{"id":144152,"date":"2024-01-03T14:00:03","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T20:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/?p=144152"},"modified":"2024-01-03T08:23:16","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:23:16","slug":"this-week-in-nchc-hockey-colorado-college-denver-grab-exhibition-victories-during-holiday-break-over-acha-powerhouse-minot-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2024\/01\/03\/this-week-in-nchc-hockey-colorado-college-denver-grab-exhibition-victories-during-holiday-break-over-acha-powerhouse-minot-state\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in NCHC Hockey: Despite losing, ACHA powerhouse Minot State impresses in exhibition games against Colorado College, Denver"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Minot State ventured to Colorado for the program’s first-ever NCAA games over the weekend (photo: Sean Arbaut\/Arbaut Photography).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last weekend\u2019s exhibition games for No. 20 Colorado College and fifth-ranked Denver were looked forward to by many college hockey fans across the region, wanting to get their fix after the holiday break.<\/p>\n

I include myself among that number, but those games meant more to me than they probably did to most.<\/p>\n

Minot State, which fell 7-1 Friday at Colorado College and 9-3 Saturday at Denver, fields an American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Division 1 team that has three national championships to its name. The Beavers reached the ACHA national title game twice in the past three seasons, including last year. The Beavers won it all in 2023, finishing 35-3 in coach Wyatt Waselenchuk\u2019s second campaign at the helm.<\/p>\n

I can already just about hear the reader comments of \u201cSo what,\u201d and so forth, and to be fair, there\u2019s a small part of me that gets it. Week in, week out, you come here for coverage of one of the best NCAA Division I conferences there is. And the league is as good as it is because of its level of competition, as well as the caliber of talent that these NCAA teams attract. But, we’re also here to grow the game.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s generally a gulf in talent between NCAA Division I and ACHA teams. It\u2019d be hard to find anyone who disagrees with that, but I should know as well as anyone. That\u2019s because I cover ACHA teams in my day job.<\/p>\n

The ACHA Division 2 men\u2019s and women\u2019s hockey teams at Dakota College at Bottineau make up a healthy percentage of the winter coverage at the Bottineau Courant<\/em>, a weekly newspaper in North Dakota where I work as a reporter. DCB usually schedules Minot State for both men\u2019s and women\u2019s games. It\u2019s easy to see why, given that Bottineau and Minot are only around an hour and a half apart. DCB\u2019s men\u2019s team isn\u2019t playing the Beavers this season, but they have for most of the nearly 10 years since I\u2019ve been in Bottineau.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see much of Minot State when the Beavers aren\u2019t skating with DCB \u2014 I\u2019m our whole sports department, and I have 11 teams to keep track of over the winter months \u2014 but I was very excited to find out that MSU would be heading out to face CC and DU at the end of December.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have especially high expectations, as NCAA Division I teams usually don\u2019t have too much trouble against ACHA foes when those games are scheduled. But, I knew that these games would be beneficial for everyone involved, and CC coach Kris Mayotte hit the nail on the head at the start of his postgame press conference Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was about the habits and getting back to it,\u201d Mayotte said of Minot State\u2019s first-ever game against a NCAA Division I team. \u201cI thought we were OK, but it\u2019s good to play another team that, when they\u2019re angling and they\u2019re coming to finish their hit, they\u2019re coming to finish their hit, and you can\u2019t replicate that in practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good for us to get hit again, quite honestly, and I really want to give a ton of credit to Wyatt and Minot State. The job they are doing there and what they\u2019re building, he\u2019s done a great job since he got hired. That was a fun team to play against. They play hard, they play with pace, they make you earn what you get, and there were stretches there where we didn\u2019t want to earn it, and we didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last season, I mentioned in a story for USCHO.com<\/strong><\/a> that both Denver coach David Carle and Alaska-Anchorage\u2019s Matt Shasby had recently scheduled UNLV with a view toward helping a school with an ACHA program see what could happen if they were to make the move up to the NCAA level. That doesn\u2019t currently appear to be the case with Minot State. Rob Beer from The Rink Live recently wrote an excellent explainer<\/strong><\/a> on this.<\/p>\n

If last weekend\u2019s exhibitions inspire Minot State to explore the possibility of launching NCAA hockey programs, it would certainly be a welcomed move across the sport\u2019s landscape. It would increase the profile and reach of a NCAA Division II university that is primarily a commuter school while improving what is already a competitive product.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t matter so much in the short term. What does is that Minot State tucked four goals on the weekend against a pair of ranked NCAA Division I teams and didn\u2019t roll over. The Beavers will remember that, and as Mayotte suggested, so should those games\u2019 favored teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend\u2019s exhibition games for No. 20 Colorado College and fifth-ranked Denver were looked forward to by many college hockey fans across the region, wanting to get their fix after the holiday break. I include myself among that number, but those games meant more to me than they probably did to most. Minot State, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":144156,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[810],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis Week in NCHC Hockey: Despite losing, ACHA powerhouse Minot State impresses in exhibition games against Colorado College, Denver - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last weekend\u2019s exhibition games for No. 20 Colorado College and fifth-ranked Denver were looked forward to by many college hockey fans across the region,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144152\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Week in NCHC Hockey: Despite losing, ACHA powerhouse Minot State impresses in exhibition games against Colorado College, Denver - 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