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Northern Michigan University hockey team welcomes break before end-of-season push

Northern Michigan University’s Luke Voltin, left, and Alaska-Fairbanks’ Troy Van Tetering fight for the puck on Friday at the Berry Events Center in Marquette. (Journal photo by Corey Kelly)

MARQUETTE — With a precarious hold on the top spot in the WCHA, it would be easy to think this is a terrible time for the Northern Michigan University hockey team to be on a bye week.

However, Wildcats head coach Grant Potulny doesn’t think so.

With NMU’s lead over Minnesota State-Mankato just one point, there’s a good chance the Mavericks will take over first place this weekend. But Potulny would rather have his team rest and prepare for a key home-and-home series the following weekend against Michigan Tech.

“If you look when the year started and the way you kind of plan your year, I was ecstatic that this is when we were off,” the first-year Wildcats coach said. “Now you get to rest your body because it was a long stretch of games where we pushed them hard in practice, too.

“So you have to travel to Alaska (Anchorage) and Alabama (Huntsville) and probably the way we practice can affect them more. We don’t stop a lot of drills or work on a lot of systems where practice gets slowed down.

“It’s up and down the rink like a track meet. Then we work on our conditioning at the end. So we do a ton of skating throughout the course of the week.

“But this is a great time to be off. When you look earlier in the year, we really had to coach hard and push hard to get our team to where we wanted to be and have the effort required on back-to-back nights.

“Then we got a break and then we come back from the break and we’re playing very good hockey. Hopefully this break can do what this last break did for us, and that’s give us some pop back into our legs and get some energy back into the guys so they can catch up on school, they can heal up and then they can have energy for a good playoff push.”

After NMU’s sweep of Alaska-Fairbanks over the weekend, Potulny’s outlook changed from Friday to Saturday.

Last week, he talked about whether his team was playing well or just well enough to win.

After Friday’s overtime win over the Nanooks, Potulny felt it was the latter, but then after the Wildcats completed the sweep the following night, he felt like they were back on track.

“Yes, I do,” he said when asked about his change in his attitude toward the team. “Maybe not so much in the execution side of it, but on the preparation, the competitiveness and the physicality.

“The reality is that the games are so competitive at the end of the year that it’s one mistake here and the season is over. We were getting away with a lot of those mistakes, whether it was because of goaltending or because guys missed opportunities at the net or whatever it was.

“I thought Saturday, we fought for every inch of the ice. We made the ice small on them. We made it hard on them.

“I thought (Fairbanks) also played much better than they did on Friday, so both teams elevated their game. It took us a little bit to get started, but then we kind of methodically took the ice back.

“That to me is the start of where we need to play and how we need to compete, because the team we’re seeing in two weeks (Michigan Tech) is a very competitive team. They can burn you if you make a mistake. They’ve got good sticks and their special teams are good.

“So that’s going to be a different game from what we’ve played the last six or eight (games). It’s going to be more comparable to playing Bowling Green where you have to be dialed in for 60 minutes.”

When asked how the Wildcats are approaching the Tech series, Potulny said his players are looking at things one at a time, but also need to be aware of the good situation they are in.

NMU is No. 16 in the important Pairwise rankings with the top 16 teams making it into the NCAA Tournament. If the Wildcats continue winning, they might make the big dance even if they don’t win the conference tournament.

“I think at this point you always take it one period at a time, but you have to be cognizant of the opportunity in front of you,” Potulny said. “Because you put yourself in a good spot. Now we play a quality opponent next weekend and if you can gain victories over quality teams, it really adjusts the Pairwise.

“Even though they were hard games against Alabama and Alaska and Anchorage and Lake (Superior) State, where they are in the Pairwise doesn’t bump you (up) much when you win against them.

“Whereas these games now can bump you as you get into the playoffs. At that point, if you continue to win, you can keep bumping yourself into a good spot.

“Is it one game at a time? Absolutely. It’s one period at a time and you have to understand that as much as you want to talk about playing 10 or 12 more games, you’re only guaranteed four.

“So you have to take care of what’s in front of you, but if you can, because of all the hard work that you’ve done earlier in the year and the wins that you’ve gotten, you can set yourself up to be in the position where you can get into the NCAA Tournament without the automatic bid.

“I think we need to be aware of that.”

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.

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