NCAA Hockey 101: Juggernauts Minnesota-Duluth and Denver set to face off

To start the year, there was a bit of a question as to whether Minnesota-Duluth would be especially good this season. Their offseason losses were as significant as just about anyone’s in the country.

Losing Tony Cameranesi, Austin Farley, and Andy Welinski alone would be tough to swallow, but they were all seniors, so you knew it was coming. You might have also known that Kasimir Kaskisuo was going to jump ship as a sophomore. But the latter loss was particularly troubling for the club, as Kaskisuo played almost 96 percent of the Bulldogs’ minutes last season, and 87 percent the year before that.

Basically, Scott Sandelin’s crew has had one goalie for two seasons. Coming into this year, they had three freshmen. That’s not usually a recipe for success, no matter how good those freshmen happen to be. Typically a coach would prefer some experience in his crease, but Hunters Miska and Shepard, along with Nick Deery didn’t afford him any. To this point, it really hasn’t mattered.

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All three have played at least one game, with Deery and Shepherd serving largely as backups, but quite capable ones at .934 and .921, respectively. Miska, the starter, is stopping .914 in 11 appearances. The current national average save percentage is .904, pretty low in comparison with recent national norms, so when you’re stopping .918 as a team you’re in pretty damn good shape to begin with. And in NCHC play, Miska has carried all the water, with a .923 save percentage that is likewise going to win you plenty in one of the nation’s two true power conferences.

All this, by the way, goes without mentioning the fact that UMD’s offense is scoring at an impressive clip as well, racking up 3.7 goals per game against one of the toughest schedules in the country. They have three players at least playing point-a-game hockey, and several more in the neighborhood. No one is truly outstanding — at least not in terms of getting up among the national scoring leaderboards — but it seems like their top six forwards and top two defensemen are scoring plenty.

When you have a plus-21 goal differential through 14 games, you’re generally going to be in good shape. That number puts them fifth in the country and leaves plenty of room for error. Should they be a little concerned about that 11.8 team shooting percentage? Sure. They only shot 7.7 percent in 2015-16 (unlucky) but I’m not sure they’re more talented than they were last year, so something in the 9 percent range feels about right for this group.

Their entire schedule is teams that have been or still are nationally ranked: then-No. 17 Michigan Tech (now merely receiving votes), current No. 9 UMass Lowell (then-No. 8), current No. 14 Notre Dame (No. 5 at the time), No. 8 North Dakota (then-No. 1), and most recently current Nos. 18 and 20 Western Michigan and Omaha, respectively.

So to have just two losses from that set of games, well, you can go ahead and pencil them into the NCAA tournament right now. They’re all set barring an absolute catastrophe. Their schedule is the strongest in the country, so while you’ve got to say they’ve been a little lucky — but not much — their strength-of-schedule rating is basically going to ensure if they get anywhere close to, say, eight or nine more wins in their remaining 20ish regular-season games, they’re punching their ticket.

Last season their results were putrid for the first half of the season or so — again, bad luck — then turned it around to make the NCAA tournament after going 11-4-0 down the stretch. They’re always at least a decent corsi team (currently just 50.4 percent, but look who they’ve played and add in score effects) so these are results we should, to some extent, expect.

But with all that having been said, their strong schedule was but a prelude to this weekend’s upcoming games: The No. 1 Bulldogs are heading to Denver for a weekend pair with No. 2 Denver.

The Pioneers, with just two losses and three ties from 16 games, are a dominant team (56.2% CF, plus-14 goal differential, etc.) and a lot of the things said about UMD apply here as well. Lots of talent throughout the lineup, including point-a-game performances from senior defenseman Will Butcher and forwards Henrik Borgström and Dylan Gambrell, a freshman and sophomore, respectively. They’re also getting one of the better goaltending performances of the season from starter Tanner Jaillet (.923) and backup Evan Cowley (.942). This seems to be about the level at which both have played their entire careers, so nothing’s too out of the ordinary there, percentage-wise.

But here’s the thing: You have to kinda say the Pios have been a bit unlucky in shooting the puck. They have three point-a-game players, but those guys are doing the lion’s share of the scoring. Only one other guy (Troy Terry) has a double-digits point total through 16 team games. No surprise here, but Gambrell and Borgström are on the same line, so you’re really only getting offense from like a line and a half. The rest of the team combined has scored just 21 of their 45 goals.

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And that contributes to a team shooting percentage of just 8.3 percent, tied for 52nd out of 60 in the country. The breakdown is even more stark when you separate out those top four guys: They’re shooting 11.9 percent. The other 16 skaters who’ve dressed this year are shooting just 6.1 percent.

The question, then, is what happens when these two teams face off: The Bulldogs are getting shooting luck and above-average goaltending, whereas Denver has very little luck (I would argue the 11.9 percent for their top four guys) is pretty close to totally talent driven) and even better goaltending. It should be a war on Friday and Saturday.

Right now, if you had to bet on these things — and here’s some friendly advice about a weird sport where wacky results happen all the time: Don’t bet on college hockey! — you’d probably have to lean Denver because they have the goaltending edge and an elite top line. I think they’re probably a bit better overall, too, but they’re not significantly better and this “should be” a split.

If ever there were an argument for teams to be ranked Nos. 1a and 1b in the country, it’s this series. Any results won’t be too damaging either way, except in the NCHC standings, and both will likely come out better having once again played top competition.

Clear your schedules for this one, too, because ASN is picking up Friday’s game and putting it on a bunch of networks nationwide. It’s gonna be great.

A somewhat arbitrary ranking of teams which are pretty good in my opinion only (and just for right now but maybe for a little longer too?)

1. Denver (swept Colorado College)
2. Minnesota-Duluth (idle)
3. Boston University (took three points in a home-and-home with Providence)
4. Penn State (swept Michigan)
5. Boston College (won at Northeastern, lost to North Dakota at Madison Square Garden)
6. Harvard (won at St. Lawrence and at Clarkson)
7. Quinnipiac (beat RPI, lost to Union)
8. UMass Lowell (took one point in a home-and-home with UConn)
9. Minnesota (split with Ohio State)
10. Notre Dame (split at UMass)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist and occasionally covers the NCAA for College Hockey News. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

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