GRAND FORKS, N.D. — UMD coach Scott Sandelin has talked a few times this season about wanting to see his team shoot pucks more.
It isn’t rocket science. Pucks can’t be passed into the net, largely because even a pass would be labeled as a shot if it actually went in.
And for a team that has nearly as many shutout losses (four) as it does games where it has scored four or more goals (five), a shot mentality is probably a good thing to have.
This UMD team does not always have it, however, and it has helped exasperate its offensive problems.
Facing a team with the second lowest save percentage in Division I, UMD didn’t do enough to make North Dakota starting goalie Drew DeRidder’s job difficult, and the Fighting Hawks handed UMD a 4-2 defeat at Ralph Engelstad Arena.
8 THOUGHTS
1. The Bulldogs attempted all of 41 shots Friday night. A grand total of eight (8) of those came in the third period, a frame that saw UMD trail for all 20 minutes, most of the time down by a pair of goals after Louis Jamernik V had basically an open net after a good bounce 43 seconds in.
Turns out that when you funnel pucks and bodies to the front of the net, good things can indeed happen, as they did on all three of the goals that beat UMD starter Matthew Thiessen.
The other team had simply way too many instances where either the puck doesn’t get there, or the bodies don’t get there. It was enough of a problematic combination to prevent UMD from ever leading a game it played at least reasonably well in.
Again.
2. So what’s happening? Unfortunately, it isn’t one thing. Players are losing position battles and are getting boxed out in front. There are instances where players go hard to the net, but they don’t park themselves there and instead sag to the side of the cage, they call it a fly-by in the biz. It feels like there are times that the play is there to be made, but if one player doesn’t read it the right way, nothing good comes out of it.
(I can’t begin to tell you how many times this season a UMD player has won a battle or a race below the goal line, then gotten the puck to the front of the net, only for there to not be a teammate within ten feet of the slot, so all the hard work below the goal line simply turns into the puck going the other way, sometimes for a transition opportunity.)
To make matters somewhat worse, when a player can get in good position at the goal mouth, the puck doesn’t usually get there because someone blocks a shot or pass.
“We want to wait for the perfect shot and we didn’t get it,” Sandelin told Matt Wellens of the Duluth News Tribune after Friday’s game (Matt is ill and not here, and we send best wishes to him as he hopefully will bounce back soon). “The next thing you know it gets poked off our stick. Everyone is worried about scoring on every shot. The mentality has got to be to funnel pucks there, get guys there (to the net). Stay in there and battle and try and create second chances, especially at the end when you have an extra guy.”
It’s been that kind of season. Friday was the seventh of UMD’s 12 losses that have come by one goal (or two with an empty net goal by the adversary). A 4-7 record in those games might give you a good idea how UMD got itself in this bind.
3. Friday’s loss was the fifth straight in NCHC play for UMD. The Bulldogs have picked up just two of 15 NCHC standings points in the last five games, making it clear why UMD has fallen to seventh in the league standings, six points clear of eighth-place Miami and two back of UND in sixth, a spot UMD can reclaim with a regulation win Saturday in the series finale.
That five-game conference losing streak is UMD’s longest since joining the NCHC when the league launched in 2013. The Bulldogs’ last streak of five league losses came in their final WCHA season, 2012-13. UMD lost five straight from Feb. 1-15, then tied at Bemidji State before losing and tying the following week at Minnesota and sweeping Alabama-Huntsville to break what was an eight-game winless drought.
4. As weird as it is to see UMD in this position, it’s also doubly frustrating, because it feels like UMD has played well enough to win for most of these games. Friday was no exception, as the Bulldogs had multiple quality shifts in the North Dakota zone, one good enough to force UND coach Brad Berry to take his timeout in the second period. And UMD kept coming after that.
But as the game went on, the shot mentality went farther and farther into the rear-view mirror. And North Dakota got some of its lines going and generated some quality forecheck of its own. The difference, of course, was that UND turned those quality shifts into goals by Gavin Hain (second period) and Jamernik (third) to open up a lead, while UMD struggled to get pucks and/or bodies to the net until the Bulldogs simply stopped shooting as the third period went on.
Luke Mylymok (six) and Isaac Howard (four) combined for ten shots on goal. UMD’s top line of Dominic James, Luke Loheit, and Ben Steeves combined for ten shot attempts (Loheit had two on goal, Steeves one, and James none). With the minutes they play, this isn’t a good way to go. The three had zone time, but they didn’t create chances for whatever reason. May have been a pass that missed, or a shot that was passed up on, or it could have been there wasn’t enough of a commitment to getting to the front of the net. But UMD needs to have all its lines going, especially against a team like North Dakota that defends as hard as it does.
Sandelin has, on multiple occasions in the last two games, put Cole Spicer’s line (with Howard and Luke Johnson) on the ice late in games. Fourth line, shmorth line, those three combined to get eight pucks on goal Friday night.
5. Freshman Kyle Bettens continued his second half surge with two goals Friday. The first came after Bettens took a slapshot from the right circle that DeRidder got with the blocker, but instead of getting the puck to the corner or up into the mesh, the rebound of the initial hard shot found its way back to Bettens, who smacked it home to cut UND’s lead to 2-1.
Then in the third, Bettens scored off the rush when Quinn Olson found him with a rink-wide feed, and Bettens buried it by a diving DeRidder.
While Bettens’ confidence is clearly soaring, there just don’t appear to be enough players who have it going for them at the moment. With Thiessen pulled late, UMD attempted just one shot (blocked) and passed up a number of opportunities to get pucks to the net. Feels like a safe bet a few clips of passed-up shots will find their way into a team meeting Saturday.
6. For those who missed Friday’s pregame, UMD played once again without freshman forward Jack Smith, who was injured in the Dec. 31 exhibition against St. Thomas and has not played since. Smith is on the trip and was available Friday, according to Sandelin, and my sense is that Smith will draw back in Saturday. Not sure who will sit in his place, but Sandelin said Wednesday it was likely Smith would return as a winger, at least for the time being, after getting some time in the middle before break. The coaches are going to have a hard time taking any of the young guys out right now, that’s for sure.
Sophomore defenseman Will Francis played for the second time since suffering a lower body injury in early December, and I think he is continuing to progress nicely, largely picking up where he left off before he was hurt.
7. Something to perhaps file away: UMD was competitive on faceoffs for two periods Friday, only trailing 23-22 after 40 minutes against a UND team that’s always pretty good to dominant on draws.
Third period: 11-4 UND.
There are faceoffs that simply don’t end up being important, and I know some people strongly dislike how much I harp on this stat. But look no further than UND’s first and third goals Friday. First goal was a power play goal where UND won the draw to start, and the puck didn’t once leave UMD’s zone until the referee carried it out to center ice after Riese Gaber gave the Fighting Hawks a 1-0 lead. Third goal was off a UND faceoff win where UMD barely, if ever, touched the puck over the first 43 seconds of the third period.
And losing 73 percent of the faceoffs while trying to stage a two-goal comeback is probably a bad recipe.
8. Elsewhere in the NCHC on Friday, St. Cloud State scored four in the second and went on to a 7-3 win over league-leading Denver in St. Cloud. Jami Krannila scored twice, while Josh Luedtke and Dylan Anhorn had two assists apiece in support of Dominic Basse, who stopped 28 shots. In Omaha, the Mavericks beat Miami 4-1 thanks to a three-goal second period, with tallies from Jimmy Glynn, Jake Pivonka, and Matt Miller. And in Colorado Springs, it was Western Michigan picking up a 4-1 win over Colorado College. Cameron Rowe made 27 saves, while goals by Zak Galambos and Hugh Larkin 30 seconds apart late in the second helped WMU open up a 3-0 lead.
Rematches for everyone Saturday. Our pregame comes at 5:30 from The Ralph.
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