DU hockey began this season with a four-game road trip spanning more than 3,000 miles, five time zones and 10 days. Call it a crash-course for a young team getting to know each other.
“Itap tough to be on a plane all the time,” senior defenseman Michael Davies said, “and being bussed five hours back-and-forth.”
Added senior forward Liam Finlay: “Weird travel times in weird time zones.”
However, with the sting of DU’s Frozen Four semifinal exit a year ago still fresh, the Pioneers relished an early-season gauntlet — one they passed with flying colors going 4-0 playing Alaska Fairbanks and Lake Superior State.
DU’s home opener comes Friday night against No. 6 Boston College, with the Pioneers’ roster already reminiscent of their last NCAA title.
The 2016-17 championship squad leaned on eight seniors. These Pioneers feature four seniors alongside a strong returning core of 16 sophomores and juniors. Both had six freshmen each. And both value balanced team hockey over individual stardom.
“You do get kind of an eerie feeling; itap very similar,” said Finlay, a DU freshman on the title team. “There are a lot of guys who fit those roles. People know what they’re supposed to do. We’re not taking shortcuts.”
The Boston College series this weekend will showcase two programs with seemingly different building philosophies.
BC is led by three first-round NHL draft picks: forward Matt Boldy (No. 12; Wild), goalie Spencer Knight (No. 13; Panthers) and forward Alex Newhook (No. 16; Avalanche). Meanwhile, the Pioneers’ highest NHL draft pick this season is forward Bobby Brink — selected No. 34 overall in the second round by the Flyers.
“We’ll never recruit like Boston College, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota or BU; they go after the high, high end and they go after a lot of them,” DU coach David Carle said. “Not to say that we don’t have high-end players on our team, but we want people that are committed with two feet into being Denver Pioneers. … Constructing our roster the way we do allows us to have consistency year in and year out, where some other programs in the country have a lot of ups and downs because of how they recruit.”
Carle would rather stay out of the comparison game, noting each team develops its own specific DNA year-to-year. The biggest parallel he draws is how that 2017 team fed off the previous year’s disappointment of not winning it all. This Pioneers’ squad appears equally motivated.
“We’ve talked as a group about turning the page from last year, but also how much that loss meant, how much it hurt and how much itap driven us through the summer,” Carle said. “We’ve come back with a real hunger to climb back up the mountain.”