POOLSIDE in TEMPE, Ariz. — Traveling around the country covering a college hockey team is a fun job, no complaints.
But when you hop a bird and land in Phoenix, followed by a short bus ride to Tempe and the campus of Arizona State University, well the job becomes a bit cooler.
Been here only a few hours of daylight, at least, but it’s pretty easy to understand how Greg Powers has been able to build a competitive Division I program from a club team in a very short amount of time. Not dogging the man at all, but when it’s this nice outside in December, you can understand why young people would want to play hockey here.
9 Thoughts comes to you this week from a hotel rooftop bar/pool setup in Tempe. But as UMD coach Scott Sandelin was quick to point out at his Wednesday media conference: “This is not a vacation.”
Tell your humble correspondent that when he applies sunscreen before writing the blog. Or when the blog is noticeably shorter than usual. Gosh, I wonder why that happened.
9 THOUGHTS
1. UMD couldn’t get through its holiday week bye without the injury bug biting. Freshman goalie Adam Gajan is questionable for this weekend’s series against Arizona State with a lower-body injury. He told Matt Wellens of the News Tribune he suffered it last week in practice. If Gajan can’t go, Sandelin indicated we might see both of the other UMD goalies — junior Zach Sandy and freshman Klayton Knapp — in this weekend’s series.
Graduate forward Joe Molenaar is listed as “doubtful” by Sandelin for the games against the Sun Devils. He’s been battling a lower body injury. Freshman forward Trevor Stachowiak could miss the rest of the season with a lower body injury. Stachowiak has played in two games for UMD, both on the fourth line.
(Mad respect to Stachowiak, by the way. UMD brought all its players on this trip, and Stachowiak was seen making the long trek from the gate at the Phoenix airport to baggage claim on crutches. I would have asked for a cart or at least a wheelchair and not thought twice about it.)
2. Growth, while not linear, is certainly happening within this UMD team. One of the pitfalls of having a young group like this is there are inevitable peaks and valleys. Even when players are learning and improving, the results aren’t always going to show it.
Case in point: The Friday game against Western Michigan. Assistant coach Cody Chupp pointed out this week that, upon further review, UMD had 27 shots in the “house,” the prime scoring area in front of the net.
The Bulldogs scored twice in the game and ate a 5-2 defeat as the Broncos built a three-goal lead in the second period and UMD couldn’t ever fully recover.
“Those are hard to swallow,” Chupp said. “Learning to win is probably where we’re at right now. So we knew that there were going to be steps this group had to take as a collective and as individuals obviously.”
3. Chupp talked about the Bulldogs’ improvement in the defensive zone.
“We haven’t given up a lot when we’re in D-zone structure. Things have come off turnovers, rush chances, different things like that, but we’ve actually done, if you go back even three, four weeks, we’ve done a decent job in D-zone structure. and it’s something that we really focused on early. So that’s very encouraging, especially with a young group, to have that buy-in to talking about your own end. So I’m excited about that. I think we really moved the needle there.”
Obviously, there are still hurdles to clear when it comes to how the puck is managed, as well as UMD’s rush coverage defensively. Western Michigan did a lot of damage off the rush, and one of Miami’s goals the previous weekend came off the rush (as broken and weird a play as that admittedly was).
Chupp connected some of those rush coverage issues to the neutral zone.
“I would say one of the things that we’ve probably talked a lot about over the last week or so is our neutral zone forecheck and our neutral zone transition. Everything’s connected, right? So our neutral zone forecheck sets up how we come into our D-zone. But I would say that that’s an area for us again, like I said, we haven’t given up a lot in the D-zone. It’s been a lot through transition chances. Some of those earned, some of those given. The more we can keep pucks out of the middle of the ice, push them to the outside, I think we’re going to be able to connect those two zones a little bit better. And the offensive zone is something where, ultimately, we need to probably score more or score more on our chances.”
4. Yes, discipline has become an issue again, and yes, it’s been addressed. Sandelin voluntarily brought it up on Wednesday.
“We’ve had a rash of majors and we’ve taken some penalties. And I don’t care how good your killers are, you’re going against power plays in our league, you give them those opportunities, they’re going to score eventually.
“And that’s really what won them the game on Saturday. Goalie was good in the first period, kept it 0-0, we got a lead and then we take a major and they score too and the game pretty much is over. That cannot creep in, last year it did. I don’t care how frustrated guys seem to be.
“That was the number one priority coming into the year was cutting down on penalties and I thought we did that early. But we cannot let that creep in right now because it’ll hurt us. It’s hard enough, but we don’t need to have that.”
5. Sandelin didn’t need to see Arizona State sweep Denver before Thanksgiving to realize the Sun Devils are a good team. But I’m sure it doesn’t hurt.
ASU went into Magness Arena and beat the Pioneers 3-2 and 5-2 before taking last weekend off.
“It’s a big boost to them,” Sandelin said. “They’ve got a good team and they’ll be ready to go. We’ve got to find a way to win two games.”
“They’re a group that’s feeling good about themselves right now, and they should be,” Chupp said. “It’s really easy to say like you have to be ready for any weekend in our league because everybody’s good and if you don’t show up you’ll lose. But obviously we’re kind of on two different ends of the spectrum right now.
“Normally when you win or you sweep you’re probably not as good as the score shows, and when you lose you’re probably not as bad as the score shows. Confidence and a little bit of mojo goes a long way with any group, and they’re riding about as high as anyone can after their previous weekend. It’s gonna be a good matchup for us.”
6. I asked Sandelin about Arizona State’s admission into the NCHC after its years as an independent. Sandelin has been very open in recent years about the importance of established programs in the sport trying to help out the new programs. He’s also put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, with Stonehill having visited UMD this season, Alaska coming after the break, and games coming in the future against Lindenwood and Augustana (plus a trip to Fairbanks next season).
Not surprisingly, Sandelin sees great importance in these programs finding conferences to play in.
“Especially the way our world’s going, right? I mean, you see an AIC moving down (moving back to Division II after this season). It’s not a good thing for our game. It’s hard to survive. It’s like they don’t have anything to play for. There’s no conference championships. Yes, Arizona State got in the NCAA tournament, but it’s very difficult to do that. The strength of their schedule is probably better just past the halfway point because everybody else is in conference play. So a lot of those teams end up playing each other, because they’re not in a conference.
“I think that’s one of the things Greg (Powers) said, it gives their team something to look forward to, to play for, right? You got a regular season championship, you got a playoff championship. All they had was, we got to do well so we can get in the NCAA tournament. And they did, and they were close again a few times, but it’s different. So, yeah, I worry about where it’s going. I certainly do. Everyone talks about adding teams, right? We’ve got to make sure we don’t lose teams.”
7. This is Arizona State’s first season in the NCHC, yes, but that wasn’t its initial intent. The Sun Devils applied for membership once before they got in this time. At NCHC Media Day in September, Powers indicated that the initial rejection may have been a blessing in disquise.
“The best thing that happened to our program when we applied to the NCHC back when we started was not getting in,” he said, “because we weren’t ready, and we needed to get our house in order, we needed to get our feet under us, we needed to get our facility built and now we think we’re ready.”
Powers saluted players and coaches who come through the program who helped pave the way for this (ASU’s alumni base includes Seattle Kraken goalie Joey Daccord, who backstopped the Sun Devils to the 2019 NCAA Tournament).
Before Mullett Arena down the street opened in 2022, ASU played home games at Oceanside Arena, off-campus here in Tempe. It was, um, interesting.
“I don’t want to say they enjoyed it because there wasn’t much enjoyable about it,” Powers said, “but it was definitely an experience. There was a gremlin in every corner. Luckily, we knew where they hid. We had a really good record there, especially for a startup independent program. It was a tough place to play, and we embraced it. We had no choice other than to embrace it.”
8. The UMD women are also closing out the first half of the season this weekend at St. Cloud State. The Bulldogs have won four straight, all at home, by a combined 23-2 score.
This weekend might not be that. The eighth-ranked Huskies are angling to make their first NCAA Tournament, and it appears third-year coach Brian Idalski has a team that can do it. SCSU has a tie/shootout win against Ohio State and a win over Minnesota, both at home.
“They’re a well coached team,” UMD coach Laura Schuler said, “very, very disciplined team in their structure and how they play the game.”
Forward Caitlin Kraemer had a six-point weekend in the Vermont sweep, tallying her first career hat trick on Saturday, the first hat trick by a UMD freshman since 2009.
“I feel like every time she steps onto the ice, she’s continuing to get better and better and gaining more confidence,” Schuler said. “You see her carrying the puck even more, you know, with every single time she plays. Again, I give a lot of credit to her teammates, you know, are so supportive of her, want her to be at her very best and are so encouraging. So it’s been a huge team effort to see her get to the point where she’s already at and she’s only going to keep getting better.”
9. Kudos, by the way, to UMD’s Student Athlete Advisory Committee. We heard Wednesday from women’s hockey seniors Clara Van Wieren and Hanna Baskin, who are co-presidents of the committee along with football senior Jacob Mogensen.
They partnered this fall with local non-profit Food Forward, along with First Ladies of Central Hillside, on a new initiative to provide holiday gift baskets to 36 low-income families, mostly single mothers, in Duluth. They also got to meet some of the families receiving the gift baskets.
The group — which featured representation from basically every UMD athletic team — got together to arrange the gift baskets and write out cards to go with each of them. Members of the group also had a chance to volunteer in the Food Forward kitchen this week and get some first-hand experience of the work that group does.
As someone who’s lived in this area my whole life, it’s unbelievably cool to see these UMD athletes making such a positive difference in the community. They come here to get an education and compete athletically, but it’s what they do in their spare time that can make such an impact. And it’s not only on the people they’re helping.
“I tell my family about some of the things we’re doing,” Baskin said, “and they just say it’s amazing how UMD has given us these opportunities, how the honors program has given us these opportunities, and how it just creates such a different learning experience outside of just the classroom. (Tuesday) night was just so rewarding. Getting to see the impact that we were making on families and talk to them ourselves.”
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7:30 pregame Friday, 5:30 Saturday from Tempe. Yes, I’ll drag myself away from the pool.
Back before the game Friday with lines and some pictures of Mullett Arena.
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