TEMPE, Ariz. — Before we get into talking about hockey, we have lost a couple major figures surrounding UMD hockey recently.
Longtime UMD hockey supporter Dave Carlson died recently. When I first got this job back in 2005, I was told that Dave would appreciate my help soliciting people for his annual Bulldog Club bus trips, oftentimes to either Michigan Tech or North Dakota. Hadn’t met Dave yet, but I was told he was a real one. Gladly passed along my email. When I met him, I wasn’t disappointed. They called him “Boss,” which I didn’t know until probably ten years after I met him. The guy bled Bulldog hockey, and there will never be another one like him.
A service will be held at Amsoil Arena on March 27 at 11am.
Last week, we also lost Bill Oswald, who played hockey at Duluth Cathedral and for St. Scholastica back in the day, before becoming the iconic public address voice of UMD hockey at the DECC.
“Heeeeeeere’s your UMD scoring!” was the stuff of legend for UMD fans, especially paired with that old DECC goal siren (which I’ve said before I actually miss a little bit).
There will be a celebration of life for Bill Oswald on March 27 at 11am at Kenwood Lutheran Church.
Our deepest sympathies go to everyone who knew Dave Carlson and Bill Oswald. May their memories be a blessing.
Now, on to the trivial stuff.
9 THOUGHTS
1. We also need to acknowledge the UMD women playing in the NCAA Tournament this week. Their opener is Thursday against Sacred Heart out in Ithaca, N.Y. The game faces off about four hours after I type these words, which are among the first words I’m typing. My point, and I do have one, is that the game will have started and might be over before you read this. So I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it.
IF the Bulldogs are victorious Thursday, I have a soft commitment from head coach Laura Schuler to make some time for me during the day Friday, and I will write a lot about that game and what’s to come for the Bulldogs Friday night/Saturday morning.
(There will be a postgame blog on Friday, this I promise you. Since the game isn’t until 9pm Central, you probably won’t see it until Saturday morning, but it will be there. Thanks in advance for your interest, assuming you have any.)
2. UMD coach Scott Sandelin has pointed it out a couple times now.
Hasn’t made the reality any less foreign for those of us who have followed the NCHC since its inception. A league that has claimed six of the last eight NCAA championships and normally puts half or more of its membership into the NCAA Tournament is going to have to adjust to 2025’s reality.
As the eight-team conference tournament begins with quarterfinal series this weekend, only two of the NCHC’s nine teams — Western Michigan and Denver — know they will be playing beyond this weekend.
“There’s six teams in our league that are in the same boat we are,” he said. “That’s very rare for this time of the year for this league. Yes, there’s some teams closer to being in the tournament, but they’re not in. So everyone’s in the same boat and it’s a new season.”
Yes, even second-place Arizona State finds itself needing to — at the minimum — win this series to have a chance at the NCAA Tournament.
(Just winning this series in two games won’t get the job done. The Sun Devils are likely to remain on the wrong side of the bubble even with a sweep this weekend. Why? Their non-conference includes a loss to Air Force, and ASU didn’t get a win out of its two marquee non-conference series, Michigan at home and Providence on the road. In a year where the NCHC mostly struggled non-conference, that’s enough to keep the Sun Devils on the outside looking in.)
For reference, here are the number of teams that have made the NCAA Tournament from the NCHC each year since the league started for the 2013-14 campaign (excluded 2020 because the tournament was cancelled, but the NCHC was on track to get three teams in had either North Dakota, UMD, or Denver won the league tournament): 3, 6, 4, 4, 3, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4.
If Western Michigan or Denver win the league tournament, odds are good that the NCHC is kept to two NCAA entries for the first time in its history.
We’ll see if any of the other six teams can get on a heater and prevent that from happening.
3. Can UMD find a way this weekend? On paper, this is a daunting matchup. Arizona State can score, and they play the game with a great pace. But the four games between these teams in the regular season would tell you UMD absolutely can win this series.
“We’ve played this team four times,” Sandelin said. “They’ve been even games.”
The only game that ended in regulation was Arizona State’s 5-3 home win on Dec. 6. The Sun Devils led 4-1 early in the third period, UMD lost Klayton Knapp to an injury on the fourth goal, and ASU had to hold on for dear life until Sam Court found the empty net with nine seconds left in regulation.
Arizona State won the next night in overtime, a game where I felt like UMD decisively outplayed the home side and deserved a better fate.
In Duluth on Valentine’s weekend, UMD won in overtime before the teams drew the next night and ASU won the shootout. Outside of the second period of Saturday’s game (basically owned by Arizona State), they were mostly even and enjoyable games.
At 5v5 over the four games, UMD led in shots 119-95. CHN’s model has expected goals for the four games at 11.5-10.4 for ASU, largely because of the Saturday game in Duluth.
But the Sun Devils have firepower. They placed three forwards and a defenseman on the NCHC’s All-Conference teams announced Wednesday (more on that in a separate filing), and deservedly so. Artem Shlaine is a finalist for NCHC Player of the Year, and deservedly so. UMD has to stick to its defense-first guns this weekend, take care of the house, stay out of the damn box, and attack when the numbers warrant it. The Bulldogs mostly did a good job of that during the regular season games against this team, but it doesn’t take much room for them to burn you, and every mistake this time of year is more meaningful and potentially costly.
4. There’s one advantage Arizona State has that UMD can’t duplicate.
Experience.
ASU has 11 seniors and fifth years on its roster. Tons of game experience, and it’s mostly shown this season.
What doesn’t Arizona State have? NCAA Tournament experience. Ryan Kirwan has played in two NCAA Tournament games, Cruz Lucius in one.
Between Owen Gallatin, Dominic James and Carter Loney, who all played in the Loveland Regional games during their freshman season of 2021-22, UMD has six.
Both teams have players who have won at lower levels, including the USHL. Does that matter when you get to this point? Here’s what Sandelin had to say on that.
“I think any time you’ve won, you’ve got a winning mindset, right? These guys all year, all these kids want to win. Like every game they want to win. The ultimate goal is you want to win, so you’ll be able to be playing in the last game of the year. That’s what you start out to do. And there’s steps along the way.
“But this is a little bit different. It’s college hockey. It’s a little bit different than junior hockey. Their series are best of five, these are a best of three and then they’re one and done, so it’s a different approach. You can get away with a bad game in a best of five.”
UMD’s young pups have improved throughout the season, showing increased moxie and an constant ability to adjust to what opponents are doing against them. They’ll have to do that again this weekend, with the pressure that comes from “the season’s over if you don’t get it done” hanging over them.
It’s a different level of heat than they’ve faced so far, and I’m excited to see how they handle it.
5. The last time Sandelin welcomed a freshman class with this much quantity and quality was 2005-2006, when 11 freshman — led by familiar names like Matt Niskanen, Mason Raymond, and the late, great Andrew Carroll — jumped into the rigors of a WCHA schedule.
That season, UMD got a whopping 74 percent of its goal scoring from freshmen and sophomores. This year’s Bulldogs are at about 64 percent, with a shade under 50 percent of the total goals coming from freshmen alone.
In 2005-2006, UMD went 1-13 in the second half of the season. The Bulldogs kept running into really good teams (including back to back home weekends dealing with the likes of David Backes and Joe Pavelski), and they kept giving up big gobs of goals. Sandelin went to North Dakota transfer Nate Ziegelmann in the regular season finale at Minnesota, and he stopped 31 of 32 in a 2-0 loss (empty netter). So Sandelin kept with Ziegelmann the next weekend at second-place Denver to open the WCHA playoffs.
He made 27 saves in the Friday game, and MacGregor Sharp scored at 1:25 of overtime after a goalmouth scramble to send UMD to a 3-2 win. Denver benefitted from a controversial disallowed goal late in the Saturday game, holding on to win 3-2 despite 28 more saves from Ziegelmann. In the deciding Game 3, Ziegelmann stopped 33 of 35, and UMD got four goals in a 3:45 span of the second period to win 5-2 and move on to the WCHA Final Five.
That loss ended the season for Denver, which was the two-time defending national champions. The Pioneers had enough non-conference struggles that finishing second in the league didn’t help them get back into the national tournament.
“They didn’t know any better,” Sandelin said about that team.
We’ll find out this weekend if this iteration of the Bulldogs knows any better.
6. Will Francis returned to the UMD lineup Saturday, playing seven-ish minutes for the Bulldogs in their 3-2 win at St. Cloud State.
“For him, it probably meant a lot,” Sandelin said, “(after) going through hell like that.”
Bulldog captain Dominic James offered a reminder for everyone that Francis “is three for three against cancer, and that’s a huge deal to us.”
Francis was diagnosed with a relapse of his cancer in October. He played in the NCHC opener against North Dakota after his diagnosis, then left the team and was gone for some time after the holiday break to get treatment in Philadelphia.
I want to repeat this for emphasis: Will Francis was diagnosed with a re-occurrence of cancer, and then proceeded to play in a college hockey game.
“I didn’t tell anybody in the room,” Francis said this week. “Only told Suz (Dr. Suz Hoppe, UMD’s wonderful Director of Sports Performance) at the time and then she told me that obviously we had to tell Sandy (Sandelin), and so between I’d say just the staff and me, we were the only ones that knew. And I donn’t think I told them until after North Dakota. So yeah, must have been after a week after or so. But I was still working on what I was gonna have to do and when I’m gonna have to go out to Philly to get the treatment that I had done.”
While in Philadelphia, he was able to meet up with the team that holds his NHL rights — Anaheim — as they played the Flyers there.
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He returned to the team a few weeks back, with Sandelin announcing at a media conference Francis was back and “had a nice head of hair” or something to that description.
Oh, and Francis was named to the NCHC All-Academic Team last month.
Will Francis is a dude.
7. Three other first-round series in the NCHC this weekend.
League champion Western Michigan is home to face St. Cloud State. Why are the Broncos in this position? This normally high-flying team is as stingy as they come this season, while also scoring 134 goals over 34 games. All-NCHC goalies Hampton Slukynsky (second team) and Cameron Rowe (third team) have combined for a .920 save percentage this season. Western has only conceded four or more goals five times this season. Forward Alex Bump was unanimous first-team All-NCHC and is a finalist for Player of the Year.
Are you a Huskies fan looking for some hope? Isak Posch would have made an All-NCHC team had he not missed so much time during the conference season with a freak injury suffered in November. And of the five times Western Michigan has allowed four or more goals this season, four of them have come in the last eight games.
Probably too small a sample size to be worried about, but if you’re a #GOHUSKIESWOOOOO type, it’s at least hope.
8. The other two first-round series are rematches from last week. Should be a war in Omaha, where the Mavericks host North Dakota. Omaha having to go back to UND was the funniest possible scenario as we went into last weekend (sorry, Mike Gabinet and crew). But we’ll take this.
These teams met in the first round two years ago, a three-game battle that went North Dakota’s way with a penalty-filled Game 3 (the same night, UMD played St. Cloud State in a Game 3 that was not penalty-filled, despite the best efforts of the players 😂).
I expect similar emotions and intensity this weekend. Omaha’s older guys — a group keyed last weekend by Sam Stange and Harrison Israels — are playing very well at the moment. The Mavericks have five players at 20-plus points, and only one of them (junior forward Cam Mitchell) has eligibility beyond this season.
North Dakota continues to be a bit up-and-down. The Fighting Hawks are led, in large part, by a couple younger players. Sophomore defenseman Jake Livanavage is having a superb season, and freshman forward Sasha Boisvert has made quite the impact in Grand Forks.
But consistency from the net out has not been there the way it needs to be, leaving North Dakota as another of the six teams that needs to win games this weekend to extend its season (Omaha’s non-conference stumbles are the reason why the Mavericks find themselves on that list).
9. Finally, Colorado College will try to keep a season that started so well alive in Denver. The Tigers started 8-0. Scored 30 goals over those games, nearly four per game.
In going 9-16-1 since, the Tigers have averaged only 2.6 goals per game.
There have been flashes. But Colorado College hasn’t found the consistency to its game in any of the three zones, and that’s why the Tigers are in this position.
Reality is that Colorado College took a major step forward last season, nearly making the NCAA Tournament. You can’t argue with math, and that’s what the selections are based on. If the math says a team didn’t belong in the tournament, that team didn’t belong in the tournament. But this is why I felt bad for Kris Mayotte and his players. You can talk about having young players and having the bulk of a group back the next season, but next season isn’t a guarantee. And the step the Tigers are trying to make now — from “emerging team” to “contending team” — is the single hardest step in a building process.
Can they shake off the problems that have plagued them against the champs this weekend? I’m not convinced we’ve seen Denver’s best yet, but that’s often by design. And what the Pioneers have shown us is good enough to lock down a spot in the NCAA Tournament, a chance to defend their title.
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Remember, Arizona is two hours behind Duluth now, as this goofy state doesn’t do Daylight Savings Time. So we hit the air at 8:30 Central time Friday, 7:30 on Saturday, and 7:30 Sunday if necessary on KDAL.
The app is free. So is the stream. Let’s do this.
Back pregame with lines.
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