After Saturday’s 3-0 Wisconsin win at Amsoil Arena ended, I sent this tweet and closed my laptop for the night.
I'm going to go ahead and not look at this app for a while. Talk amongst yourselves.
— Bruce Ciskie (@BruceCiskie) October 23, 2022
To be honest, the amount of positivity (or, maybe more accurately, not-negativity) was nice to see. But there are people out there on the verge of panic over this team.
It’s understandable. Winning spoils fans faster than just about anything. And UMD’s done a lot of winning over recent years.
I urge you to not panic. Scott Sandelin has referred to this as chapters in a book. We’re a long way from finishing the book. In fact, the main characters haven’t necessarily established themselves yet. So don’t put the thing down and give up on it. Hell, for all we know, this could be a Pulitzer winner before it’s all said and done.
8 THOUGHTS
1. Let’s just address the elephant in the room. Sandelin certainly did in his postgame press conference.
For the second straight night, UMD saw a top player ejected from the game for a completely preventable and unnecessary penalty. Isaac Howard, visibly frustrated after losing a board battle that cost his power play unit offensive zone possession, two-handed the glass with his stick, then turned toward the bench and inexplicably cross-checked Wisconsin defenseman Corson Ceulemans in the face. Ceulemans went down, but was able to stay in the game. The officials called for a review, and the camera on the catwalk above the playing surface caught Howard’s hit, which was far enough behind the play that My9’s main cameras did not catch it as they followed the puck into the UMD zone. Howard was ejected from the game and now faces potential discipline from the NCHC, which we expect to hear about officially on Tuesday.
(UPDATE: The NCHC has suspended Howard for two games, meaning he will miss both ends of the Cornell series this weekend. Howard can return to the UMD lineup Nov. 4 at Colorado College.)
“One of the main focuses going into the game was controlling emotions, managing the game,” he said. “And I didn’t like at all what I saw in the second period, aside from Isaac’s penalty. There was a lot of stuff on the bench that I addressed after the game, that we will never see again. Because it will not creep into this.
“There’s always going to be adversity, there’s always going to be frustrating moments. But the best way to do that is put your head down, go to work, and play. What I saw tonight was addressed and hopefully we won’t see that again. Because it won’t bode well if I do.”
Obviously, there’s a separate issue here that Sandelin is referring to, and whatever he’s talking about from the bench is going to remain internal (as it should). But it was clear listening to his postgame that he was not happy with his team’s discipline in the game Saturday, and there’s no doubt that Wyatt Kaiser’s major penalty and suspension that cost him Saturday’s game plays a role in the coach’s response. He couldn’t have been happy to lose his No. 1 defenseman at a time where that group is still struggling to find its footing.
Sandelin said frustration and emotion are going to happen, but “you can’t put your team in a tough spot.
“(Friday) was a one-goal hockey game. Regardless of how it happened, it happened. Plus we lose one of our best players for another game. (Saturday), we lose another good player for half a game when we’re down two goals.”
There are no excuses to be offered for what Kaiser and Howard did. Undoubtedly, both were frustrated by things happening to and around them, but the reactions we saw can’t be seen from them (or anyone else on the team) again. Kaiser was, frankly, lucky to only be suspended for one game, and UMD will be, frankly, fortunate if Howard is available at all this weekend against Cornell. For a team that’s struggling to find itself offensively, that’s a major loss at a bad, bad time.
2. UMD was better defensively Saturday, but it was also bailed out a few times by Matthew Thiessen. The Maine transfer got the start in goal, and he was sharp. Thiessen was beaten on a rebound in the first period, when Brock Caufield was left alone in the left circle to bang a puck home off a long shot off Thiessen’s pad. The only other shot that beat him was a Cruz Lucius wrister from the right circle that banked inside the far post off the skate of defenseman Owen Gallatin, the ultimate bad-luck goal after UMD took an undisciplined post-whistle penalty.
(Sandelin addressed that after the game as well, saying that after first-period coincidentals that came in a post-whistle scrum, the officials made clear that not every scrum would end in coincidental penalties, instead possibly resulting in power plays for one team or the other. Next scrum: UW power play. The goal came seven seconds into it.)
3. The Bulldogs aren’t scoring. You probably don’t need me to tell you that.
Here are UMD’s goal scorers in 2022-23 through six games: Luke Loheit/Ben Steeves (two each), Derek Daschke/Blake Biondi/Dominic James/Luke Mylymok/Howard/Gallatin (one each).
That’s it.
Only Steeves (one of his two), Daschke, James, and Mylymok have scored at even strength. And none of those even strength goals have come since Steeves’ on Oct. 2 against Arizona State. It’s a span of 264 minutes, 40 seconds without an even strength goal.
(I’m not sure anyone has tracked this stat historically, but I’ve gone back quite a ways in the archives and can only find one comparable drought. In 2007-2008, the season where UMD scored just 74 goals in 36 games, the Bulldogs went 232:10 without an even strength goal while going three full games without a goal of any kind.)
Nothing is going to get better until this changes. But this isn’t going to change until other things get better, if that makes any sense.
4. One of the struggles so far has been generating any real offensive zone possession. I asked Sandelin about this before Saturday’s game.
“You’ve got to be strong over it (the puck),” he said. “We’re making a bunch of hope plays. We’ve got full possession a lot of times, and we’re just not strong over it. Just some of the decisions don’t sit very well. We’ve got to establish sort of a ground game, we’ve got to have guys willing to play along the wall. Try to get pucks low to high, spread them out. We need better net presence.”
There have been some moments of this, even in the Wisconsin series, but they’ve been just moments. It hasn’t sustained, and the Bulldogs need to find their way back into this. Cornell, with its size and defensive abilities, won’t make it easy on UMD, but this is likely a series of games UMD can win by being strong over pucks and strong on the wall. This is a step this team has to figure out how to take.
5. Coaches are loathe to make excuses. Understandable. However, I’m not a coach, and I don’t have the same strong feelings.
A big key to UMD’s game is its ability to get pucks north from the defensive zone. Go north and go to work as far away from your net as possible. Make good decisions, stay strong over the puck, and take advantage of the eventual opportunity that will come.
But the Bulldogs are struggling to get pucks north quickly enough. If you look at the roster, it becomes more understandable why.
Kaiser is a mainstay, yes, but he missed Saturday’s game. Darian Gotz didn’t really become a lineup regular until last season, serving largely as a seventh defenseman type in his freshman season. Owen Gallatin had a strong second half last season and has been good so far, but he’s only one guy and I’ve only listed three.
The rest of the blue line? Derek Daschke is new and clearly still adjusting to UMD’s ways. Will Francis is a sophomore, but one who played five games last year WHILE RECOVERING FROM FREAKING CANCER. Riley Bodnarchuk, Joey Pierce, and Aiden Dubinsky are freshmen. And while Dubinsky has impressed in a lot of ways, he’s still a freshman, an 18-year-old one at that.
This is going to take time. Roles might change. Pairings might chance. Players are going to improve as they gain more and more footing. I thought Francis and Bodnarchuk took steps last weekend, but both have a long way to go.
More than anywhere else, this is the group that requires patience. Let’s see continued progress and get a better look in December.
6. This is a big week. UMD needs an infusion of confidence, and I would expect a week of lively practices full of battles.
Sandelin wants to get the offense going, but if he’s thinking about line changes, the specter of a Howard suspension may cloud his decisions until he knows for sure. I think there might be a chance the James Gang is altered, but if Howard is out, Sandelin might opt for stability in the top six and hold off on changes until he has a full boat at his disposal.
Also adding intrigue is the possibility that skilled freshman forward Jack Smith debuts this week. Smith has been downed by a lower body injury and missed some preseason time in addition to a couple weeks of in-season practice. He got on the ice last week, and Sandelin wants to get him a full week of practice. If that happens and Smith is good to go, it’s very much possible that he is in the lineup this weekend.
You have to feel for Smith, who ran into terrible injury luck last season in the USHL and has seen that carry over to this season. Sandelin has been excited to see what Smith can do, but the kid keeps getting interrupted. Hopefully, that run of bad luck ends this week.
7. It all leads into a series against Cornell, an Ivy League school. Why is that important to note? Because the Ivy League schools who play hockey — Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale — don’t start their regular seasons until the end of October.
The Big Red will debut this weekend, now two years removed from a cancelled season due to COVID, and three years removed from an ended season that had them projected to be the No. 1 overall seed for the NCAA Tournament. Longtime coach Mike Schafer is back after being forced from the bench by health issues last season, and Sandelin said last week Schafer has wanted to get this trip on the schedule for some time. Cornell and UMD have never met in Duluth, only playing at the Syracuse Holiday Tournament in 1968 (Cornell won 2-1 in double overtime) and the Florida College Classic in 2005 (tied 1-1, Cornell won the tournament title in a shootout).
8. This should be a fun weekend at Amsoil. The UMD women are home for a huge series against Wisconsin, with games at 3pm Friday and Saturday. We’ll have those games on KDAL, along with the men’s games against Cornell each night at 7. The Bulldog women will try to rebound after losing twice at Ohio State (they did get an OT point on Friday) by that dreaded 3-2 score, and we know what the men are trying to put behind them.
Students are on break this weekend, so come on down and give these teams your full-throated support. The atmospheres have been really good so far (Saturday’s crowd was over 7,000 and awesome, probably the best October crowd I’ve seen that didn’t involve Minnesota), and these teams are worthy of it.
If you haven’t seen the UMD women yet, give that whirl for sure. Coach Maura Crowell has been open about this possibly being the best season in the history of NCAA women’s hockey, thanks to a number of fifth-year players who are back, including players like UMD co-captain Ashton Bell and Ohio State star Emma Maltais, who are back from the Olympics.
Wisconsin is a national powerhouse, and these are always tough but very good games. They’ve played some classics at Amsoil in recent years, so don’t miss out on that hockey this weekend. If you can’t make it out, coverage both days on KDAL starts at 2:45 (Saturday’s time is approximate, as we will follow UMD football from Malosky Stadium).
And UMD hosts the Frozen Four March 17-19 in Duluth, too. What a year for it.
Back later this week to preview the weekend.
