UMD coach Scott Sandelin was asked at his weekly media conference — yes, I know this isn’t exactly hard-hitting — what he remembered about playing against the jersey his players will wear this weekend against Minnesota.
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They are throwbacks to the Bulldogs’ 1981-86 seasons, years that include some pretty good teams and the program’s first two Hobey Baker winners, Tom Kurvers and Bill Watson. Sandelin’s North Dakota teams had some legendary battles against the Bulldogs in those days.
“Billy scoring a lot of goals. Hully (Brett Hull) scoring a lot of goals. Their power play, which was pretty good.
“They’re cool looking jerseys, so kind of great that we’re bringing them back.”
Personally, I’m just glad they didn’t bring back Triangle Bulldog.
10 THOUGHTS
1. Sandelin has long resisted the idea of putting timelines on injuries. The Bulldogs’ director of sports performance, Dr. Suz Hoppe, doesn’t like doing that, either, as she explained in a 2020 podcast with Matt Wellens.
So at this week’s media conference, no timelines were offered, but three UMD forwards were ruled out for this weekend’s games against the Gophers.
Sandelin, purposely shifting to discussing player availability, declared junior forward Max Plante, junior forward Trevor Stachowiak, and freshman forward Kade Kohanski “unavailable” for Friday and Saturday. Plante, of course, will be missing his second straight weekend. Kohanski will miss his second and third straight games with an injury he picked up on Friday in Sioux Falls. Stachowiak briefly left Saturday’s game in the second period, was on the bench and played at least a shift or two in the third, but will not go this week.
There has been a lot of discourse online about Plante’s injury. We’re not going to address any of that, and certainly we’re not in a position here to confirm or deny whatever the rumour of the day is.
We know he’s injured. We know he won’t play this weekend. We don’t know when he will be back.
2. The absence of UMD’s best player has complicated matters a bit for everyone involved, from players to coaches to even you great fans.
This is a time of year where coaches are — no matter how many players they return from the previous season — trying to figure out where all the pieces fit.
After a so-so game from his team Friday against Augustana, Sandelin went with what you might consider the nuclear option. He reunited Plante-Plante-Shaugabay, with an asterisk, as Victor and Zam Plante were joined by Jayson Shaugabay. The line had its moments, but only Zam Plante got on the scoreboard, assisting on Ty Hanson’s goal that tied the game 1-1 in the second period. Of course, that’s also how the game ended.
Sandelin indicated Wednesday that Shaugabay would be moving back to center this weekend, but it’ll certainly be interesting to see what happens if the team struggles to generate offensive push. Does Sandelin pull a John Hynes (with Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Matt Boldy, well before the rest of the team ended up injured, at least) and put those three back together and try to ride one line?
“The lines you saw Saturday are not what they are now, so that’ll tell you,” Sandelin said when asked about the new combos the staff came up with for Saturday’s game against the Vikings. “So we’re going to keep trying, but right now we only have 12 forwards. We’re going to try and create as much balance through our lines as we can.”
3. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Faceoffs are being talked about. Sandelin — among others, I promise — was pretty irritated with how the CCHA crew in Sioux Falls handled the new rules on faceoffs.
From the rulebook itself, here’s what the rules committee — after consultation with coaches last spring — decided on (emphasis mine):
“Before the puck is dropped, centers must be properly positioned by standing squarely facing their opponent’s end of the rink. Both skates must be clear of the face-off markings where applicable, and the full blade of the stick must be flat on the ice within the designated white area. Linespersons should not drop the puck until both players have established a legal position.“
Let’s just say that wasn’t happening too terribly often. If you saw any of the Long Island games, you saw the NCHC officials were working with players on both teams, trying to get them to understand and follow the new standard.
And if you listened to my podcast with NCHC Director of Officiating Mike Schmitt, you aren’t surprised the league’s officials were handling it the way they were.
4. But Sandelin was also frustrated with his own players. Here’s his long answer about faceoffs, focused on his guys, and also edited for clarity.
“You’re going to lose draws clean. But again, we weren’t on our toes ready to jump and get on our route to get to where we needed to go. On one of the goals, our winger is supposed to go to the point. He ended up in the corner. So there’s some mental errors there, too.
“As a center, you gotta learn, right? If you’re having a tough time against somebody, you gotta try something different. You can’t always try and win your draw clean. Sometimes you get 50-50, sometimes you lose it on purpose and tell your wingers to go forecheck. So there’s lots of things you can do to change that. It’s just got to be better.
“I mean, if we’re going to keep chasing the puck, you try and work on some offensive zone faceoff type plays. They’re really important on the power play. We did win some. They’re important on the penalty kill where you can win it and get clears. I mean, they’re important all the time, but, neutral zone is probably a little less chaotic. It’s got to be something we bear down on and get better at because that’s going to be tough. We’re going to give up more goals if we don’t win.
“We’re going to play a team that, you know, all the times when (Austin) Burnevik played at St. Cloud, they run an overplay and he gets it and he’s got a great shot. And if we don’t get through and block that shot, he’s probably going to have chances to score. We know it’s probably coming, so we gotta battle through if we do lose draws and and try to get in that shot lane and block. It’s just gotta be better. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves.”
5. Carter Murphy’s dad, Curtis, was an All-American at North Dakota, working under Sandelin, who was on Dean Blais’ staff at the time.
The younger Murphy, a hockey player as long as he can remember, said his dad didn’t talk to him about his college playing career until he was 12 or 13 years old.
“I knew about other stuff, but I guess I just didn’t stalk his Elite Prospects well enough,” Carter Murphy said. “He had a great career and I’m just hoping to one-up him. That’s kind of the biggest thing. He did so good at North Dakota and I’m really proud of him for what he did and getting to see him inducted over in North Dakota’s Hall of Fame and a couple other places.”
Carter Murphy said Curtis “has been a big influence” on his career, which started with travel hockey in the Dallas area before a two-plus year run with the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms. The Youngstown stint was his first significant time away from home.
“I enjoyed it,” he said. “I had a really great billet family. We had great teams every year. My two full years, not including my affiliate year, we set the record for points in a season for our franchise. So we had great teams. I mean, it obviously sucks going out in playoffs. But those guys meant a lot to me. They were awesome. The staff was really good to me and I don’t know it was it kind of especially with the billets like I was away from home but they were so great to me kind of helped me just settle into the USHL.”
6. Murphy credits his experienced teammates with helping him make what has been a really smooth transition so far.
“Being willing to help has been a big part,” he said. “They just got a pretty tight-knit group in there. Going to anybody in practice, asking questions, stuff like that has been a big one. But think keeping it simple and trying not to overthink has been one of the hardest challenges. Obviously everything’s a little faster and I don’t know that’s it’s been going well for me. There might be a couple stumbles here and there and I’m gonna have to you stay on the right track. I think that’s where I’ll be tested is when I start stumbling, I gotta catch my feet again. I think I can rely on the guys to catch me if I if I need the help.”
Sandelin has been impressed by the undersized defenseman so far.
“I told you guys he’s going to be a good player here,” he said earlier this month. “He’s had some great exit plays. Got a lot of poise with the puck and he’s competitive. And again, he’ll keep learning and hopefully getting better.”
Murphy’s competitiveness has stood out almost from the second he arrived.
“I hate losing,” he said. “I used have a competition with my brother when I was maybe three. I always had to walk in front of him. Always. I hated losing. I would throw a fit after I lost. It’s just kind of always been a thing. I take it a little better now because you can’t be a head case out there and stuff like that. But no, losing is something I don’t enjoy. I think losing any puck battle, stuff like that, it also helps like your teammates around you. Like if you’re going to be the one of the hardest working guys out there, it’s gonna make everybody around you better and I think that’s a big thing.”
It doesn’t shock that Sandelin has hinted at the possibility of Murphy someday wearing a letter at UMD.
7. In case you’ve been living under a rock, you might not know that the Gophers are now coached by Duluth native, UMD graduate, and former UMD player-turned-associate coach Brett Larson.
Hired to replace Bob Motzko in April, Larson spent the summer immersing himself in the Gophers program, getting to know alumni while working on his golf game (he joked it didn’t get a lot better despite the added reps). Oh, and turning over much of last season’s Minnesota roster.
With 13 new players in tow, the Gophers went to Houghton two weeks ago and got swept by a Huskies team many consider a favorite in the CCHA this season.
“We’re trying to build a lot as far as this is new to pretty much everybody here,” Larson said last week. “Trying to break some old habits, we’re trying to build some new habits. We’re trying to play just a little bit different style of game with how we pressure pucks and how we defend. And I really felt like our team looked like, to be honest, they were thinking a lot this past weekend. And as you know, that’s not a good thing. It’s a little paralysis by analysis. I didn’t think we were just playing hockey. It felt like the guys were trying hard and they were trying to do what we asked.”
“It’s going to be very competitive series,” Sandelin said. “We have to play better. This is a team (Minnesota) that you (can’t) give the puck up as much as we’re giving it up or where we’re giving it up more importantly, off just careless plays. They’re a good transition team, like a really good transition team. We didn’t handle Augustana’s pressure, which is what I got on the guys (about) today. You have to learn how to play under pressure. And I’m not talking pressure to win pressure, that it’s pressure situations when your time and space is taken away. You have to learn how to make plays and protect pucks and know where to put pucks when you don’t have the time and space to make the play.”
8. Around the NCHC this weekend, we have our first No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup of the college men’s hockey season.
9. I got rid of Twitter/X a couple years ago. Stopped posting on it in 2024, tired of the rampant toxicity. Dropped my long-running account a few months later. But there are a few people whose work I enjoy and/or whose opinions I respect who only post on the ol’ bird app. So I am back on the app with a burner account of sorts that I use to occasionally check on what those folks are saying.
My point, and I do have one, is that the general tone of that place has not changed. People are exceptionally negative about a lot of things.
An example of that comes with this weekend’s marquee matchup in Denver, with Michigan visiting. Should be a fun series, and there are certainly some implications for what we could end up seeing in March, especially if one team were to sweep the other.
It’s a moment where you’d like people to be excited about what college hockey is becoming. Instead, they’re angry (stunning on X, I know) about the fact these games won’t be widely available unless you subscribe to NCHC.tv.
I’m old enough to remember the days where the old Midwest Sports Channel came up to Duluth and televised the Minnesota-UMD men’s hockey games to its large Upper Midwest footprint. So are a lot of fans around here. And that skews the perspective.
Nowadays, leagues control their streaming and TV rights. Games in NCHC buildings are streamed on NCHC.TV, along with the teams having the ability to make deals for local TV rights (like UMD has with the nice people at My9).
What national TV entity is going to put these games on? ESPN does barely any college hockey before the NCAA Tournament. Fox/FS1 carry some Big Ten games and that’s about it, thanks to Fox owning part of the Big Ten Network. CBS Sports Network was a fine partner for the NCHC, but clearly it wasn’t business they felt it necessary to keep being a part of.
I get it. Many fans of the sport want to watch these games from Denver. And a wider distribution would be great for growing the game. But college hockey is a niche inside of a niche, so early-season series like this one are always going to be a hard sell for national TV, especially when you’re competing against college football, which is a much larger TV draw on its worst day.
10. Without Caitlin Kraemer and Eve Gascon, the UMD women had to settle for a split last weekend against St. Thomas.
The Tommies got a late goal to beat UMD 2-1 on Friday, in a game where they outshot the Bulldogs 36-18. On Saturday, freshman goalie Marilou Grenier posted her first win and shutout in a 2-0 UMD win. Grenier made 24 saves.
Head coach Laura Schuler was asked this week what changed from Friday to Saturday, and unsurprisingly she went immediately to her team’s defensive play.
“I thought we were playing way more aggressive on Saturday compared to Friday night,” she said. “I thought we were a little bit too much containing and just passive (Friday). And that’s not how we want to play. A lot of that is on me as a coach and as a leader. So we addressed those things. And I thought, again, Saturday was significantly better for us.”
Kraemer and Gascon wrapped up the Canadian national team training camp in Quebec on Wednesday, and both were expected back in Duluth in time to travel with the team to Bemidji for this weekend’s series against former UMD goalie Sophia Villanueva and Bemidji State.
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Games are 7pm Friday and 6pm Saturday at Amsoil Arena. Not only are the Bulldogs wearing those SHARP maroon alternates both nights, but they are retiring Hoagie’s number 00 before Saturday’s game.
Tailgate parties start at 5pm Friday and 4pm Saturday over by the Slip Bridge. I’ll be out there with assistant coach and goaltending whisperer Brant Nicklin Friday, then associate coach Adam Krause before Saturday’s game.
Back pregame Friday with lines.
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