It’s hard to argue with the case made in this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column that this college hockey season is reminding us to expect the unexpected.
That has been particularly true with several NCHC teams, including North Dakota. As three-time defending regular-season league champions, the Fighting Hawks (7-8-4 overall, 3-5-2 NCHC) sit outside the DCU/USCHO Division I Men’s Poll’s top 20 and haven’t cracked it since Nov. 14.
They hope to have turned a corner last weekend, when they earned five of six points at Western Michigan. Goals from Judd Caulfield and Louis Jamernik V led to UND taking an overtime shootout on Friday, and Michigan State transfer goaltender Drew DeRidder made 25 saves in a 3-0 shutout win Saturday.
UND coach Brad Berry found much to like from his team’s first unbeaten weekend since the Hawks took five points Nov. 4-5 at Omaha.
“We knew what we were dealing with going into Western,” Berry said. “(Lawson Ice Arena is) a tough environment in a loud, small building, but we knew they were a very good team and that we had to play our best defensively.
“We were going into the last two games of the first half of the season and wanted to end that playing the right way, and we addressed a couple of things how we had to play to have success: No. 1, defensively sound, and No. 2, locking down leads or playing a full 60-minute game, and for the most part, we did that in both games.”
Caulfield scored a goal in both games, bumping his total on the season to seven. It was also a breakout weekend for DeRidder, who earned NCHC goaltender of the week honors. His play last weekend reminded Berry of what DeRidder did in an October split at then-No. 1 Minnesota.
“He made some big saves in that series, and his first half, along with ours, has been a little inconsistent. (Against Western Michigan), knowing those were the last two regular-season games before the first half ended, they were from his area,” Berry said of DeRidder, who grew up two hours away from Kalamazoo in Fenton, Mich.
“He had a lot of family and friends there, and he has a lot of pride and he seemed to play his game and looked comfortable in doing that.”
DeRidder is among a host of transfer players making a difference with new teams within the NCHC and adding a sharp contrast to the state of the league.
“If you have a chance to add to your group, and everybody can, that evens the playing field out a lot,” Berry said. “You know you don’t have to rely sometimes on your freshmen, and if teams feel they want to add older guys who have played college hockey, they can.
“You’re going to see that more and more all the time. You’re seeing some names in the top 20 that you haven’t seen in a while, and you’re seeing some teams that aren’t in there that usually are. It makes college hockey have even more parity.
“You really have to kind of wait to see how the second half shakes out, because I think there are teams that have the experience to get where they need to go and see where their body of work goes.”
UND’s January slate appears relatively kind. After Lindenwood visits Grand Forks on Jan. 6-7, UND plays six consecutive NCHC games against teams (WMU, Minnesota Duluth and Miami) who, like the Hawks, are in the bottom half of the conference standings.
And Berry would be happy to see more what his team did last weekend.
“We have a lot of good players that can make plays, whether five-on-five or on a power play, but it’s about our play away from the puck: being above pucks, making sure that the other team has to come through layers to get to our area,” Berry said. “We did that for the most part at Western, and we gave up two goals, on one night, and one was on a faceoff play at the end of the first period.
“Playing better defensively, being predictable to your teammates and making it tougher for the other team to get to our net…you have to score goals, but defense wins games, and we have to make sure we remember that.”
