COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — But not for the visitors.
Colorado College beat a short-handed UMD team 7-2 Friday night. This will be somewhat short and not at all sweet to summarize.
9 THOUGHTS
1. Let’s start with some updates. If you didn’t listen Friday, you might not have caught me covering for an earlier mistake. Normally, we get injury updates from Scott Sandelin at his Wednesday media conference. Associate coach Adam Krause filled in on Wednesday with Sandelin unavailable, and both Matt Wellens and I forgot to ask for updates.
Forwards Harper Bentz and Carter Loney left last Saturday’s game against St. Cloud State in the first period with upper body injuries, neither returned to the game. As it turned out, neither of them is here in Colorado with the team.
Sandelin told me before the game that they will see where both players are at on Monday and assess any chance they may have of returning next weekend against Denver. Certainly seems like a sliver of good news, since neither player has been deemed to be out long-term. Freshman forward Trevor Stachowiak does remain out long-term, as does senior defenseman Will Francis after his recurrence of cancer (we obviously continue to wish him the best).
(Also want to throw out some best wishes to longtime UMD equipment guy Chris Garner. He’s here in Colorado, but was unable to work the game Friday night. Hopefully he’s feeling better soon as well. Tip of the cap to Scott Aldrich from USA Hockey, who filled in for Garner on the UMD bench Friday night.)
2. The game started okay for UMD. Some up and down action, some offensive zone time for UMD, and a near goal at the UMD end on a puck that squirted by Klayton Knapp but was swept off the line by Adam Kleber, but the biggest takeaway of the first 12ish minutes of the first period was that UMD missed on two early power play chances and didn’t generate a ton of quality.
We’ve talked about this kind of stuff. These games are so often played on the margins — yes, it can be acknowledged that this particular game ended up not being played on the margins — and little things are going to matter. Get an early power play goal, even generate some momentum, and this could have been a different night.
Instead, UMD got sloppy in its own zone and left Noah Laba of all people wide open in front of Knapp. Goalie made a hell of a stop on the first try, but Laba popped the rebound over a prone Knapp and under the bar to open the scoring. 20 seconds after UMD’s second power play ended, the Tigers had a 1-0 lead.
At the end of a four-on-four, Gleb Veremyev rifled a wrist shot over Knapp’s right shoulder off the rush to make it a 2-0 lead late in the first. It was just sloppy tracking back by UMD, leaving Veremyev to skate down the wing by himself. I’ll let the goaltending experts decide if that one could have been played better by the keeper.
3. Colorado College blew the game open early in the second, scoring on its first two shots and chasing Knapp. Both were mostly unscreened shots from distance that found a way through, one from Fisher Scott and the other from Max Burkholder to make it 4-0 on the power play. Then Laba got his second 2:31 after Zach Sandy entered the game, on the first shot Sandy faced, an unscreened shot from the top of the left faceoff circle.
Yes, the Tigers scored three goals on three shots to start the second period. I don’t like labeling goals as “bad goals” from a goalie’s perspective. Been pretty open about the fact I’ve been doing this for 20 years and absolutely despise trying to be critical of that position.
But the shots that went in to start the second period were not a good enough quality for any team to go three-for-three. Giving up one or two would have been suboptimal having already gone down 2-0, but all three going in to basically seal that game 26 minutes into it can’t happen.
4. It was a chase UMD had little chance to win. Ty Hanson got the Bulldogs on the board shorthanded late in the second, but Stanley Cooley tipped in a long shot that leaked through Sandy 14 seconds later, making it 6-1 after two.
Any chance of a dramatic rally faded when UMD squandered 1:52 of five-on-three time to start the third period. Hey, get a couple of goals there, and you never know.
Instead, five shots attempted, none of them on goal, in that stretch. It came six days after UMD blew a long five-on-three against St. Cloud State, with Sandelin bemoaning before Friday’s game “I don’t think we shot the puck enough again.”
And that quote came from a five-on-three that took seven shots, four of them getting on goal. I’m sure Sandelin was less than thrilled with what he saw Friday.
5. For the first time in a while, discipline was a problem for UMD on Friday. The Bulldogs ended up taking eight penalties for 16 minutes, the most minutes UMD has taken in a game since Nov. 23. UMD had taken 22 penalty minutes in five games since returning from break, and only 36 total in seven games since the start of the series in Arizona Dec. 6.
Four of those penalties came in a stretch between the last minute of the first and about 15 minutes into the second period.
CC scored a pair of power play goals in the second period, but the penalty kill did what it could to keep the Bulldogs in the game. UMD was only outshot 7-5 on the Tigers’ power plays, and the Bulldogs did a good job limiting the looks the Tigers got down low. The first goal was a center-point shot, the second a net-front tip that was Colorado College’s best power play look all night.
Either way, UMD needs to play a more disciplined game. No team — especially in this league — can be put on the power play as much as the Tigers were while this game was still in doubt.
6. UMD has plenty to clean up defensively. Yeah, the seven goals, even if you want to put a lot of that on the goaltending. Expected goals were not friendly to UMD’s goalies on Friday, claiming that Colorado College had 3.1 expected and got seven. But it actually could have been worse. The Tigers hit four goalposts in the game, three of them coming on shots that beat Knapp and Sandy clean.
Kaidan Mbereko had a good night in goal for Colorado, making some key saves early and earning the last 13ish minutes of the game off.
But improvement going into Saturday starts in the defensive zone. From the goalies out.
What won’t be happening is any significant personnel changes. Loney and Bentz are in Duluth. Adam Gajan did not dress Friday, and there was no update offered on his status before the game. Luke Bast was the only healthy skater out of the lineup.
7. First-year NCHC member Arizona State took the league lead on Friday, thanks to a 6-3 win in St. Cloud. The Sun Devils trailed 3-1 before scoring the final five goals of the game, led by two goals and an assist from Ryan Kirwan. Greg Powers and crew are offering a hell of a story in the desert.
ASU has sole possession of the top spot because Western Michigan needed overtime to beat North Dakota 3-2 in Grand Forks. Alex Bump tied the game shortly after UND took the lead in the third period, then Bump scored a power play goal in overtime to win it for the Broncos. Western is one point back of Arizona State with two games in hand.
Elsewhere, Omaha used four different goal scorers to win at Miami 4-1. Simon Latkoczy continued his strong play in net with 25 saves, and Miami remains winless in league play.
8. Back in Duluth, Ohio State used a two-goal first period to beat the UMD women 3-1 at Amsoil Arena.
Caitlin Kraemer scored the only goal for UMD, a beauty of a power play goal off a faceoff win.
But the story of the night was sophomore goalie Eve Gascon. On a night where UMD was missing top-four defender Ida Karlsson to illness (and indications are she isn’t the only one on the team fighting through the crud), Gascon made a program-record (men’s or women’s) 34 saves in the second period, finishing with a career-high 58 (four off the women’s program record).
UMD needs to play a stronger game in front of Gascon, but only conceding twice on 60 shots against a team like Ohio State shows again how good Gascon is (the third goal was an empty-net tally late).
9. But penalties remain a story for the women. I’m sure head coach Laura Schuler is sick and tired of being sick and tired of us asking about penalties, but UMD is the most-penalized team in the WCHA and took too many again on Friday, this time six penalties for 12 minutes.
(Schuler talked somewhat openly on Wednesday about what amounts to a double-standard, saying that a hook on UMD isn’t a hook when other teams do it. In her defense, I do think it’s funny that three of the league’s top teams — UMD, Minnesota, and Ohio State — are the three most penalized in the conference. And this isn’t the first time it’s happened. Last year, three of the four most penalized teams in the league were Minnesota, UMD, and Wisconsin.)
Ohio State put 21 shots on Gascon during five power plays, scoring once.
UMD remains fourth in the PairWise rankings, but can win the season series from Ohio State with at least a point Saturday afternoon.
_______
7pm start for Saturday’s game here. We hit the air at 6:30pm. Back pregame with the lines and anything else that might be interesting.
Comments