The 2019-20 season was exactly what you would expect from the Denver hockey team.

Nothing if not consistent, the Pioneers posted numbers comparable to what they had the past two seasons, and there was a sense that this could have been a team poised to go at least to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. That is something DU had accomplished the five previous seasons.

Things being what they are, Denver, which finished No. 6 in the polls and fifth in the Pairwise rankings, didn’t get that chance.

What the Pioneers did do was surpass 20 wins for the 19th season in a row (they finished 21-9-6), grandly celebrate 70 years of hockey history (with incredible throwback jerseys to boot) and reclaim the Gold Pan from Colorado College in fairly convincing fashion

What follows are some takeaways from the short-circuited 2019-20 DU hockey season.

Let’s go streaking

Denver had a balanced roster – 12 upperclassmen and 14 freshmen and sophomores – but it was prone to some uncharacteristically wild swings during the regular season.

An 8-0 start included a sweep of Boston College (sixth in Pairwise). That was followed by a 1-4-3 stretch in this gauntlet: a loss and a tie at Minnesota Duluth (fourth), two losses vs. North Dakota (first), a split with Western Michigan (18th) and a loss and a tie at Arizona State (13th).

“The first eight games were good, although at parts we looked like a team that was getting away with some things,” Denver coach David Carle said. “Then you saw how competitive our league is. That first game at Duluth we had a 3-1 lead and felt like we were in control. They came back and we lost a little of our swagger and our confidence.

“(In the 1-4-3 stretch) there were pockets when there were winnable games, we just weren’t getting results. A lot of it came back to confidence.”

That run was followed by an 8-0-2 stretch that included sweeps of Colorado College and Massachusetts (eighth) on either side of the Christmas break.

The pendulum swung again with back-to-back losses at home against UMD and then at North Dakota.

“The Friday game against Duluth, we felt like we outplayed them, but they go 3-for-6 on the power play and win the game, then (Hunter) Shepard played a great second game,” Carle said.

But the Pioneers again bounced back with a 5-1-2 closing stretch, completed by the Gold Pan’s return.

It was a season that had a little bit of everything.

 

By the numbers

How many playoff games do you think the 21-win Pioneers could have won? If they won three between NCHC and NCAA Tournament games they would have matched last season’s total of 24. If they’d gone on a heater, they conceivably could have won five to eight more, giving them at least 26 wins. Run the table and win eight for 29 and they’d still be four shot of the 2017 National Championship team’s 33.

Win just two more, and they’d match the 23 victories of the 2017-18 season. That season is the best comparable statistically to this season.

This year’s team scored 3.3 goals per game, so did the ’17-18 crew. This year’s team allowed 2.25 goals per game as opposed to 2.1 two years ago. Shots per game (35.5 to 35.1), shots allowed per game (25.9 to 26.6), power play (22.2 percent to 22 percent) and penalty kill (85.4 percent to 85 percent) were nearly all identical.

Two years ago, DU reached the elite eight in final season of coach Jim Montgomery and players such as Henrik Borgstrom, Dylan Gambrell, Blake Hillman, Logan O’Connor and Troy Terry, each of whom departed early for the pros.

What’s interesting is this season’s team actually improved over the 2018-19 team in every statistical category except goals allowed per game (up from 2.0 to 2.25).

The 2019-20 squad also had excellent scoring balance, with 13 players reaching double figures in points, three exceeding 30 (Emilio Pettersen, Ian Mitchell and Brett Stapley) and four more surpassing 20 with a fifth one point away. Five players hit double figures in goals and a sixth was one away.

Goaltending wasn’t an issue as freshman Magnus Chrona stepped in for departed countryman Filip Larsson and went 16-6-4 with a 2.15 gaa and .920 save percentage. Just as Larsson battled injuries a season ago, junior Devin Cooley twice missed stretches this season.

Summing it up

Denver made a lot of improvements to its game this season. Although they were streaky at times, the Pioneers’ special teams improved a great deal with mostly the same cast of characters from the season before. That is one reason I would be bullish on any playoff prospects. Goaltending was another. And the scoring depth would be the third.

The power play improved by seven percent and the penalty kill was almost four percent better. Larsson’s run at the end of last season was magical, and while DU hadn’t gotten that level of goaltending, it still was outstanding.

There’s plenty of fuel for offseason what-if’s because this was a good team that had a chance to make a special run.

So what to make of all this?

“We liked our team – it was dominant at times – but then there were times when it lacked some urgency,” Carle said. “That’s the challenge: how do we correct that going forward?”

I think the returning players know they were on the cusp of potentially big things. The guess is urgency will be a hot topic among what figures to be a large returning senior class.

NEXT: What’s next for DU

©First Line Editorial 2020