OMAHA, Neb. — Bye weeks are weird.
Everyone thinks it’s a great chance for a team to get healthy and reset, and to work on a few things.
“I’ve done this a long time,” UMD men’s head coach Scott Sandelin said this week, as his team prepares to return from a bye to battle Omaha. “I always thought bye weeks were great opportunities to really, really work on things. But it’s amazin. The guys are, when there’s not a game to play, their mindset isn’t where it normally is. So we gave them a couple days off (last week).”
Now it’s back to work. Spirits were high at practice Wednesday, held at the Heritage Center because Amsoil Arena has a concert Thursday night. Then it was on the road south.
9 THOUGHTS
1. The Bulldogs also spent most of their bye battling injuries and illness. UMD did have 25 players on the ice for practice Wednesday (freshman forward Trevor Stachowiak and senior defenseman Will Francis were unaccounted for), and Sandelin said freshman forward Harper Bentz (out the two weeks before break with an upper-body injury) should be available Friday in Omaha.
But the head coach also noted that players were in and out of practice last week because of various injuries and illnesses. Bugs have been going around the building — both the men’s and women’s teams have been affected — because it’s that time of year, right?
Sandelin also noted the team had a great experience with its annual outdoor practice, held last weekend at Portman.
“I thought it was good for them to just have another just unstructured day. It’s the last weekend before you’re actually done that they have off. Because we have five weekends in playoffs and you either keep playing or you don’t. So I think they enjoyed it. They had a little team thing there. Weather cooperated, snow came later, so that was good.”
2. UMD’s power play has come around after a bit of an unsteady start to the season. The power play went scoreless for seven straight games (17 total chances), but bounced back to go 6-for-22 over four games before going 0-for-3 in the Saturday loss to Denver.
Still, 25 percent over a five-game stretch is a nice way to rebound from a drought.
Assistant coach Cody Chupp, who runs the power play, believes continuity is playing a role.
“Having Max (Plante) back, I’d be crazy to tell you that hasn’t been a huge impact for us, because it has been. And obviously having Max, Zam (Plante), and Shogs (Jayson Shaugabay) on the same power play, playing five on five together, it’s helped us immensely. They’re building chemistry through their five on five. And then you take one of the defenders off the ice and there’s just more time and space and more opportunities for those guys to do what they do best.
“Adding Cal Arnott to that power play (unit) has been good for it. I think Cal fits in really well with that group. Aaron (Pionk) moving to the top, he’s done a good job up there. That power play found a little bit of a rhythm.
“For me, one of the biggest things that I would say is, you look at the chances that they haven’t scored on a couple posts two weekends ago. Some opportunities, wide open nets that we didn’t capitalize on. It’s important that we understand that creating momentum is just as important sometimes. You’re going to fail probably 70 to 80 percent of the time on the power play, but if you’re creating momentum, it helps us in the long run. So that’s the biggest thing is making sure that we have the right mindset, we don’t complicate things and we are creating momentum every time we’re out there.”
3. Omaha and Denver made history last weekend, needing a 16-round shootout to decide the extra NCHC standings point after a 4-4 tie last Friday.
Omaha captain and Northlander Nolan Krenzen scored the winning goal in the 16th round of the shootout, with just three skaters on each team left without a chance to participate in the seemingly never-ending affair.
“What a night,” Omaha coach Mike Gabinet said. “What a way to come up with two points.”
Most coaches will draw up their shootout plans before the game, but they don’t list out the entire roster when they do it. Maybe four or five rounds. Gabinet said he went a lot off feel after that.
“You put your first four that you’re pretty confident with,” he said. “It could depend on a pre-scout with a goalie, or who’s been doing well in practice, or which hand you’d like to have as a shooter, depending on which goal you’re facing. But then after that comes down to mostly feel. Sometimes it’s even who you’re looking at on the bench.”
Gabinet joked he talked to his mother after the game, and her first question was “Who picks the shooters?”
You’re talking to him, Mom.
Krenzen scored the winner, which was a cool moment, because his brother Lane played four years at Denver and a bunch of family and friends were on hand to see it.
(Denver won Saturday 11-2, but we won’t talk about that. Sandelin called it an “anomaly,” and speaking as someone who had it on until it was 6-2, I would have to agree.)
4. Krenzen grew up in the Twin Ports, and the Omaha graduate defenseman lists Twig as his hometown for a reason.
Twig’s excellent outdoor lake facility — adjacent to Grand Lake Town Hall — is where Krenzen grew up, and it’s home to many of the great hockey memories from his formative years.
“That’s where I grew up,” Krenzen said, “and that’s why I changed my hometown from Duluth to Twig, honestly, because I want to pay a little more homage to where I started hockey, and honestly, my earliest memories of hockey were probably not even that much skating related, more of climbing the snow banks, not taking my skates off and fighting kids on those.”
Krenzen played two years at Duluth Marshall before heading to juniors. He credits late Marshall hockey coach Brendan Flaherty for a lot.
“He’s one of the best coaches I’ve ever had,” Krenzen said. “I know I can speak for a lot of other Marshall hockey players, but he was extremely influential upon me and my brother. He brought me in there. I was young coming out of bantams. He taught me how to be a man, how to be a better hockey player. And I can’t thank him enough for it.”
5. Omaha made the NCAA Tournament last season, in large part, by going 16-3 in one-goal games. The Mavericks then won the Ice Breaker in Vegas by beating UMass and Minnesota, both in overtime.
Omaha then lost six straight games, four of them by one goal and a fifth by two goals only after a late empty-net goal.
“At one point we were 2-6,” Gabinet said, “and we didn’t feel like a 2-6 team, and I think for exactly that reason, it’s just they were one goal games as you know, in hockey can go either way at times. And it wasn’t like we were getting blown out or things were going drastically wrong. I thought we did a really good job of staying even-keeled and sticking with the process and keeping finding ways to not discredit the losses, but also just keep on staying positive and working on our craft and trying to improve.”
Omaha lost 3-2 to Lindenwood on Dec. 13. Since that day, the Mavericks are 8-2-1, with a 2-2 record in one-goal games (Omaha also has a pair of two-goal wins with the aid of late empty-net goals).
“Sure enough, then it turns for us the other way here in the second half,” Gabinet said. “So lots of learning experiences. It’s not fun to come on the wrong end of those, but you also, if you can stay even-keeled and keep building and keep growing, good things can happen down the stretch for you.”
“I think just that belief in our structure, belief in our team and one another,” Krenzen said. “We have so many new guys this year, which I know a lot of teams go through that, but I think just that transition. I think we’re just finally seeing the result of that now.”
6. There is plenty of intrigue surrounding this weekend’s NCHC action. First-year and first-place Arizona State is home to face Denver, with Friday’s game on CBS Sports Network (8pm Central, 7pm Mountain, 9pm Eastern, 10:30pm Newfoundland). Of course, it was the teams’ first meetings of the season where Denver suffered its first losses of the season and Arizona State first really served notice of its ability to compete in this conference. Denver has to be feeling pretty good about itself after the aforementioned 11 unanswered against Omaha, so we will see if the Pioneers can carry any of that over.
Elsewhere, St. Cloud State is at a Western Michigan team that still has not lost a conference game in regulation. The Huskies, meanwhile, are winless in ten straight NCHC games (0-9-1) going back to mid-December. The only point SCSU has picked up in that stretch was Friday’s tie/shootout loss at home against North Dakota.
Colorado College plays at UND this weekend. The Tigers picked up an emotional overtime win over Western Michigan Saturday on Brett Link’s incredible winning goal.
Bret Link has mastered the hockey equivalent of the bat toss#CCTigers pic.twitter.com/RnJiB1YhtW
— CC Hockey (@CCTigerHKY) February 2, 2025
UND got five points at SCSU while playing without captain Louis Jamernik V, who was a healthy scratch for both games. He’s expected back this weekend.
7. Despite losing both games last weekend, there’s little doubt the UMD women got better with their performances.
No. 1 Wisconsin was taken to the limit both Friday and Saturday, picking up a pair of 2-1 wins while trailing in both games (first time that UW has trailed in both games of a series since Nov. 15-16 at Ohio State, a series that ended in a split).
After a tough weekend defensively at St. Thomas, UMD seemed to buy in to a defense-first game plan against the high-powered Badgers. Were it not for a few glorious chances just missed, it sure appeared to work.
“I thought we took a major step defensively against Wisconsin,” head coach Laura Schuler said. “That was something that we wanted to clean up. There were parts in our game defensively the week before that we got exposed on. So we really focused in on those areas and I really liked what we were able to do against Wisconsin.”
This week, UMD heads to Bemidji State. The Beavers beat Minnesota State 3-2 in overtime last Friday, snapping a ten-game WCHA losing streak. But Schuler isn’t fooled by BSU’s 5-23-1 overall record.
“They’re relentless and they don’t stop. And when I look at how they played other top teams in our league, they’re still getting a ton of opportunities, putting up a lot of shots. It’s even if some of the top teams are up by a few goals, you look at the shots and they’re right there. They’re tenacious. They, like I said, they don’t back off.”
8. The UMD women have been running with a short roster basically all season. Forward Nina Steigauf left the team after opening weekend, forward Gabby Krause never played and eventually announced her medical retirement from hockey, freshman forward Reece Logan was lost for the second half of the season, and sophomore forward Payton Holloway missed the Wisconsin series and will be out this weekend as well, per Schuler.
Throw in the illness that ravaged the team during the Ohio State weekend in January, and UMD has been battling as of late. Schuler has talked about how much she loves this group, their attitude and work ethic is top-notch.
And it’s had to be that way.
This weekend will be no different. UMD has dressed seven defenders for most of its games this season, but will be down to five for this weekend’s series at Bemidji State. Senior Nina Jobst-Smith (Germany) and sophomore Ida Karlsson (Sweden) are with their respective national teams, trying to get qualified for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy.
(Good luck to both. Germany and Sweden are both hosting four-team, round-robin events that run through Sunday. Each won its opening game on Thursday, with Germany beating Austria 2-0 and Sweden knocking off Norway 3-0. Tournaments run through Sunday, with the group winner heading into Group B at the Olympics next year.)
Schuler was asked if any forward has been getting training on defense in case of emergency, and she immediately volunteered that such duty has fallen on co-captain Clara Van Wieren. Schuler said Van Wieren will be available to move to defense in the event of an injury or if a defender takes a penalty.
“It’s natural for her as a center being down low,” Schuler said. “She knows what to do, and she knows the game really well. We feel really confident in her abilities back there.”
Junior Tova Henderson joked that Van Wieren told her and Hanna Baskin during a drill that it was “really easy.”
“We looked at each other and said we should probably step it up,” Henderson cracked.
(In case you’re curious, Schuler said freshman Zoey Krock has gotten some shifts at center in practice this week, in case Van Wieren is needed on defense and has to miss a shift up front.)
9. This immediately made me think of the Ledyard Classic in late 2017, when UMD had five players in the World Juniors and went out to Dartmouth for a pair of games. During the title game against Dartmouth, the Bulldogs were down to four defensemen because Nick McCormack was inexplicably given an unrescindable game DQ the day before and was ineligible to play. Sandelin moved Sammy Spurrell back to defense, and he gave his team some important shifts.
“We had backwards skating contest first to see who could skate backwards,” Sandelin joked. “No, Sammy had played it before. So we kind of knew that. There’s (always) a couple guys that have started there and either moved to forward or vice versa.
“And he was that team guy. He didn’t care, just play me. And again, knowing it’s not gonna be probably a long-term thing, I think he focused on what he needed to do and gave us some really good shifts. He was a smart hockey player, number one, so that helps, right? Played in the middle of the rink.”
Sandelin said there were a lot of guys who were “definitely afraid” of playing back there, but he trusted Spurrell.
By the way, the coach didn’t want to get into the topic when asked who on this year’s team could be a candidate to make such a move in a pinch.
“There’s some guys that could do it. We don’t need to get there. We’ll play with five.”
(By the way, Aaron Pionk nominated Carter Loney.)
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6:30pm pregames both Friday and Saturday from Omaha on KDAL. Friday is apparently Country and Cowbells Night. None of that sounds appealing, but we’ll try to get through without van Goghing ourselves.
Women’s games in Bemidji are at 6pm Friday and 3pm Saturday, and as always you can watch on Big Ten Plus. We’ll have the home games with Minnesota State next weekend on KDAL.
Back pregame with lines from Baxter Arena.
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