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#5/6 Miami at St. Cloud State
St. Cloud won the Penrose Cup, awarded to the NCHC’s regular season champion in 2013-14.
Fresh off a 3-1 holiday road trip that featured two shutouts by junior netminder Jay Williams, Miami is on the road again this weekend in a two-game series at NCHC rival St. Cloud State.
This will be the first and only time the two schools meet this year after playing six times last year culminating in Miami’s two-game NCHC playoff series sweep of the Huskies who finished first in the league’s inaugural regular season.
Though they rode high last year, this year has been very different for the defending Penrose Cup Champions.
The Huskies (7-10-1, 2-5-1 NCHC) find themselves mired in seventh place while Miami (14-6-0, 7-3-0 NCHC) sits in first place in the league standings after finishing a disastrous dead last one year ago.
Both games can be seen via NCHC.tv and heard via Miami All-Access. Tonight’s game will also be shown live on Sports Time Ohio and Fox Sports North Plus (good lord) at 8:37 PM EST and tomorrow the puck drops at 8:07 PM EST.
The Series
Miami has dominated this series though the number of games between the burgeoning rivals is relatively limited. Miami leads the all-time series 12-5-1 including a 4-2 mark last year. After splitting two regular season series on each other’s home ice last season, the RedHawks went to St. Cloud fighting for an opportunity to salvage their season, and salvage they did as they swept the Huskies out of the NCHC playoffs.
The Coach
St. Cloud head coach Bob Motzko is a familiar name to Miami fans as he was an assistant with the program under former Miami head coaches George Gwozdecky and Mark Mazzolini for five seasons. At SCSU, Motzko has taken the program to its only Frozen Four and has gone a respectable 191-146-41 in 10 seasons behind the bench of his alma mater.
The Team
Coming off last season’s first place regular season finish, SCSU was picked to finish third in this year’s preseason poll behind North Dakota and Miami. However, they will have to go on some kind of run in order to fulfill those lofty preseason expectations.
In net, the Huskies run out sophomore Charlie Lindgren who has decent numbers with a 2.63 GAA and .905 save percentage. However, the Huskies simply aren’t scoring like they did a year ago averaging just 2.44 goals
SCSU’s Jonny Brodzinski is a Hobey Baker caliber player.
per game vs. 3.58 a season ago. Leading scorer Jonny Brodzinski paces the Huskies with 11-6-17 after netting 21 goals a year ago. The loss of Hobey Hat Trick Finalist Nic Dowd has been huge because after Brodzinski’s 11 goals, only one player, Joey Benik, has at least 8 goals for SCSU. In fact, the next highest scorers after Benik are Andrew Prochno and David Morley who have just three goals apiece.
The Prediction
Looking at this matchup on paper, Miami should sweep the weekend. SCSU can’t score and when Miami’s right, they can. However, road weariness could take its toll as the RedHawks will be playing their fifth and sixth games away from home since December 28. As much as I want to say Miami will sweep, I think they leave the series with yet another NCHC split.
Coleman’s return lifts Miami past St. Cloud
Well, hello there!
You probably didn’t miss us even though we haven’t posted since Miami got pretty boring to watch about six weeks ago. We haven’t found this season easy to watch, either.
Anywho, Blake Coleman is back! And the junior from Texas netted his 11th and 12th goals of the season to lift Miami to an emotional win over fourth-ranked St. Cloud State at Steve Cady Arena last night.
Blake Coleman celebrates a Miami goal. (Miami University Athletics)
Coleman, who had not seen action since injuring himself (we believe he broke his collarbone) in a game on December 6 against Denver, was easily the best player on the ice. He added an immediate boost of energy and seemed to infect the RedHawks with his sense of purpose and leadership — something that’s been sorely lacking since he left the lineup. He was hitting, backchecking, hustling, creating turnovers … and scoring. Frankly, it was one of his best games since his freshman year. If he can raise his level of play, and lift the team around him, this could be a good sign as the season nears completion.
Austin Czarnik also seemed affected by Coleman’s presence in the lineup. On the first line with regular mate Riley Barber, Coleman was inserted alongside the two of them creating matchup nightmares for SCSU as that line accounted for three of Miami’s four goals and was a handful all night for the Huskies. For Czarnik he scored his 11th goal of the season and assisted twice giving the junior captain a season’s line of 11-30-41. Barber also assisted on Coleman’s first goal of the night, his 20th, in an otherwise quiet night for the sophomore sniper from Pittsburgh.
Sophomore goaltender Jay Williams earned just his fifth win of the season evening his record at 5-5. He wasn’t great, but he did enough to enable Miami to record its second win over SCSU this year. Consider. Miami has only 11 wins this season but they have beaten an impressive list of teams with far better records than the RedHawks. Miami has beaten North Dakota, St. Cloud (twice), Wisconsin, Denver and Ohio State (twice) who is somehow 15-10-3. Oh, wait. I know. It’s because duhOSU has the 46th ranked strength of schedule in college hockey. For the record, Miami has played the 15th most difficult schedule in the nation and sits at 11-15-3.
Austin Czarnik scored a goal and added two assists in Miami’s 4-3 win over SCSU. (Miami University Athletics)
Can one player make a difference?
Well, it certainly looked that way last night. Miami put forth a level of effort, a much higher “compete level” to paraphrase CBS Sports analyst Dave Starman, that I haven’t seen in months. Will this be the start of a late season run that could carry this team into the NCHC playoffs and save the entire campaign? Or will this just be a blip on the radar? While I’m not completely sold on this as a bellwether moment, I’m at least curious for one more night to see how this team responds.
#7 Miami Drops #3 St. Cloud 2-0
In one of their most complete games of the season, the #7 Miami RedHawks went into the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, Minn. and handed #3 St. Cloud State their first loss of the season shutting out the Huskies 2-0.
The win was significant as it was St. Cloud that knocked Miami out of last year’s NCAA tournament winning a 4-1 Midwest Regional final in Toledo in front of a crowd that would make duhOSU’s crowds at Cheap Furniture Arena look huge.
Miami got on the board first about halfway through the first period as freshman defender Matt Joyaux recorded his first collegiate goal on a nifty pass from junior Alex Wideman. After Miami won a puck battle at the SCSU blueline, sophomore forward Sean Kuraly muscled the puck into the offensive zone where Wideman collected the puck along the boards and centered a pass to a trailing Joyaux who one-timed a low shot on the ice past Husky goaltender Ryan Faragher for what turned out to be the game-winning goal.
Sophomore Ryan McKay makes one of his 31 saves in a 2-0 Miami victory. (Miami University Athletics)
In the third, Miami collected an insurance marker as sophomore Riley Barber connected on his ninth goal of the season by firing a wrist shot off a draw in the SCSU end. Junior captain Austin Czarnik won the draw cleanly and directly to Barber, and he made no mistake ripping a shot past Faragher on the far side.
Sophomore netminder Ryan McKay made 31 saves to record his second consecutive shutout and sixth of his career and the Miami penalty kill went 5-for-5 and forced many of the SCSU chances to the outside though the Huskies certainly had their share of good scoring chances, but were simply unable to find the back of the net. Miami will still need to focus on limiting chances down low tonight and for the rest of the season as the young defense corps continues to grow.
“It was a great team effort, our most complete game all season,” said McKay. “We blocked a ton of shots (17). We weren’t blocking a lot of shots at the beginning of the season.”
“The size of the ice helps us,” McKay said of the Olympic-sized sheet at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center. “We’re similar teams in a lot of ways. I thought our ‘D’ kept their position on the dots and kept stuff to the outside,” he said. “And when we needed to, we collapsed and won battles in the tough areas.”
Miami and St. Cloud will finish the two-game NCHC series tonight from the National Hockey Center. Faceoff is at 8:07 PM EST and the game can be heard via Miami All-Access. The Huskies also offer a pay video feed from their website, scsuhuskies.com.
22 Days to Go! Welcome to the NCHC, Part 1
As we start our 2013-14 preseason coverage, we introduce you to the new conference. The National Collegiate Hockey Conference should prove to be a whale of a conference to play in for many years. Outside of college hockey, you may not know that these schools are power houses. You may not have even heard of some of the schools without ties to Miami hockey. Here’s the first portion of our intro to the teams of the NCHC.
Miami Advances to Regional Final
Miami earns first NCAA tournament victory since 2010
Happy to be proven wrong, Miami easily dispatched Minnesota State thrashing the Mavericks by a 4-0 score. It’s been a long time since we’ve won big in this tournament and freshman Ryan McKay was back on top of his game earning the fourth shutout of his career and Miami’s first-ever NCAA tournament whitewashing of an opponent.
Curtis McKenzie, Marc Hagel, Cody Murphy and Max Cook notched goals for Miami as they advance to their third regional final since 2009. The RedHawks will face WCHA regular season champ, St. Cloud State (24-15-1) in today’s final at 4pm EST from Toledo.
Miami (25-11-5) will need even more balanced scoring today as they face a talented Huskie squad coached by former Miami assistant Bob Motzko. It is a preview, of sorts, of next year’s NCHC conference as Miami and SCSU will likely be the favorites to capture the first championship in the new league.
The Huskies took Notre Dame behind the woodshed yesterday exposing the slow and plodding Irish by a final of 5-1. SCSU looked strong, tough and fast in handing it to the Irish as I predicted here and other places. The Huskies have notched 136 goals this year and will provide yet another loaded offensive challenge for Miami.
Led by seniors Ben Hanowski (17-14-31 plus his rights were just traded for Jarome Iginla) and Hobey Baker finalist Drew LeBlanc (13-37-50), freshman Jonny Brodzinski (22-11-33) and junior Nic Dowd (14-24-38), the Huskies can score with the best of them. In net, sophomore Ryan Faragher is 23-14-1 with a respectable 2.26 GAA and .915 save percentage. The defense corps is led by Nick Jensen and Kevin Gravel – Jensen is particularly effective offensively. The Huskies are deep and talented and will pose a significant challenge to the RedHawks.
With another victory, Miami will reach the Frozen Four for the third time in five seasons. They would face the winner of today’s Quinnnipiac/Union regional final if they are fortunate enough to win.
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