Minnesota State is back on top in the CCHA

When a great coach moves on from a college program, in any sport, there's always a question about what comes next.

It's not that it's impossible for the team to reach its previous heights — such as winning 8 of the previous 9 conference regular-season championships and 5 of those 9 postseason titles, qualifying for the NCAA tournament in all but two of the last 11 seasons — but the road ahead can be bumpy.

For Minnesota State, that road seems to have had a couple early potholes, but now, a season and a half later, it's pretty clearly smooth driving.

It wasn't just that Mike Hastings got a job offer he couldn't refuse from Wisconsin two summers ago. That would be reductive, and unfair to the program he built up over the course of a decade or so at the helm. It was that he took with him his longtime assistant coach who felt to some like the heir apparent, Todd Knott, as well as a few of the team's best players.

So it was a tall order for Luke Strand, who had some college coaching experience but had mostly been a successful USHL coach, right out of the gate. And while his first year was merely "good" — 18-15-4 with a plus-15 goal difference, but no trophies — only being good in what is often a one-bid league certainly doesn't live up to the standard that had been set in Mankato.

But in Year 2? It seems like things are back to normal. The Mavericks are an NCAA bubble team as things stand right now, sitting 15th with a 16-6-2 record, a huge goal difference, and all the reason in the world to think they're on course for more of the success they began cultivating starting in the early 2010s.

Perhaps the biggest reason for that is the one position where Minnesota State has almost always been elite: goaltending. For most of the last several years, they have been among the top save-percentage teams in the country because of the way they controlled the game. By dramatically outshooting their opponents and limiting scoring chances, their goalies often made it look easy, from Jason Pawloski and Connor LaCouvee to Hobey winner Dryden McKay. Last season, Alex Tracy assumed the starter's job with Keenan Rancier as the regularly used backup and both were fine behind a team that, again, was a bit depleted.

This year, Strand has leaned on Tracy so heavily that no other goalie has seen the ice, and why not? He has one of the best save percentages in the country (.942) and is once again insulated from much in the way of volume or quality. He's only facing about 25 shots per game. No goalie in the country allows fewer goals per 60 than Tracy has, and at this rate, it feels like he's going to be high on plenty of Richter ballots when those get tabulated a couple months from now.

What's interesting is that the defensive structure has come together in a major way, led by defenseman Evan Murr devouring 22-plus minutes a night, but the offense kinda-sorta hasn't. The Mavs allow the fifth-fewest shots (25.1 per game) and fewest goals (1.54) but there aren't many NCAA tournament hopefuls scoring or shooting less per game (2.71 goals and 26.5 SOG) than them. It used to be that you could count on them to put up 30-plus shots a game without fail, and they were one of the biggest shot-volume teams in the country every year. But even with the biggest offseason addition in the country this offseason, getting Rhett Pitlick in the transfer portal right before school started, this season they've only broken that plateau six times. Pitlick has been their leading scorer to date, and one of the big offensive engines for one of the best teams in the country, but he's not lighting up the CCHA to the potentially ultra-dominant effect many thought he would. He's easily a top-five or so player in the conference but coming into the season he felt like a Hobey finalist and hasn't quite reached that height offensively. However, the Mavericks are a hugely positive goal-difference team when he's on the ice at 44-21, including 10-2 in the four games since the team returned from break. That means Pitlick has been on the ice for almost two-thirds of the team's total goals, and more than three-quarters in the second half so far. If that's going to become a pattern as January and February wear on, he could easily get into the Hobey conversation… if Tracy's stellar numbers don't make him the de facto "Minnesota State guy" for voters.

Interestingly, despite the dominant goaltending and huge impact from Pitlick so far in the second half, the Mavericks are only 2-2 in January (one of the losses was in overtime), but that stat about putting 30 shots on goal in any given game is another thing that's turning around. They've done so in each of their last three games and seem to be turning a corner. Strand has talked a lot about the need for continual improvement from the roster and now seems to be getting it. Even still, the early-January road loss to Northern Michigan was just their first regulation defeat since Nov. 1.

The Mavericks might be able to play their way into an at-large NCAA tournament spot if they keep up the high quality of play. But the CCHA sure looks like it's shaping up to be a one-bid conference once again, and any loss they suffer will hurt their Pairwise standing the rest of the way. They certainly have the inside track for the regular-season title (in a year where there's an unbalanced conference schedule so the standings are based on points percentage rather than total points), but in terms of making the national tourney, that probably won't matter.

And so the season is very much in their hands, as it usually has been over the past decade-plus. They might need to come pretty close to running the table, but if anyone in the CCHA can do it, it's the Mavericks. Same as it ever was, sure, but after so much tumult in the past two seasons, it's great for them that they're back in that pole position. And maybe not so great for the rest of the conference.