MARQUETTE – It’s been two weeks since the season came to a disappointing end for the Northern Michigan University hockey team.

First, a late-season swoon meant the Wildcats lost home ice in the first round of the WCHA playoffs to Ferris State.

Secondly, Northern then traveled to Ferris and lost the series in two games with a costly five-minute major penalty dooming them in Game 2.

Still, even though the Wildcats lost the series, NMU head coach Walt Kyle thought his team played well overall.

“It was a good series,” he said. “It was two really tight one-goal games if you take the empty-netters out.

“I thought Friday night that we played exceptionally well and that we carried the play. We just weren’t able to convert. We ended up taking a penalty and we let them (score) on the power play. We also had ample opportunities to do the same thing ourselves. We just weren’t able to do it.

“I thought Saturday night that Ferris came out and played better. They carried the play a little bit in the first (period), but I thought it was a really good hockey game.

“We ended up having to kill a couple of majors. We lost Dominik (Shine) and lost (Ryan) Trenz. To the guys’ credit, we wound up gaining a lead in the third period, but that’s when Trenz got the five-minute major and they scored two off that to go ahead of us.

“I thought the series was good. I was just disappointed with our inability to score goals and that we took some untimely penalties.

“We actually generated a ton of opportunities. It wasn’t just the Ferris series. In was our last six games, we just could not put the puck in the net.

“Over the course of that time, the 10 games prior to that, (Darren) Nowick’s line was on fire and we were finding ways to put the puck in on a regular basis. The last six games of the year, we were able to generate stuff through most of those games. We just could not put it in the back of the net.”

This year went better than the 2014-15 campaign. Its record improved slightly and they were above .500 in the WCHA.

NMU also defeated Minnesota State on the road for the first time, beat NCAA tournament participant Minnesota-Duluth, took down Michigan State at the Great Lakes Invitational and kept pace with Michigan, which has the best offense in the country.

The Wildcats were also plagued by multiple injuries a season ago, the most important being the loss of goaltender Mathias Dahlstrom for the second half. This season, NMU did have to fight through a few injuries, but ultimately, they were not as devastating as the previous season.

Northern was without Dahlstrom for the first half of this season as he tried to recover from the previous season’s knee injury as well as bad back pain. However, freshmen goalies Atte Tolvanen and Mathias Israelsson stepped in during his absence, with Tolvanen making the WCHA All-Rookie Team.

Kyle gave Dahlstrom credit for fighting his way back from his injury and persevering through the process.

He also praised his other seniors for the time they put in to help change things with the team.

“I think at defense both (Barrett) Kaib and (Ryan) Trenz had career years,” the coach said. “I thought that those guys were two of our best defensemen. They played very well.

“Cohen (Adair) had a career year.

“Darren, of course, played exceptionally well. He went from a guy who was a solid college hockey player into an elite college player. He kept working at it and he bought into everything that we were selling.

“I really didn’t like our culture the last couple of years. It slipped away from whom we were a little, and this year was not like that at all. I think the guys regained that culture and I think we are swinging the right way. That’s to their credit.”

When analyzing the season overall, Kyle was pleased with how his team weathered the storm during the first half, but wasn’t with how the team played its last six games that caused them to lose home ice in the playoffs.

“I give the guys a ton of credit for the first half,” he said. “We were missing Dahlstrom for 20-some games. We missed (Zach) Urban for 20-some games. We were missing Sami (Salminen) for 20-some games. We found a way to keep grinding it out each week to be a .500 hockey team.

“We had a really good second half. Except for the last six games, we were moving ahead, we had a ton of confidence. I liked where we were.”

Looking forward to next season, Kyle hopes that some of his upperclassmen can bounce back and said that he feels the team’s culture is back to where it needs to be.

“We did not project this year to be playing the number of freshmen that we played, but a couple of things happened,” he said. “I think, first of all, these guys got a great opportunity the first half of the year with our injuries and some of those guys just took jobs away from other people. That’s a good thing as we move forward.

“I think some key things for us going ahead, Troy (Loggins) blew his knee out before Christmas and we need him to come back and be the player that we hope he’s capable of being. He’s a big guy for us as we move forward.

“Shane (Sooth) is a guy that struggled with injuries and stuff the first part of the year, so we need him to have a bounce-back year and have the type of year that he had a year ago.

“We need Brock (Maschmeyer) to bounce back and have the year that he had a year ago. We need to continue to grow through our lineup. If we do that, we’re in a pretty good place.”

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 246. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.