With two weekends left in the regular season, the UMD women’s hockey team already knows who it will face in a best-of-three WCHA quarterfinal series March 1-3.
It’s the same team the Bulldogs welcome to Amsoil Arena this weekend, the team it will try to clinch home ice in round one against.
St. Cloud State.
UMD needs three points by any means this weekend to clinch home ice for that first round series. Otherwise, it comes down to next weekend, when UMD heads to Minnesota and St. Cloud travels to Bemidji State.
At the same time, the UMD men are currently looking at an NCHC table that sees them paired with — you guessed it — St. Cloud State for a third straight season. Now, there are still four weekends to go in the regular season, in other words plenty of time for this to change.
As if this rivalry needed any more juice.
And if either of the women’s coaches need more info on this, all they have to do is ask their men’s team counterparts.
Anyway, four games on the radio this weekend. Let’s take a look.
8 THOUGHTS
1. Maura Crowell is a one-game-at-a-time type of coach. I mean, most coaches are, but Crowell’s consistent insistence is that her laser focus is sighted in only on what is next on the docket. For her Bulldog team, that’s a 3pm home date with St. Cloud State Friday afternoon.
That means there’s no discussion to be had about any potential weirdness when you face a team you know you’re about to face in two weeks with much higher stakes (that first-round series is almost certainly going to eliminate the loser from NCAA Tournament consideration).
“I’m just thinking about Friday and getting our team ready for that one game,” Crowell said Wednesday, “and I think that’s how we have to approach it. We’re still in the regular season, we’re still battling for points, we’re battling for home ice, we’re battling to get in the NCAA Tournament. The more you look at it, like this long term, four game, five game series, I think you let things slip. So we’re just trying to focus on one game at a time, knowing that we’re gonna see them in a couple of weeks.”
Second-year St. Cloud State coach Brian Idalski — former head man at North Dakota before that program was eliminated — is taking a slightly different approach, saying he and his staff have talked about how to play this weekend.
“It almost has more of a pro feel to it,” Idalski said. “We’ve looked at it, talked about how much do you show right away this weekend, how much do you leave in your bag for the playoff series itself.”
It’s an interesting conundrum, but surely both teams would much rather have to deal with that in two weeks while preparing to play at home, even when it’s a pretty short road trip like this one is.
2. UMD’s captain is closing in on history. As long as all goes well, graduate forward Mannon McMahon will set the program record by playing in her 166th consecutive game Saturday on Senior Day. That will break Anna Klein’s record of 165 straight games played.
(Naomi Rogge holds the program record for games played at 168.)
“It’s awesome,” Crowell said of the impending record. “I mean, that’s a warrior right there. you know, taking care of herself is critical to being able to play consecutive games and it doesn’t even guarantee it, right? So I think that’s a ton of experience in our captain and a great role model to everybody else of what it looks like to be a Bulldog hockey player off the ice, away from the rink, throughout the week, how she works and ultimately able to wear that jersey that many times for us.”
“People might take (staying healthy) for granted,” said senior forward Clara Van Wieren, “but it’s really amazing. You look at players who have been injured and have gone through so much so those of us who have been able to stay healthy and play consecutive games are just so blessed to be able to do so.”
Graduate forward Reece Hunt — the reigning WCHA Forward of the Week after a five-goal explosion last week against St. Thomas — said the work McMahon does away from games is paying off.
“She takes care of her body,” said Hunt. “She puts in extra work. She comes in on Sundays. She’s given herself the power to play all these games.”
3. Before UMD’s 4-3 loss at Omaha on Feb. 3, the Bulldogs’ last game before last week’s bye, coach Scott Sandelin said he wanted to see some urgency out of his team.
“I want some desperation from our guys,” he said. “I want them to play like this is the last game of the year. We’ve got a break coming up, and we don’t want this team (Omaha) to get by us. We need to play like it’s the last game of the year and play with that desperation but yet composure.”
Yes, the Bulldogs’ late rally fell short, but did Sandelin see what he wanted to see?
“A little bit,” Sandelin said Wednesday. “Not enough. Shouldn’t take Friday’s loss. It shouldn’t take two meetings. It shouldn’t take conversations at this time of the year to tell guys they need to play with a little more urgency. That should have happened on Friday night. So I was very disappointed coming out of there. Yeah, I can talk about the effort. But there’s no consolation, right? At the end of the day, you got to play good enough, and you got to find ways to win games, and we didn’t do that.”
4. Urgency is a buzzword right now for the UMD men. Yes, the Bulldogs sit seventh in the NCHC, but all is not lost.
Win this series against Denver, and UMD moves to sixth, at least one point up on idle Omaha as the teams pull even in games played this weekend. The Bulldogs are six points back of DU in fifth and seven back of fourth place Colorado College.
With eight games left (plus at least two postseason games), Sandelin wants to see some of that, well, urgency from his group.
“They’re going to decide how they want to play the rest of the year,” Sandelin said. “They got 10 (games) for sure. That’s it. You want 10? It’ll be done in 10. There’s 10 games. That’s it. Hopefully we can play beyond that. Hopefully we can play better and get to the playoffs and beat somebody and get to the tournament, our NCHC tournament. Because otherwise it’s ending.
“If you don’t have urgency now, you’re never going to have it. Never going to have it. They need to decide how they want to play.”
“I’ve been here for five years now,” fifth year senior forward Quinn Olson said, “so obviously these 10 games mean a lot to me and I’m sure it does to Luke (Loheit) and Tees (Matthew Thiessen) and Macker (Connor McMenamin) as well, because that’s the end of our college career. I think we’re just trying to bring a positive energy each and every day, especially now that things are getting tight.”
5. UMD needs to continue to find ways to create offense. Having a 21-goal scorer in Ben Steeves helps tremendously, but no team can rely on one player to do it all. The more UMD can cultivate elsewhere in the lineup, the better off the Bulldogs will be down the stretch.
“It’s not like we have a bunch of guys that are filling the net,” Sandelin said. “Any contributions we get from anybody, we’ll take it. And that’s how we started the year. That’s how we need to finish the year.
“Ben is going to do his part. We need different guys. Doesn’t mean I’m asking Braden Fisher to lead our team in scoring, but if he can chip in a goal here or there, or Jack Smith, or like Geno (Anthony Menghini) did a couple weeks ago, everyone needs to contribute in some way. There’s some guys that play more that we expect more out of. Some guys play a lot more and play in different situations, so yeah, the expectations are a little bit different, but our group has to do it by, like we were doing it earlier in the year, where we’re getting a little bit of contributions from everybody.”
The power play — a pedestrian 6-for-27 since Christmas — would certainly help here. We’ll see if that unit can get going this weekend after a night off the Saturday of the Omaha weekend, where neither team had a power play.
Steeves will have a huge hand in whatever happens on the power play the rest of the way. Assistant coach Cody Chupp said the work there continues, and he’s also hopeful that some lineup continuity — more on that shortly — will help.
But having Steeves is a huge advantage.
“Last year, he kind of snuck in there and was able to score,” Chupp said. “And we knew the challenge this year, going into his sophomore year, was now everybody knows. There’s no secrets. You’re a part of everyone’s pre-scout. Everyone’s aware of when you’re on the ice, especially on the power play. You know, it’s kind of that Ovechkin mentality, right? Ovechkin scored a lot of goals from the exact same spot on the power play. We have tinkered with moving Benny around on the power play and kind of freeing him up to play both sides. and kind of roll and create different opportunities for himself, but he’s consistently good from that spot. No different than Ovechkin, it’s about finding new ways to open up the play to get the puck to the guy that scores the goals
“Besides that, Benny is a guy that works at it all the time. I mean all the time. Whether it’s before practice, after practice, in the shooting room, he’s constantly finding new ways to get pucks off, to deliver them to the net quickly, or to hide his release, or to change his release. He works at his craft. So if you’re a young player and you like to score goals, some of it is natural, God-given ability. And some of it is you work at it every single day. Benny’s a testament to that. How he prepares to score goals is how he does everything. School, eat, workout. sleep, all those things. I mean, he’s dialed in. So it’s not luck. It’s not just pure chance that these pucks are going in the net. And that’s what I appreciate about him.”
6. For the second straight week, UMD is trending towards having a healthy scratch Friday. The Bulldogs had 20 skaters available for the Omaha series, and so far all 20 are upright and accounted for this week.
“It was nice to have a few more bodies on the ice,” Sandelin cracked, before pointing out that this season has been so strange that what is normal — maybe some day-to-day continuity in lines and pairings at practice, for example — is actually abnormal now.
“It’s been so abnormal every week,” he said. “I’ve never gone through anything like it. So it is nice to have bodies. We still only have 13 forwards and seven D, so it’s not like we’re loaded here. Again, everyone needs to do their job. We need some guys to play better. We need overachievers, not underachievers. It’s that simple.”
Despite a season of upheaval, assistant coach Cody Chupp made clear that no one in the building is making excuses.
“The great thing about our program and the city is the expectations don’t change and they don’t change from within either,” he said.
7. Denver is in town to face UMD this weekend. Always a challenge with the Pioneers, who are explosive offensively but have struggled a bit at the other end of the rink with a much younger defense, both defensemen and goalies.
“I guess it’s been a little while for our group that we’ve been in this type of a playoff race,” said DU coach David Carle. “Sitting in fifth right now with some teams in front of us due to the bye week. I think it’s hardening us. We’re a very young team this year so we’re getting pushed in different ways and that’s really good for our maturity and our growth. It doesn’t get any easier going up to Duluth. Sandy’s teams are always very well coached.”
UMD is well aware of the challenges being faced this weekend.
“They’re a team that likes to play on offense,” said Sandelin of this weekend’s adversary. “They defend quick. They defend with five. They possess pucks in the offensive zone. They’re going to have the puck. They do every time we play them. They’re going to have the puck. They’re going to possess it. Sometimes they might not get a shot, but they’ll wear you down if you don’t get some stops. Their sticks are good. I think they’re really good at creating second opportunities through their stick detail. Disrupting plays, keeping plays alive.”
“Denver is probably the most unique team in the offensive zone with the amount of movement that they start to create,” Chupp said. “And when that happens, if you panic and you start to run around, it only gets worse. So pick your spots, if you can get them kind of into corners, if you can start to close them near the walls, good angles, good sticks. Any opportunity you have to stop a puck. make a little play to exit, you got to get those. Because if you prolong offensive zone time, they’ll just try to wear you down, and you might not see a shot for 20 or 30 seconds.
“But over the course of 60 minutes, over the course of a weekend, it’s really hard way to play where you’re not able to establish any offense. You’re not able to establish a forecheck because you’re tired from spending 30, 40 seconds chasing guys around in your zone. So that’s a key for us. Get pucks stopped, make simple plays to exit, an opportunity to exit, get it. That’s all about connectivity and making sure that we’re offering support. We’re offering support through the neutral zone, which allows us to have speed on the forecheck, hopefully recover pucks. And then conversely, when we get to the offensive zone, we can’t stay in tight areas. We got to get things moving. We got to get them spread out.”
“They’re a very skilled team,” Olson said of the Pioneers. “They got a lot of skilled forwards and D. But I think us as Bulldogs, we’re more of a gritty team.”
8. With the teams that played last weekend — St. Cloud State, Miami, Omaha, and Western Michigan — taking this weekend off, it leaves only one other series being played. It’s happening in Colorado Springs, where surging Colorado College hosts first-place North Dakota.
It seems strange to think about UND wanting to get revenge on anyone in a season where the Fighting Hawks have gotten points out of literally every NCHC game they’ve played, but that’s the storyline here.
When CC visited Grand Forks in December, the Tigers won both games. In overtime, so UND got points. But CC got its first sweep in Grand Forks in some 30 years.
It’s been a springboard. Colorado College has surged into a home-ice position, and the Tigers hope to hold that this weekend.
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Doubleheaders both Friday and Saturday on KDAL from Amsoil Arena. We’ll start with the women’s pregame at 2:45 both days. Men’s game is 8pm Friday for CBS Sports Network purposes, back to 7pm on Saturday.
Join us for a fun weekend on the radio!
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