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Looking ahead to Minnesota-Duluth

By Jason Paul | April 8, 2011

Alright, folks, time to put the North Dakota game talk to rest.  Great win for our boys, but it’s not like we won the national championship…yet.  So it’s time to turn our focus to Minnesota-Duluth.

The Bulldogs are 25-10-6 overall.  They finished in fourth place in the WCHA with a 15-8-5 conference record and only two points behind second place Denver, so it’s not like there was a huge difference.  The Bulldogs are 12-5-2 at home, 10-4-4 away, and 3-1-0 at neutral sites, all very good records.

UMD started off the season with an impressive 11-1-2 run through the end of November with their lone loss coming against North Dakota, but then stumbled in December going 1-3-1 against Denver, Minnesota, and North Dakota.  One thing that really sticks out looking at their first half results is nearly half of their games went to overtime (9 of 19).  The Bulldogs rebounded in January, but faltered in February, where they went 2-3-3.

In the WCHA tournament they swept St. Cloud State, though it took triple overtime in Game 2 to dispatch them.  The Bulldogs then bowed out of the tourney with a loss to Bemidji State.

UMD’s road to the NCAA championship game began with Union, who they shut out 2-0.  The Bulldogs then crushed the No. 1 overall seed Yale Bulldogs, 5-3.  In the Frozen Four semifinal they hung on to defeat Notre Dame, 4-3.

YOU MIGHT REMEMBER ME FROM SUCH TEAMS AS…
Colorado College.

When the Tigers upset Boston College in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, they did it behind their top line featuring the Schwartz brothers and an extremely effective power play that went 3-for-4.  Michigan then proceeded to shut down this line and essentially shut down CC in the West Regional final.

If you look at Minnesota-Duluth’s stat sheet, it’s looks like a higher powered version of  Colorado College.  The Bulldogs feature three 50+ point scorers in Jack Connolly (18-41-59), Justin Fontaine (22-36-58), and Mike Connolly (28-26-54).  That’s 68 goals, 103 assists, and 171 points (!) between the three.  That’s like their whole offense.  After the top three, the next three forwards have 16, 13, and 10 goals, then it drops off to 8, 4, 3, 3, 1, 0.  The Bulldogs are essentially a one line team, but an extremely good one line at that.

Defensively, it’s the same story.  Freshman Justin Faulk has been outstanding posting eight goals and 25 assists in his rookie campaign.  But, not including Dylan Olsen, who left the team midway through the season, the other seven UMD defensemen combined have totaled only five goals and 30 assists.  Faulk alone has almost singlehandedly outscored the entire Bulldogs defense combined.  Keep the puck out of his hands.

IN GOAL…
The Bulldogs will roll with junior netminder Kenny Reiter, who is 15-7-5 in 30 games with a 2.32 GAA and .914 save percentage.  He did not look sharp against Notre Dame and gave up some soft goals.

STAY OUT OF THE BOX
The Bulldogs have used their power play to propel them to the title game.  Eight of their 11 goals in the NCAA tournament have come on the power play. That is a really, really high percentage.  For the season they have converted 23.3 percentage of their power plays, good for seventh in the nation.

Of UMD’s other three NCAA goals, two came even strength and one shorthanded, so yes, STAY OUT OF THE BOX!

SO HERE WE GO…
The keys to the game are basically shut down UMD’s top line and stay out of the penalty box, the same deal as when we faced Colorado College.  If the Wolverines can do that, they have the depth advantage and can hopefully use that to control the puck more and wear down the Bulldogs.

LIVE BLOG MADNESS
Expect the live blog to open around 6 p.m. ET tomorrow night.  Game time is 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.  Come one, come all!