DENVER — Not going to lie: Traveling with the UMD men the last 24 or so hours, wondering if we were going to get to Colorado in a timely manner, joking about getting diverted to Albuquerque and even dealing with cannibalism humor, one thing kept popping into my head.
Damn, do I miss having home ice.
8 THOUGHTS
1. Outside of that one time I had to get a hotel room after a home game because the freeway was closed and I couldn’t get home, being at home has major advantages. For starters, you don’t have to fly into a potential Colorado blizzard, or a Midwestern ice storm for that manner. You don’t have to spend a weekend fighting off a headache in the thunderdome that is the Brooks Center in St. Cloud.
Best yet: You don’t have to find a way to get to a far-flung venue on short notice. Mad props to UMD director of hockey operations Christian Koelling, who orchestrated this trip on a couple days’ notice, navigated the warnings about impending weather doom in Denver, and was able to find us nearly two dozen hotel rooms near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after Wednesday night’s flight became Thursday morning’s flight.
Anyway, either the storm wasn’t as bad as feared or we just plain got lucky. Not only did the flight leave at the 8:50am time they told us it would leave upon word of the initial delay, but it was a smooth flight and landing in Denver, and a fairly easy ride to the hotel in southeast Denver, not far from the DU campus.
From my seventh-floor window, the snow is still falling but not at any sort of debilitating rate. That said, rush-hour traffic is virtually non-existent on this day, as many places shut down in anticipation of poor conditions.
Very heavy and wet snow, but as of now not as much as we were told was possible.
And I’m not complaining. We got here okay, and it’s game on for Friday.
2. By the way, if you missed it, I posted what’s basically a bonus 8 Thoughts earlier, laying out my selections for NCHC awards. Please give that a look.
The postseason awards are the last sign of playoff hockey’s arrival. Look for everything to be handed out next week before the NCHC Frozen Faceoff in St. Paul.
Not a lot of UMD representation, but there are guys who have taken big steps this season and could become factors in the future.
Just another incredible season in this league, honestly. Denver coach David Carle agrees.
“It’s been an absolute grind,” Carle said of the NCHC season. “I think for everybody, battling and jockeying for position. It seems like this year’s been as tight as ever, especially (standings spots) two through seven.”
3. Chief among the Bulldogs’ key future pieces is UMD’s new top defensive pairing of Aaron Pionk and Aiden Dubinsky.
Dubinsky has more experience, both at UMD and as a defenseman as a whole. Pionk is older, and he has flashed the kind of ability that made him a touted prospect once he moved to the blue line while playing for the Minnesota Wilderness.
“I like the looks of that moving forward,” said UMD coach Scott Sandelin. “Aaron’s had a good year. I mean, there’s obviously ups and downs. He’s played a ton of minutes for us. We’ve put him in a lot of situations.”
On Dubinsky, Sandelin said he’s “just consistently gotten better. I think last year was a tough tough year for him with some injuries and not getting kind of that consistency. But I think his confidence is growing.
“I think he’s playing with a lot more purpose. So hopefully that continues because I like those two together and we can get some big minutes out of them.”
Dubinsky’s jump throughout the second half has been really impressive. He had an injury at the end of last season that affected the first part of his offseason, and it seemed he was struggling with his confidence at times in the first half. But he’s earned the opportunity to play with Pionk, and the future for those two is incredibly bright.
“It’s been super fun, (seeing) him find his groove like that,” Pionk said of Dubinsky.
And, yeah, UMD knows a thing or two about developing and deploying talented defensemen.
4. Denver is an impressive team, but the Bulldogs played with them last month at home. Yes, DU got the early goals in the Saturday game for a 3-0 lead UMD was not going to overcome, but the Bulldogs were arguably the better team for most of Friday night and a chunk of Saturday as well.
It was a bit of a theme for UMD as the season went on.
Long chunks of time where UMD looks great, but can’t fully capitalize. Then one mistake ends up in the back of their net.
“We’ve been talking the past few weekends,” said UMD captain Luke Loheit, “and it’s just little stuff, it’s just little mistakes, it’s just little lapses of like five to seven minutes where we just weren’t in it. Five to seven minutes can can cost you a lot in our league and especially in the playoffs.”
Playing for their lives this weekend, the Bulldogs need to find a way through those lapses where things aren’t going great.
5. Was last weekend a necessary galvanizing moment? Let’s be honest, in a 12-win season, there haven’t been a lot of big weekends like the last one.
UMD has a handful of Friday night wins followed up by disappointing Saturday results, or vice versa (in the case of the Milwaukee trip, it was a disappointing Thursday loss followed by a nice Friday result in a worse overall performance 
).
This past weekend, the Bulldogs might not have always played their best hockey, but they won twice, including a Friday win that featured a pair of two-goal comebacks. Can that be a (late) springboard?
“I think if we can bottle that up and bring that into this weekend,” Loheit said, “just being excited for each other, pumping each other up when stuff’s going right. Whether it’s a blocked shot, whether it’s a big save by by Thiess (Matthew Thiessen) or JR (Zach Sandy), whether it’s a goal at the end of the game. It’s getting excited for each other. It creates a lot of positive energy, which we haven’t had much of this year.”
6. And, of course, goaltending helps. Whether it’s Sandy making massive saves down the stretch during Friday’s comeback overtime win, or it’s Thiessen going all Superman on St. Cloud State during Saturday’s win, the Bulldogs continue to get enough goaltending to stay in basically every game.
Thiessen gave his defense credit for his being able to see a lot of first shots.
“I think when you’re able to see the puck and make the first saves and try to control the rebounds to the best of my ability, that definitely helps out,” he said. “Then you just gotta battle at the end of the day. There’s a couple of those where it’s just the desperation save, and you gotta just try to find the puck and get in the way of it.”
Thiessen and Sandy did that when it mattered most last weekend, and we’ll see if they can get it done again this week with the season on the line.
7. The rest of the NCHC playoff weekend shapes up to be a good one. Miami plays at North Dakota, trying to take down ex-teammate Ludvig Persson one more time (UND went 4-0 in the regular season).
Elsewhere, Western Michigan heads to St. Cloud. It might be overly simplistic, but this has the look and feel of an NCAA Tournament elimination series. Western enters the weekend 13th in the PairWise, while St. Cloud State is currently on the wrong side of the bubble at 17th. With the CCHA and Atlantic Hockey champions both well outside the top 16, only the top 14 in the rankings can feel good, barring further conference tournament upsets. I don’t think either team is getting in without winning this series (St. Cloud is certainly out without moving on to St. Paul).
Omaha was able to navigate this snowstorm as well, heading to Colorado Springs to battle the league’s best story this season, Colorado College. Noah Laba and Kaidan Mbereko were named First Team All-NCHC this week, and Tigers head man Kris Mayotte is the odds-on favorite to win Coach of the Year as CC is hosting a first round NCHC playoff series for the first time since, well, ever. CC is 11th in the PairWise, Omaha 12th, and neither can possibly think they’re safely in the field without moving on to the X next week, a place Omaha has never been.
8. The UMD women got a second life Thursday night in Columbus, and their captain made damn sure to take advantage.
Mannon McMahon deposited a rebound of a tipped Nina Jobst-Smith shot by Connecticut goalie Tia Chan, and UMD survived a heck of a scare from the upstart Huskies, winning 1-0 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Columbus.
McMahon’s winner came about eight minutes after an apparent UConn winning goal by Claire Peterson, a great point shot that whistled through a mass of bodies in front of UMD freshman goalie Eve Gascon and by her before she could react to it.
Problem: Connecticut was offsides on its zone entry. After a relatively brief (at least by our standards) video review, the goal was taken away and the game continued.
Gascon made 33 saves in her NCAA Tournament debut, her third shutout in her last four games.
UMD advances to face Ohio State Saturday at 3pm for the regional championship and a spot in the NCAA Frozen Four, next weekend in Durham, N.H.
Who starts in goal? Your guess is as good as mine. Gascon was outstanding Thursday and frankly all season, but Hailey MacLeod has been great all year as well. It’s a nice problem for UMD coach Maura Crowell to have, I’d say.
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7:30pm CT pregame Friday, one hour earlier Saturday and then the same time for Sunday if necessary. Join us on KDAL for what we hope is not the swan song.
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