Injuries are a part of sports, unfortunately. This is especially true in collision sports like hockey.
UMD has seen a lot of the wrong side of the injury bug recently. This season’s captain, Dominic James, is likely not here to be the captain were it not for a freak upper-body injury suffered in the fifth period last season that cost him the ensuing 35 games. The Bulldogs battled through malady after malady last season, including the preseason recurrence of leukemia in defenseman Will Francis that cost him the entire season and was an immeasurable setback in his development as a player.
And this season hasn’t started much better. This weekend, the 24-game NCHC meat-grinder opens against a North Dakota team that doesn’t have much time for any sympathy towards its Highway 2 adversary.
9 THOUGHTS
1. Cue the “M*A*S*H” theme. It’s hard to imagine a time where these teams have met this early in a season and both been so impacted by injuries.
The Bulldogs will play this weekend without two of their unquestioned top nine forwards in freshman Max Plante and junior Jack Smith. Plante, who played left wing on a line with his older brother Zam and classmate Jayson Shaugabay in the season opener against Bemidji State, hasn’t played since thanks to an upper-body injury.
Smith was injured on a, frankly, bit of a dirty hit that he took in the Friday win over Stonehill two weeks ago. You just want to scream sometimes for these guys. Smith’s career has been so snake-bit by injuries, oftentimes the types of injuries a player can do nothing about (no better example than this latest one, where he’s trying to play a puck and gets waylaid into the corner boards with no real chance to protect himself).
2. As I mentioned, North Dakota doesn’t have much time to express sympathy. UND played short a player Saturday at Cornell, thanks to a bunch of injuries that have affected the Fighting Hawks all over the ice.
UND played with forward Dane Montgomery on defense against the Big Red Saturday after losing Andrew Strathmann to an injury on Friday. Already out of the lineup were defensemen Bennett Zmolek and Tanner Komzak. Montgomery played a hair under ten minutes Saturday and picked up an assist, and UND’s online roster now lists him as a defenseman.
(Our friend Brad Schlossman wrote about Montgomery ahead of this weekend’s games.)
If that’s not enough, the Hawks had replace third goalie Kaleb Johnson on the roster, adding Aleksi Huson, a freshman aviation major at UND who played goalie at Shakopee and served as a captain for the Sabers last season.
North Dakota traveled east last week without top-line center Cameron Berg, who sat out injured. However, Berg is expected back in the lineup against UMD on Friday.
“Experienced guy at the center ice position,” UND coach Brad Berry said this week when asked what it means to get Berg back. “A guy who can bring offense, whether it’s five-on-five or power play. Finally, probably most importantly, is leadership (Berg is an alternate captain).”
3. Both coaching staffs are likely frustrated. One of the goals early in a season is to see what kind of team you have before getting into league play. It’s nearly impossible to evaluate all facets of a group when key players are not in the lineup.
(And this is two straight years of this mess for UMD. They have to be doubly frustrated.)
Anyway, UMD’s staff is left to patch the holes left by Plante and Smith in the top nine. Yes, it’s a great opportunity for a lot of players to step up, but I guarantee you Scott Sandelin and crew would much rather have spent the first seven games looking at what they had up front with two Plantes in the lineup instead of one, and Smith is a key part of the Bulldogs’ penalty kill.
And surely, Berry and his staff would like to be able to work these young defensemen into different roles to see how those pieces best fit together. Instead, they’re spending time training a forward how to play the position and basically running five guys until he’s settled.
4. Zam Plante wants it known. He prefers playing center. But Max’s older brother was pressed into wing duty as the Bulldogs try to see how the forward group can be deployed for peak efficiency until Max Plante returns, hopefully as soon as next week.
Zam will play wherever (I’m old enough to remember him playing basically half a game on defense during the 2021 state tournament because of COVID issues with Hermantown), but he’s moving back to the middle of the rink this weekend.
“I want to say it’s a way different game but it’s not really,” Zam Plante said of playing wing versus center. “It’s just more trying to figure out how to apply offense more. I played both in the past, probably played half and half last year in Fargo. I like center personally, but the wing is more, it frees you up a little bit sometimes.”
That said, he is clear of his preference to play center. Sandelin has talked about Zam Plante’s defensive tendencies when he’s playing wing, and while no coach is ever going to turn down a player playing responsible hockey, it seems like it’s been a bit of a challenge to unlock offense from Plante’s game when he’s been a winger (though, in fairness, he’s had buzzard’s luck with finding iron on some glorious scoring chances).
For the player’s part, Zam said he does think it’s easier for him to be offensive when he’s playing center.
“I’m coming into pucks with speed more,” he noted. “I get caught at wing a lot of times coming way back when I probably should be pushing out and helping create space underneath. That’s one of my downfalls at wing. I normally figure it out after I play wing a while longer. But I do like center more because when you get the puck, you’re looking up the ice a lot of the time.”
5. Associate coach Adam Krause has said more than once that every weekend and every opponent is a different challenge. So I asked him this week how he thinks North Dakota will challenge his team differently than we saw from Minnesota last month.
“I think if you look at Minnesota,” he said, “out above you, good angles, a very similar style to, say, Denver in terms of they’re not going to run you through the wall or play you overly physical. North Dakota is going to play you physical, they’re going to challenge your readiness in terms of your physical play.
“Just a little bit different throwing pucks at the net with bodies at the net. Really challenging your intensity versus probably a Minnesota challenging your support because of the way they reload and the way they get on top of you and their good sticks. It’s really gonna challenge our intensity (against UND this weekend). It’s gonna be another really good test for our guys.”
I followed up on the subject with Sandelin to get his perspective.
“They’re both hard, I know that,” he said. “I know when we’re playing our game, us and North Dakota have played very similar over the years. They’re obviously, again, talented, hard skill, some big bodies, they’re going to be hard to the net.
“We’re going to get challenged in battles probably more along the wall than maybe I’d say Minnesota. Or around the net. Because they just play a little bit differently. But definitely going to be hard.”
Sandelin lauded UND’s transition game, but said Minnesota is going to feed off their transition game more.
6. Sandelin liked a lot of what UMD did against Stonehill, and he’s optimistic we will see continued improvement this weekend.
“I think it was an important weekend against Stonehill for us to win a couple games before the break,” Sandelin said. “I think that’s set the next week off in a good way mentally. I always worry about coming off bye weeks.
“You look at who North Dakota’s played, BU and Cornell back to back. We played Stonehill and had a weekend off. So you always worry about the early part of Friday. You know they’re going to come out (hard). They’ve lost three games, but our guys are excited to play. It doesn’t mean we’re going to play good, but I know they’re excited to get going. These are long weeks. I think we had a really good week last week.”
Krause also expressed optimism with what the coaches saw in the Stonehill series.
“Minnesota is one of the top teams in college hockey,” he said, “so they challenge you a little bit differently. But I thought we certainly took a step looking a little bit more connected and consistent in our game play.”
7. Seismic news in the college hockey world Thursday, as the NCAA Division I Council officially has voted to make players in the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) eligible for Division I hockey, starting in the 2025-26 season.
This comes in the wake of all the changes we’ve seen in college sports since the pandemic. The transfer portal, NIL, revenue sharing, and now CHL eligibility.
Recruiting of CHL players can start immediately, and the official date for the eligibility change is Aug. 1 of next year.
The nice people at College Hockey Inc. have a FAQ page on their website that you can access here.
Incidentally, I talked to Schlossman on my radio show Thursday (podcast it here). I asked Brad what he thought was the biggest surprise of the first part of the season. Without hesitation, he talked about the improved parity in the sport, with Long Island beating Notre Dame, Lindenwood winning at Wisconsin and Miami, and Stonehill already having wins over three Division I adversaries (two more than last year).
It’s clear, he noted and I agree, that there are more good, quality Division I players than there are teams for them to play on. With the CHL players becoming eligible for college hockey, that pool is only expanding. It’s a massive moment for the college game on the mainstream, and could be the impetus for big-time developments in terms of national attention on the sport (even more legit NHL prospects in the NCAA) and hopefully someday more programs playing the game.
8. The nation’s best conference indeed kicks off league play this weekend. Besides this doozy of a series, we have Western Michigan playing two in Omaha. After a promising start for the Mavericks that brought the Ice Breaker title to Omaha, they’ve dropped four in a row, three of them by one goal, and scored only four goals, three of them in one game. Western is 3-1 after a loss to Boston College on Oct. 26, a game the Broncos led 2-0 before conceding the game’s last four goals.
Miami heads to St. Cloud this weekend, as new RedHawks coach Anthony Noreen gets his first taste of games for points in this conference. Miami is 3-5-2 after a busy October, and lost a pair of one-goal games to RPI at home last week. More on them next week, as UMD will be there for a two-game series, but patience will be needed in Oxford. Noreen has some very nice players in the pipeline. Depth is lacking a bit with his first Miami team, though. St. Cloud State will be looking to rebound after getting swept at home by Boston College last weekend. The vibes should still be good there, thanks to a 6-1 start preceding last week’s stumble.
The other series for points pits the newcomers at Arizona State against Colorado College inside beautiful Ed Robson Arena. The Colorado contingent in the NCHC hasn’t lost yet, with both Denver starting 8-0 and CC at 6-0. Overtime has been required for the Tigers twice, but they’ve only given up eight goals in six games. With the firepower Colorado College has, expect a lot of wins if they only give up goals at that rate. The Sun Devils snapped a run of five in a row without a win when they swept Northern Michigan Oct. 25-26 in Marquette, conceding just one goal over two games. ASU has a chance if it can get goaltending like it has so far, with Gibson Homer and Luke Pavicich combining for a .916 through eight games.
Denver, by the way, is home for Lindenwood this weekend. The Pioneers best not take the Lions lightly, given they’ve already beaten Wisconsin and Miami on the road. New coach Bill Muckalt (yes, the Michigan legend) has Lindenwood playing competitively on a nightly basis.
9. A quick note: I have been contemplating a move away from Twitter/X for a while, and I am finally feeling like it’s time. A lot of high-quality UMD fans use the platform, and that’s all good, but you won’t see me there this weekend. Instead, I will be posting in-game updates on Threads, with occasional posts on BlueSky.
Both apps are free to join. BlueSky, frankly, is a much cleaner experience, but we’ll focus on Threads for now because there’s simply a higher volume of users on that app, at least for now.
Obviously, this is going to cost me followers, and it’s a price I’m willing to pay. Too many rabbit holes, too many unwanted ads, and way too much toxicity on Twitter/X for my liking. I am not obligated to maintain an account there or anywhere, so I’m going to spend my time in places that offer a better user experience. Your mileage may vary, and that’s okay. I’ll still be here with regular updates, and I always appreciate people being interested in the hockey team, the broadcasts, and somehow wanting to read the crap I write.
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6:30pm pregame Friday, 5:30pm Saturday on KDAL. Back pregame with lines and whatever else might be interesting.
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