believe me, I’ve reminded our guys.”
Given how things have been on an upswing basically every game since that fateful Friday, it’s likely the players don’t need to be reminded.
“I think Coach has been preaching the traits from the Friday game that we should not be doing again,” said Gallatin. “Yeah, I think the Saturday game, we played a lot better. So if we can just replicate that and come out hard, this is a team that we have to beat at this point in the season.”
4. After a strong first four games to start league play, Colorado College hit a skid two weekends ago, swept at home by St. Cloud State.
Second-year head coach Kris Mayotte said this week that he liked his team’s Friday game against the Huskies, where St. Cloud State got a 180-foot goal from Brendan Bushy and then a late tally to break a 1-1 tie on the way to a 3-1 win.
Freshman Kaidan Mbereko — the NCHC Goaltender of the Month for November — was pulled from the Saturday game, which the Huskies won 5-0.
“They’re (Colorado College) a much improved team. They’ve got some good forwards, especially a couple freshmen. McKown is a good hockey player. They’ve got a different attitude on their team. I think Mayotte has done a good job with trying to build their culture there.”
In a league that is notoriously difficult for freshmen, the Tigers are led in scoring by freshman Noah Laba, who has seven goals and 11 points. Colorado’s future is bright, however, as fifth year defenseman Bryan Yoon — the Tigers’ captain — is the only player among the team’s top 13 scorers who is older than a junior.
The Tigers are heavily reliant on special teams for offense, however. Of CC’s 37 goals, 18 have come via special teams (17 power play, one shorthanded). Yoon runs a sharp power play unit that includes McKown, two veteran players on a young team.
(For comparison, UMD has only gotten 11 of its 33 total goals from special teams, just one-third.)
5. Dubinsky is out, and we didn’t see Kaiser at practice on Wednesday, which at least opens up the possibility he won’t be available. Kaiser leads the league in minutes per game (“It seems like he’s never tired,” said Daschke), and he’s played over 30 in each of the three games Dubinsky has missed.
Whether Kaiser plays or not, we’re going to see a lot of Daschke and Gallatin this weekend. They say they’ll be ready.
Daschke has been moving in the right direction since the Friday game in Colorado, which was, as he said this week, a bad night for him and pretty much everyone else.
“It’s been my best stretch in a Duluth uniform for sure,” Daschke said of the last five games. “I kind of had a bad night, the Friday game at CC. I guess, collectively as a team, we did as well. And Sandy got on me a little bit. I think I took some steps forward.”
The veteran defenseman has looked a lot more sure of himself in recent games.
“I think I’m more confident for sure,” he said. “The systems here and at Miami were completely different. There’s a bit of an adjustment period, and then you just see what the coaches like and what the coaches don’t like, what you can get away with, and things you have to be more careful with.”
If Kaiser can’t play this weekend, he’ll be missed in all situations for UMD. But Sandelin does like some of the steps his younger blue-liners have taken in recent weeks. He singled out Will Francis during the Western Michigan weekend. This week, he talked about seeing improvement from Riley Bodnarchuk and Joey Pierce, the other freshman defensemen. He wants to see more assertiveness, especially from the bigger Bodnarchuk, but both are getting better.
With UMD at home and in more control of matchups, we’ll see how the coaches try to divvy up minutes.
6. There are two other NCHC series this weekend, and both could be very good. North Dakota goes to St. Cloud State for a two-game set. The Fighting Hawks fell behind early last Friday in Bemidji, but clawed their way back for a tie before winning the home game Saturday 4-2. It was a nice bounceback for a team that needed one after dropping three of four league games over consecutive weekends at home. SCSU was off last weekend after the CC sweep. The Huskies will look to pick up where they left off before the holiday.
Meanwhile, Western Michigan brings the nation’s best offense and top scorer (Ryan McAllister) to Omaha. The Broncos put up a touchdown against stingy Northeastern last week in a single non-conference game, and they continue their torrid offensive pace to start the season. Just think about this: For most of that series in Kalamazoo, I thought UMD did a lot of good things defensively. The Bulldogs put a puck in their own net, yeah, and allowed an empty net goal in the Saturday game. But Western scored nine times total in that series. Yikes.
Anyway, Omaha is off a huge win last week in Denver. The Mavericks might not be the deepest team, but they’re getting quality goaltending from Jake Kucharski and finding ways to score timely goals, both at five on five and on the power play. Is it sustainable? Perhaps not, as the Mavericks are being outshot by almost double figures per game in league play. But they’re a tough team to deal with at the moment.
7. Big opportunity this weekend for the UMD women. The Bulldogs host Ohio State in a rematch of the national championship game from March 20, won 3-2 by the Buckeyes. Ohio State swept UMD in two more 3-2 games Oct. 21-22 in Columbus.
The Bulldogs have won four straight since that tough 1-5 stretch against OSU, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (two overtime losses, two other losses by one goal), outscoring St. Cloud State and Harvard 20-1 over those four games. It was a good chance for UMD to bounce back and stack some wins, and the Bulldogs took full advantage. Along the way, they got the offense going, which could bode well for this weekend.
“I think all areas right now, we’re feeling confident,” head coach Maura Crowell said this week. “Certainly goal scoring, but not even just that specifically. I think offensively, what we’re doing is dynamic, fun. It incorportates all five players.”
Crowell thought her team played well in Columbus, especially in the Saturday game, where Ohio State got two third period goals to erase a 2-1 deficit.
“We really were the better team (Saturday),” she said. “That one stung because I think we should have walked away with three points and we just gave up a couple good opportunities for them.
“Ultimately, what you take out of those weekends is a lot of learning. Hey, you give good teams opportunities like that, they’re going to bury them just like we would. Ultimately, if that’s the number one team in the country, we’re right there.”
8. If you’re joining us at the arena for any or all of the four games this weekend, please keep in mind there are a lot of events in the DECC complex all weekend long. The annual Duluth Gun Show starts Saturday, as does the Duluth Winter Village behind the DECC on Harbor Drive. If that’s not enough, Bentleyville is in full effect across the street from Amsoil, lighting up the night sky both nights and bringing visitors from all over the place (especially on the weekends).
Plan ahead, especially on Saturday, to make sure you can find a good spot to park.
If you’re joining us on the radios, 2:45pm pregames for the women’s games, 6:30 for the men. Watch my Twitter for line charts before the women’s game, and I’ll get a quick blog up with the men’s lines between games that you can watch for here.
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