For Northern Michigan, this season is about the process, not results.
Maybe that sounds like a tired sports cliche, but considering this team had to refresh basically its entire coaching staff and roster in the span of five months, it’s a reasonable expectation.
Last weekend’s series against Arizona State is a case in point: The Wildcats, who are 1-5 overall, were swept by the Sun Devils at home, 3-1 and 2-0. Despite being massively outshot each time (40-17 and 38-22, respectively) both were tie games heading into the third period.
“We’re going to experience some growing pains because of how new our team is and how young our team is,” NMU coach Dave Shyiak said. “So that’s going to take a little bit of time, but we’ve seen progress. We like where we’re at as a team in terms of workload and culture. Obviously, you’d like to win a few games along the way, but we’re holding our heads high right now.”
Shyiak was brought in to be the head coach at his alma mater in June, just a few weeks after former head coach Grant Potulny stepped down to accept a head coaching position with the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack.
The Wildcats were already set to see some major roster shakeup, but the coaching change meant that just four players stuck around–sophomore forward Tanner Latsch, junior defenseman Jakob Peterson, junior forward Zach Michaelis and sophomore forward Brendan Poshak. Latsch, who played in just eight games last season before a season-ending injury, was named team captain before the start of the season while Peterson, a Marquette native, was named an alternate captain.
“Well, the game is continuity,” Shyiak said. “Obviously, we’ve got only four guys from last year’s team. Until this season Tanner had only played eight games in college hockey, and JP was used limitedly. But what they do bring is a great attitude, team-first mentality. They were voted captains by our guys, and they’re leading this group the right way.
“They know the culture that we want to build here. It’s great to have guys that were around last year, and who can talk to them about Marquette and about our program and lead us the right way, and I think they’ve been doing a great job of that.”
As for the rest of the roster, 24 players are new to the Upper Peninsula. Shyiak had a limited amount of time to find players, and the resulting roster is a combination of freshmen and Division 1 and Division 3 transfers.
“Some of these guys are getting more minutes than they’ve ever had in their careers at the collegiate level, and some guys are still making the transition from junior hockey here. So we’re still kind of identifying our line combinations, and our ‘D’ pairings are getting to what we want, but that’s all going to take a little bit of time,” Shyiak said.
One player new to Marquette who is seeing plenty of playing time is goaltender Ryan Ouellette, who played two seasons at Niagara after a freshman year at NCAA D-III Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Ouellette has started five of NMU’s six games this season and has a .941 save percentage.
“He’s stepped in right away and has performed very, very well. He’s given us a chance in the games. He’s kept it tight when he’s needed to keep it tight. Obviously, he’s playing very well for us now,” Shyiak said. “You know, we’ve got to do a little bit better job in front of him, creating a little bit more offense to help him along the way too. We got to bring our shot count down. And that’s about more about our breakouts and taking care of the puck.”
After a 1-5 start against nonconference opponents (the Wildcats were swept at Colorado College then split with Alaska Anchorage at home in the two weekends before the ASU series) NMU starts off CCHA play with the biggest series on their calendar, a home-and-home with archrival Michigan Tech. The Wildcats actually played the Huskies once already this season, an exhibition game that finished as a 4-3 win for Tech in Houghton. Those 24 newcomers got a small taste of what Shyiak calls the best rivalry in college hockey back on Oct. 4, but the games for conference points obviously mean more.
“We are getting better, so let’s learn from that. Don’t worry about what happened (in our past six games). Our focus is for Friday night here against our biggest rival. We’ve got to take another step forward and continue to get better,” Shyiak said. “We’ve also got to find a way to win a hockey game. Our focus is on getting better against a great opponent, Michigan Tech. Obviously, they’ve been to the NCAAs three years in a row. I consider them one of the top teams in the CCHA.
“So the matchup is going to be good, it’s going to be heavy, it’s going to be fast, it’s going to be exciting for everybody, but let’s focus on getting ourselves better.”
