By Andrew Vitalis
Let’s Play Hockey

University of Denver men’s hockey coach Jim Montgomery walked into the Pioneer locker room last Saturday, right after DU fell to Western Michigan for the second time in as many nights and saw something he hadn’t seen in over a year – disappointment. It wasn’t so much that the Pioneers lost to the Broncos, but rather how they lost.  In both games, DU had a two-goal lead and lost it. After allowing 10 goals in their previous six games, the Pioneers gave up 13 in two games against WMU. Montgomery remembered seeing similar emotion from his squad last season after the Pioneers opened the 2016-17 season losing two straight to Ohio State and Boston College. His team was stunned.

“Last year we got swept the first weekend of the year and I remember our locker room just being devastated and it was the same (last weekend) – which I like,” Montgomery said. “I’m glad that people in our program were devastated that we were swept. It was very disappointing to everyone involved in the program – how we weren’t able to finish games that we had leads in. A lot of that had to do with the incredible intensity and how well Western played. But when looking at our team’s development, it was very disappointing to give up leads like that, and that is purely a will thing – being team-committed to defense. It happens during the course of the year. You have bad moments and you need to learn and get better. Hopefully, this team will be able to do that.”

“For us, it always comes down to our preparation,” junior forward Dylan Gambrell said. “It wasn’t a regular DU weekend. We need to be at our best every week. They definitely brought it to us. We have to take it as a learning lesson and get better. I think it’s good that it happened early in the season for us. Now we know what it’s like and how it feels to lose like that, especially for some of the younger guys. Now we know what it takes, how hard every weekend is going to be and how hard we need to prepare.”

The two losses were the first for the Pioneers this season (now 4-2-2 overall) and their first regular season loss since last January when DU fell to St. Cloud State in overtime. Ironically enough, the Pioneers’ next opponent is St. Cloud State. When Denver takes on SCSU this weekend, it will be the first time since last February that the Pioneers won’t have a No. 1 ranking next to their name. That ranking now belongs to the Huskies after a home sweep of UMD last weekend. If a wake-call needed to happen for Montgomery and his squad, they are glad it happened when it did.

“It definitely wasn’t the way we wanted to play,” junior defenseman Blake Hillman said. “I give Western a lot of credit. They were prepared; their rink was super loud. I think that helped them a ton with momentum. This week in practice we have really focused on us and what we can do, going home and looking at ourselves in the mirror and telling ourselves that it wasn’t a good weekend and we need to get back to what we have been doing to have success. I think that was the biggest takeaway.”

When dissecting the 2017-18 Pioneers, the one thing that sticks out more than any other category is their experience. A veteran squad made up of 11 juniors and seniors who have skated to the college hockey mountaintop, DU has been down this hallway before. Last year’s national championship run continues to be the perfect blueprint for success. After dropping their first two games, Denver went 12-0-3 over their next 15 games. During that stretch, they outscored their opponents 46-28 and held them to one goal or less eight times. 

Then in December, DU experienced a small hiccup in their schedule. After losing to UMD on Dec. 10, the Pioneers skated to a 3-3-1 record over their next seven. It wasn’t a stretch of bad hockey necessarily, just not DU hockey. Then, after losing to SCSU 3-2 in overtime on Jan. 20, the Pioneers exploded by finishing the regular season with 11 straight wins, outscoring their opponents 48-17 and holding their opponents to two goals or less nine times. 

Aside from the speed bump in the NCHC Tournament, DU was nearly perfect from late-January through  April when they captured their eighth national title by beating UMD 3-2. Now, almost seven months removed from that historic run, the Pioneers use that time period as a learning tool. It becomes a matter of perspective. Sometimes it’s a good thing to be reminded that it’s a marathon and not a sprint.

“Last year, we played North Dakota in the NCHC semifinals and we ended up losing. I think honestly that the loss was the best thing that could have happened to us before we went on our little run,” Hillman said. “It just gave us that mental edge on how nothing was going to come easy. Every team, especially this year being that we are the defending national champions, every team is going to be gunning for us. I think it definitely was a wake-up call to everyone in general. We know we are a good team and we just flat-out got outworked and embarrassed. I think it was a good thing because it’s early on in the year and we can fix some of these things and we have plenty of time to do that.”

Good teams typically have one thing in common – they excel in the leadership department. Montgomery can certainly check that one off the list. In addition to his seniors – led by captain Tariq Hammond – DU has one of the strongest classes of junior pucksters in the nation. They have seen it all. Whether you look at their 2017-18 team statistics, the box score from last year’s national championship game against the Bulldogs or the game recap from their Frozen Four loss to North Dakota two seasons ago, the players who represent DU’s current junior class are a part of the story.  

Led by assistant captain Troy Terry, a Colorado native, Denver has three players in the top 13 in scoring in the nation heading into this weekend. Two are juniors (Gambrell is the other). Terry is second in the nation and first in the NCHC in scoring with 16 points in eight games. It definitely does not stop there. In his first two seasons, Gambrell has scored over 40 points. Junior sniper Jarid Lukosevicius notched a hat trick during last year’s title game – the first hat trick in a national championship game since Montgomery did it as a member of Maine’s title team in 1993. Then there is Hillman, Colin Staub, Logan O’Connor ... get the idea? It’s an intangible that one cannot ignore. If experience is one of the keys to long-term success, the Pioneers’ junior class has certainly been there, done that.

“We knew we were getting a real solid class of individuals and character young men that were going to help elevate our program to another level,” Montgomery said when asked about recruiting the class as freshmen. “Did we know they were going to be this good on the ice? We hoped, but you never know they are going to be as good as what you hope. It’s a class that has been to two Frozen Fours and we lean on heavily for leadership and being able to increase our culture. 

“Up front, we have a lot of forwards that play high quality minutes and two are assistant captains in Dylan Gambrell and Troy Terry. Everyone knows about them, but I don’t think everyone knows about a guy like Logan O’Conner, who I think is the best defensive forward, not only on our team, but one of the best defensive forwards in the country. Just his tenacity and how hard he plays. Then you throw in a guy like Colin Staub who is an incredible team-first guy that gets better every year. There you have four forwards, and then you add Jarid Lukosevicius who is a trigger man and a power-play guy who is hard to play against every night because of how hard he goes to the net and how hard he shoots the puck. On the back end, we have Blake Hillman who has developed into a great two-way defenseman who is one of three returning defensemen who log tons of minutes right now until our captain Tariq Hammond gets back.”

“I think it helps that we’ve been there before,” Gambrell said. “I’m sure other guys have been there in different leagues as well, but for us, knowing that we’ve been there and have handled it and have taken it on previously, we have that in the back of our heads – what it feels like and what we need to do moving forward.”

Moving forward is something they have shown they are good at, and something they will need to perfect once again this weekend. If you believe in statistics, the weekend series with St. Cloud State will come down to one thing – the Huskies’ offense against the Pioneers’ defense. SCSU skates into the series with the top-ranked offense in the nation, averaging 4.7 goals per game. Denver is currently 40th in team defense, giving up 3.1 goals per game.  

“Just today, Monty called (SCSU) the Harlem Globetrotters of ice hockey,” Hillman said. “They pass the puck, they move away from the puck, they are quick and very offensive. Their D-men jump up in the play. We know we are going to have our hands full. The way I look at it, just like last weekend when we went into Western’s barn, they were looking at us like we are looking at St. Cloud this weekend. There is an undefeated team, No. 1 in the country coming in and we want to do everything within our power to slow them down.”

“We always look at how we need to get better,” Montgomery said. “In year’s past, we needed to get better offensively and this year we need to get better defensively. We need to have to increase in defensive awareness and a stronger commitment to team first.”

All eyes will surely be on Denver this weekend. Get your tickets now – if there are any left.

Andrew Vitalis can be reached at lphprep@yahoo.com