OMAHA, Neb. — From Peyton Manning’s favorite non-NFL city, right?
When the schedule was released last spring, we all had this stretch of games circled for various reasons. Four straight home games in the NCHC is difficult, no matter who the opponents are, but back-to-back trips to Omaha and Grand Forks are just not ideal for a lot of reasons. UMD doesn’t fly to Omaha like some teams do (and like Omaha did to Duluth in November), because the Duluth to Minneapolis to Omaha connection makes the day about as long as it would be if UMD just took a bus. So the Bulldogs got here Wednesday night and got in a practice Thursday afternoon. UMD will bus home immediately after Saturday’s game, then get back on the bus for North Dakota Thursday afternoon.
Throw in that UMD is down to 12 healthy forwards at the moment, and it’s easy to work the mind into worries about guys staying fresh during this tough run of games (UMD will host St. Cloud State and Western Michigan in consecutive weekends before its final bye week of the season).
Head coach Scott Sandelin talked last week about shortening or maybe even wiping out practices, depending on how his players felt. Sandelin, his coaches, and UMD’s tremendous athletic trainers have a good handle on this type of thing, so there’s no reason to think anyone will run the players into the ice.
With UMD 30th in the PairWise entering this weekend series in Omaha, it’s a major stretch for the Bulldogs’ chances of being a factor in March (without winning the NCHC playoffs, obviously). The Bulldogs hit bottom at 42nd in the PWR (at least that I remember seeing) and have already made some significant headway. However, with non-conference play wrapped up, it’ll be harder to make headway without winning games. Get hot here, and UMD can go from afterthought to bubble team very quickly. However, not getting hot is only going to make the task taller and taller.
8 THOUGHTS
1. Can UMD get hot? We saw some of the recipe last weekend against Bemidji State, a team that leads the CCHA in points despite having played only 12 league games while most of the league has played 14. The Beavers pushed back hard in the second period, but UMD got confident goalkeeping from Zach Stejskal and two power play goals when they were really needed to help expand the Bulldogs’ lead.
“They were probably the better team, but we were optimistic,” Sandelin said of that middle frame. Bemidji State got a late goal to cut a 4-1 lead to 4-2, but while Sandelin wasn’t thrilled with it, he wanted to see how his group responded.
“Were we going to come out, be down, and let Bemidji take that momentum?,” he said. “Or are we going to come out, flush it, and play a good period?
“I thought it (the third period) was probably one of our better periods of the weekend.”
It was a quality response to a shot of adversity in a game UMD should have felt like it was controlling. Stejskal, who was peppered with 14 shots in the second period, only faced four in the third as UMD closed out a 5-2 win and did it the right way.
More than anything, that’s the path. UMD is not a dynamic offensive team. Score on the power play, stay out of the box, and limit the adversary’s chances at five on five. Yes, it’s easier said than done, but we saw enough flashes of it last weekend to make one think it could be sustainable going forward.
2. One UMD player is closer to healthy. Defenseman Will Francis (lower body) is likely to play this weekend, Sandelin said, but the head coach pointed out that Francis might not play both games.
“He’s getting there, but he’s available,” said Sandelin of Francis.
With freshman Jack Smith still out up front, and sophomore Kyler Kleven still working his way back from a preseason injury, UMD traveled with its 12 healthy forwards and all eight defensemen for this weekend, along with all three goalies.
3. UMD’s special teams are heating up. Since Nov. 11, the UMD penalty kill is 32-for-36, a solid 88.9 percent. Since Nov. 12, UMD’s power play is 9-for-26, or 34.6 percent.
Sandelin pointed out this week that the power play hasn’t experienced the same upheaval the five-on-five groups have this season. It hasn’t been ideal, mind you, but a lot of UMD’s changes have been switching players on power play units, instead of running completely different people on the ice when the Bulldogs have numerical superiority.
Bemidji State had five power plays last weekend. No goals, three shots on goal, and nearly conceded a short-handed goal to Dominic James in the Friday game. It probably isn’t a coincidence that UMD won faceoffs to start four of those five power plays.
“I think one of the things that hurt us the most in the first half was that (losing faceoffs),” said associate head coach Adam Krause, who is the architect of UMD’s kill. “When you start in structure right off the penalty kill, it puts a lot of pressure on your killers. Especially when they have maybe a faceoff play that they run, and guys aren’t quite in the positions they need to be in to defend it. It’s something that we’ve harped on, and give a lot of credit to those guys for working on that in practice. Those are the fine lines.”
4. Sandelin brought up discipline multiple times heading into the Bemidji series. The Bulldogs are still averaging nearly 12 penalty minutes per game, even after taking just one penalty in Saturday’s win and being assessed ten PIMs for the series.
That discipline will be tested this weekend against one of the best power plays around. Omaha is basically a safe bet to rank in the top 20 nationally every year, with very few exceptions in Mike Gabinet’s time there, as an assistant and now as the head coach.
Gabinet, as hockey people are known for doing, deflected praise and instead heaped it upon his players and assistant coach Dave Noel-Bernier, who handles a lot of the power play now.
“It’s about practicing it and putting the time in,” said Gabinet. “You have to spend the time on your pre-scout and spending time on it before practice, during practice, and after practice.”
But Sandelin keenly pointed out this trend covers Gabinet’s time working at Omaha under Dean Blais.
“They love to shoot the puck,” said Sandelin. “It’s such an easy thing, right? But they have a lot of guys on the power play who love to shoot the puck. When you shoot the puck, you create opportunities for retrievals and breakdowns on a penalty kill. So as simple as it sounds, that’s where they’re really good.”
Shot mentality.
“You gotta sell it a little bit to the players,” said Gabinet. “I like to talk about some analytics of where the goals are scored and how they’re scored. If you give yourself an opportunity to reproduce those situations more than not, you’re going to be more successful. And I like to teach the power play from the PK’s perspective sometimes. Sometimes, even showing them what the penalty kill is trying to do gets their mind to really buy in to what we’re trying to do on the power play. At the end of the day, you’ve got to attack the net.”
5. Faceoff improvements continue for UMD. The Bulldogs won the faceoff game last weekend against Bemidji, and a good weekend in the circle has UMD now at 51.3 percent on faceoffs in its last eight games. In that stretch, James is over 60 percent (75-for-122 or 61.5 percent), Jesse Jacques is at 52.5 (64-for-122), Carter Loney is exactly 50 percent (62-for-124). Luke Loheit went 9-for-13 last weekend.
I asked Sandelin about the continued improvement in the circle, improvement he has been looking for throughout the season, and improvement his players have earned with a lot of focused work on faceoffs during the week. He pointed out the fact that most of UMD’s draw-takers are right handed, which creates challenges on the penalty kill considering that the team on the power play picks which side of the ice the faceoff happens to start.
Sandelin talked about the challenge that can present, with James being UMD’s only left-handed PK faceoff guy at the moment (Cole Spicer is left-handed and currently playing in the middle, but he isn’t in the penalty kill rotation right now). Jacques won faceoffs on both sides of the rink last weekend against Bemidji, with the help of fellow fifth-year Tanner Laderoute, who started most of those kills with Jacques. Those challenges are likely to continue this weekend. Omaha is 52.7 percent, 15th nationally, on faceoffs this season. Fifth year senior Jake Pivonka (55.4 percent) is left-handed. So is captain Nolan Sullivan (56.9 percent). Freshman Cameron Berg is counted on to win power play faceoffs and is, you guessed it, left-handed.
We might see James take some PK draws this weekend, only because we know Omaha is going to have lefties to pick from for those key situations.
6. The NCHC is back in full this weekend. Western Michigan plays a mammoth series at North Dakota. UND is seventh, but only five points back of third place Colorado College, with Western and UMD tied for fifth, two points back of CC. The Fighting Hawks have struggled big-time with the task of keeping the puck out of their net, but one outlier so far is the series North Dakota played in Kalamazoo. Western Michigan, which is averaging 4.23 goals per game, was held to two on the weekend, both in a 2-2 draw Dec. 9. UND won the Saturday game 3-0 on a 25-save shutout from Drew DeRidder, who has a save percentage of .882 this season (UND’s team save percentage is .873).
Since that loss, we’ve seen Western score *checks notes* SIXTEEN GOALS OVER TWO GAMES in winning the Great Lakes Invitational in Grand Rapids.
The Hawks need to reinstall whatever hex they placed on WMU’s attack this weekend, because if it doesn’t go well for North Dakota, it could start to look somewhat bleak for home ice.
7. Let’s see if Colorado College can pick up some big road points. The Tigers vaulted to third in the league with a pre-Christmas sweep of Omaha. An excessively difficult second half kicks off for Colorado in St. Cloud against the Huskies, who will honor legendary SCSU alum Matt Cullen on Saturday night.
The Tigers play Western Michigan and Denver four times each in the second half, along with series against North Dakota (home) and Omaha (road). If Kris Mayotte’s team is home for the first round of the NCHC playoffs, you should start etching his name on the Herb Brooks NCHC Coach of the Year trophy.
Also this weekend, Miami travels to Denver for a two-game series.
8. The UMD women return home this weekend to face Bemidji State. This comes after the Bulldogs’ historic sweep of Wisconsin last weekend in Madison, UMD’s first road series sweep of the Badgers since 2007.
“I feel like our team is playing at just a different level, different pace, the confidence and the way they’re showing up this week, it just feels different,” coach Maura Crowell said of the week of preparation off such big wins.
“Now we get ready for Bemidji and that’s a huge series for us.”
Before break, UMD dropped a shootout to St. Thomas, squandering two valuable WCHA standings points. Crowell said the team had a good reset over the holidays, and came back ready to go against a Wisconsin team that boasted the top scoring offense in the country before being held to one goal on 72 shots by UMD fifth year senior goalie Emma Soderberg.
Against a Bemidji State team that has just one WCHA win this season (four total), the mindset has to be right. Crowell has emphasized with her team that the Beavers will work hard, and if UMD allows itself to be outworked, trouble could be afoot.
Big points on the line, and it’s IceBreaker weekend, meaning lots of girls’ hockey players in town. Hoping to see good crowds for these games back in Duluth.
Here in Omaha, 7pm pregame Friday, 6:30pm Saturday. Join us on KDAL!
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