Friday was one of those nights. UMD controlled large chunks of the game's five-on-five play, but Western goalie Cameron Rowe was outstanding, and the Bulldogs struggled to finish some glorious scoring chances. Meanwhile, it felt like every UMD turnover or coverage breakdown led to a goal. Defenseman Joey Pierce was eje...

For UMD, this is a significant weekend. The Bulldogs have shown clear and obvious signs of improvement, especially over the last three games. Western Michigan -- both in terms of its overall talent and its frenetic style -- is a different kind of challenge than the Bulldogs have seen to this point. As Scott Sandelin po...

For the second time this season, the UMD men's and women's teams are home on the same weekend for series. (If you're wondering, there are either three or four more such weekends, counting the first weekend of January -- when the women play Thursday-Friday and the men Friday-Saturday -- and depending on if the women are...

OXFORD, Ohio -- UMD coach Scott Sandelin has talked a lot about this team needing to learn how to win. The younger players are learning everything at this level, the older players -- to be blunt -- mostly haven't won here. Yet. It's why I asked about Joe Molenaar's presence on the team. Four years at St. Cloud State, f...

OXFORD, Ohio -- When a strong start didn't lead to any notable offense or goals for UMD Friday, the Bulldogs slowly began to struggle to generate the same kind of offensive push. UMD's bottom six forwards helped turn a nothing period into a two-goal lead late, and the Bulldogs rode that momentum to a 5-0 win over Miami...

OXFORD, Ohio -- A key stretch of games begins here for UMD. After playing legitimate national title contenders in Minnesota and North Dakota over a three-series homestand (and we needn't speak any further of the results), the Bulldogs now play their next 11 games against teams that range from "legitimate NCAA Tour...

OXFORD, Ohio -- If the start to this season feels awfully familiar to you despite this mostly unfamiliar roster, you're not hallucinating. Thanks to illness and injuries, UMD was never able to field its full and preferred lineup. Even if you remove Will Francis (cancer recurrence) and Dominic James (surgery on an upper...

One of the more disappointing aspects of Friday's 7-3 North Dakota win was the way the game played out. UMD started strong, dominating the first 100 seconds-plus of the first period and generating a breakaway chance for Anthony Menghini. The sophomore forward tallied his first career hat trick Friday, but none of those...

As the NCHC season begins, UMD continues the search for progress. Head coach Scott Sandelin believes his team has gotten better, but there's no doubt injuries are a setback. The Bulldogs will operate this weekend without two legitimate top nine forwards, one of whom (Max Plante) is unquestionably in the top six, and an...

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 s...

Couple things to look for in this game. Can UMD build off its best period of the season, which was the final 20 on Friday? The Bulldogs took full and complete control of the flow of play then, outshooting the visitors from Massachusetts 20-4 and attempting 32 shots to just 10. Yes, a three-minute power play helped, but...

Scott Sandelin has talked about every game being an opportunity for his young group to get better. And worry not, he still believes strongly in this team, to the point that he's now saying that unprompted. We'll see if they can take a step forward against Stonehill, which is off to a good start in its second full Divis...

Stonehill is a second-year Division I program. The Skyhawks won just twice last season while playing only nine home games against Division I opponents. Under first-year head coach David Berard, Stonehill has already taken down a pair of teams -- Merrimack and Lake Superior State -- on the road, and now this team that f...

A horror show of a first period preceded what turned into a far-from-boring series opener on Friday. Minnesota jumped all over UMD, taking a 4-0 lead and outshooting the home team 23-4 in the first 20 minutes. The teams traded goals in the second period before UMD attempted a valiant comeback that would fall two goals ...

It's been 13 years and a couple days since Minnesota and UMD last met for a two-game series in Duluth. You have to go back to Oct. 14-15 of 2011, with UMD coming off its first national championship and the Gophers suddenly looking up at their northern rivals. Minnesota won both of those games, and outside of a trip up ...

Part of coaching a young team is knowing when to push certain buttons. You can't over-praise them. Similarly, however, the riot act can't be read every time they have a bad night. And those bad nights? They're inevitable, especially when you face the number of older teams UMD will face throughout the season. But that d...

LOWELL, Mass. -- Before Friday's series opener, I asked UMD coach Scott Sandelin about the return of Will Francis to the Bulldog lineup, and what he thought of Francis' game Sunday against Manitoba. Sandelin went from that into talking about the difficult lineup decisions he and his staff are facing in the early going ...

LOWELL, Mass. -- They're never perfect, especially in October. Sometimes you just have to find a way at the end. That's what UMD did on Friday, riding 36 saves from freshman goalie Adam Gajan -- making his first collegiate start -- to a 4-2 win over UMass-Lowell at the Tsongas Center. Let's get it. 9 THOUGHTS 1. Gajan ...

LOWELL, Mass. -- Coaches love early-season road trips for the "team bonding" aspects of them. Get on the road, and all the players have to do is hang around each other and focus on the task at hand. For UMD, it's doubly valuable here in Massachusetts. 12 newcomers, 11 freshmen, and this is the Bulldogs' only ...

TEWKSBURY, Mass. -- After a long travel day (one made longer when you cross a time zone and lose an hour), we're settled in out east. For this edition of UMD, it's a completely unfamiliar foe, one the Bulldogs are playing on a return trip that is four years overdue. Here's what happened. UMass-Lowell was in Duluth for ...