PC Hockey Opens at #6 North Dakota at “Palace on the Prairie”

PC Hockey Opens at #6 North Dakota at “Palace on the Prairie”

The Providence College Hockey sextet tuned up for their 2024-25 season in an exhibition game win over Union College, 4-1, last Saturday, October 5th.  Lots of good outcomes in that win which we will get to below.

 

North Dakota is Hockey Country

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All the games count now, and the Friars start their season this Saturday evening against one of the traditional powerhouse college hockey teams in the country, the University of North Dakota. The game will be on the Fighting Hawks home ice, the Ralph Englestad Arena, on the North Dakota campus in Grand Forks.   North Dakota is a member of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) and has won eight NCAA titles.  Providence has won one.

To say that hockey is big on the University of North Dakota (UND) campus is an understatement.  In the North Dakota winters, there is not much else to do.  The UND basketball team is nothing to write home about.  The nearest pro teams are in Minnesota, Colorado, and now Utah.  From October 1 to April 30 of each year, you will find at least on story every day in the Grand Forks Herald about the UND hockey team.

 

 

College hockey is king in Grand Forks. The Fighting Hawks play in the largest campus hockey arena in the country, the Ralph Englestad Arena, built in 2001 for $104 million by a wealthy alum and former UND hockey player, Ralph Englestad.  The “Ralph,” or the “Palace on the Prairie,” as it is affectionally known by the locals, seats 11,600 fans and sells out every game.  The PC Friars have never played on a campus arena with this many hostile fans rooting against them.

For the last several years, Coach Nate Leaman of the Friars has opted to schedule national powers before the Friars open Hockey East play.  Last year, the Friars stunned Michigan at Ann Arbor, 4-2, and stunned Denver, the eventual NCAA champ, at Schneider, 4-3.  This year’s early season match against North Dakota will give the nine new PC freshman players an opportunity to experience Division One hockey in a memorable atmosphere against an iconic college hockey program.

 

Friars Cruise Past Union College in Exhibition Tilt

With a roster filled with 14 of its 28 players new to the program, Coach Leaman wisely scheduled an exhibition game before the first official game of the season. Union College, expected to be a middle-of-the-pack team in the ECAC this year, and a team that Leaman coached at prior to PC, consented to the game.

The 4-1 win over Union gave Leaman an opportunity to play 22 of his 28 players and to create new offense and defense line configurations.  PC played 4 offense lines and 3 sets of defense combinations.   Most importantly, many of the new freshman players and grad student transfers saw action.  Each of the 4 offensive lines had one freshman—Trevor Connelly, John Mustard, Logan Sawyer, and Braiden Clark.  And the power play featured freshman Tomas Machu.

The PC freshman accounted themselves well.  PC outshot Union 36-18 and 20 of PC’s shots on goal were from freshman, including freshman Tomas Machu with a robust 8 shots on goal.  Goal scoring was balanced, 2 goals from veterans, one each from Nick Poisson and Chase Yoder, and 2 goals from freshman, one each from Trevor Connelly and John Mustard.

PC struggled with face-offs last year, winning a very modest 51% of them. Against Union, PC won 61% of face-offs, with 4th-line freshman Braiden Clark winning 7 of 8 for an astounding 87% win rate.

Coach Leaman has to be happy with how well the freshman players and veteran players played together in the Union game.  The next game up against North Dakota will provide a stiff challenge for PC’s new team chemistry.

 

Some Additional Slap Shots

 

Transfer Portal Giveth and Taketh

In a May 18, 2024 GoLocalProv column, “Transfer Portal Hits PC Hockey for Good and Bad”, I opined that the transfer portal had mixed blessings for PC hockey.  Lots of new grad student transfers opted to join the Friars, but there were some undergrad Friars who decided to leave PC for more playing time in other programs.  Two significant transfers who left PC were Brady Berard to Boston College and Bennett Schimek to Arizona State.

I speculated in the May 18th column that Schimek was a potential 20+ goal scorer for Arizona State. I may have underestimated Schimek’s potential.  This past weekend Arizona State played two games against the Air Force Academy. Schimek played on regular offensive shifts, on the power play, and on the penalty kill unit. In two games, he scored 4 goals and two assists.  His 6 total points last weekend were the most in Division One hockey. He scored every way possible:  2 short-handed goals, 1 power play goal, and 1 regular shift goal.

PC fans get to see Schimek in his Arizona State uniform on October 18th and 19th when the Sun Devils visit the Friars on Homecoming Weekend.

 

Friars in NHL Uniforms

Twenty former PC hockey players were in NHL training camps in September looking to make it on to an NHL roster. Eight Friars start play this week for the 2024-25 season on NHL rosters:

Noel Acciari is a left winger for the Pittsburgh Penguins; Vinnie Desharnais is a defenseman with the Vancouver Canucks; Brandon Duhaime is a right winger for the Washington Capitals; Mark Jankowski is a center for the Nashville Predators; Kevin Rooney is a center for the Calgary Flames; Brandon Tanev is a left winger for the Seattle Kraken; Brandon’s brother, Chris Tanev, is defenseman for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Jake Walman has landed with the San Jose Sharks as a defenseman.

Acciari, Jankowski, Rooney, Brandon Tanev, and Walman were all members of PC’s 2015 NCAA championship team.  Acciari, a native of Johnston, RI (and the second most successful Johnston native son in professional sports after Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla), is the only native Rhode Islander, I believe, presently playing in the NHL.

 

Fighting Sioux become the Fighting Hawks, Sort Of

As part of the NCAA’s purge of Native American nicknames in college sports over the last 20+ years (remember the Dartmouth Indians and the St. John’s Redmen), the University of North Dakota was required to ditch its long-time Fighting Sioux nickname and find an alternative nickname.  When the Ralph Englestad arena was being built, North Dakota alum Ralph Englestad threatened to pull his money out of the project if UND got rid of the Fighting Sioux nickname.

Englestad made his fortune in casinos he owned in Las Vegas and Mississippi.  He also owned the Las Vegas Motor Speedway at one time.

The NCAA eventually prevailed, and Englestad reluctantly backed off his threat when the North Dakota fans voted for the new nickname, the Fighting Hawks. Englestad died in 2002 of lung cancer, one year after the Ralph Englestad Arena opened in 2001.  If you attend a UND hockey game, you will still see hundreds of Fighting Sioux sweatshirts