This was not the way Miami wanted to wrap up the road portion of its 2024 slate.
The RedHawks finished the calendar year winless outside of Oxford, capped off by an 8-1 blowout at the hands of Omaha in their road finale at Baxter Arena on Saturday.
Miami will end 2024 with an 0-14-3 record away from home. The RedHawks’ last victory not played at Cady Arena was actually Dec. 30 at Niagara.
MU’s losing streak has reached eight games, and it has dropped eight in a row vs. the Mavericks as well.
RECAP: Miami (3-11-2) allowed the first six goals before Blake Mesenburg ripped a drop pass from Michael Feenstra home on the glove side from the high slot with 5:34 left in the second period.
Omaha (5-7) scored in the final second of the middle frame to make it 7-1 and tacked on an insurance goal in the third period.
STATS: Mesenburg’s goal was his fourth of the season and his second in three games. The junior netted four total goals his first two seasons combined.
Feenstra’s assist was his first point since Nov. 10, 2023 vs. Colorado College. He missed the second half of last season with a shoulder injury and dressed for just the sixth time on Saturday.
Matt Choupani picked up the secondary helper, giving him the team lead in points with 12, including a RedHawks-best five goals.
— Miami set a school record by racking up 58 penalty minutes in the third period, breaking its prior mark of 54 set on Feb. 13, 1993 against Western Michigan.
There was confusion about the penalties in that frame, which we’ll discuss later, but the most recent box had UNO with 80 total PIM for the game, which means the teams combined for 138 minutes.
The RedHawks’ record for combined single-game penalty minutes is 178, set against Ohio State on Nov. 4, 2005.
— MU allowed a shorthanded goal for the fifth time this season, seizing the top spot in Division I outright. This was the second straight game an opponent has registered a SHG, the first time that has happened since Nov. 10-11 of last season vs. Colorado College.
— Miami has been outscored, 29-6 in its NCHC contests and scored just six goals during its 0-6 start to its 2024-25 league slate. The RedHawks have won once in their last 36 conference games, going 1-33-2 (.056) in that span.
There’s a lot more that could be thrown out, but it was a bad loss and there’s no reason to pile on.
ANALYSIS: Regression.
It’s the only noun fitting to describe Miami’s effort in this game.
Twenty-four hours prior, the case was made on this site that the series opener was winnable for Miami despite its being shut out for the second time in three games.
Watching the first period, the question wasn’t if the RedHawks were going to get blown out, it was how badly.
Shots were 16-0 with three minutes left in the opening frame until a low-percentage, bad-angle shot was cleanly snagged by Omaha goalie Simon Latkoczy, who is tough enough to score on playing well.
The Mavericks’ 17th and final shot of the stanza made it 3-0. Nine minutes into the second period, that lead had ballooned to six.
Shots were 34-12 after 40 minutes, and for good will, UNO scored its seventh goal in the final second of that frame, eight seconds into a power play, and a still shot of Miami’s positioning in the final seconds could have been featured on a What’s Wrong back cover of a Highlights magazine.
Duluth and Omaha were both well under .500 entering their series against the RedHawks, and MU didn’t even come close to earning a point in any of its four games the past two weekends.
The RedHawks are off this upcoming week for the first time since the season started on Oct. 4.
The break couldn’t have come at a better time, as Miami’s next opponents are North Dakota, Denver and Omaha again.
— Which leads to another question: Was Miami tired? Only six of 64 Division I teams have played 16 games the past eight weekends, and of them only Minnesota State has fared well recently, with Air Force getting swept by Bentley this weekend and Mercyhurst going winless in its last seven.
This was also the second night of a two-game road set following a long road trip.
— Midway through the third period, it looked like an Omaha player lost his footing near the boards and Miami’s Frankie Carogioiello braced for the boards over top of him as they battled for the puck, but that seemed to ignite these teams’ fuse that had been ready to blow all weekend.
All 10 skaters paired off, with Feenstra’s altercation being the most intense, and he was ultimately wrestled to the ice on his back. Carogioiello also ended up on the bottom of a scrum after trying to intervene in the Feenstra scrap.
Everyone except the goalies was assessed a 10-minute misconduct, with the RedHawks’ Brayden Morrison inexplicably receiving an additional minor.
A linesman was injured earlier in the game, leaving the officiating crew down a member, so especially in that light and with the result no longer in doubt, taking everyone off was the right call.
There was some confusion as to whether the skaters received 10-minute misconducts or the more severe game misconducts, three of which in a season result in an automatic one-game suspension.
UNO forwarded a note that no one received game misconducts over the skirmish, although the accompanying updated box score addressing the issue still had all 10 players receiving game misconducts.
As absurd as it sounds that college hockey teams would combine for 102 penalty minutes over a single incident, there was little to see here.
Omaha thought one of its players absorbed a dirty hit and Miami responded with more aggression, largely out of frustration.
No issues with either side’s actions, and actually it was nice to see Miami stand up for itself after getting its brains kicked in for 50 minutes in every facet of the game.
— As the final seconds of an 8-1 game ticked down, Mesenburg was still battling at the side of the UNO net for a potential second goal like it was Game 7 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. He snapped Miami’s 140:22 scoring drought with his second-period blast and showed this weekend why he deserved to wear a letter.
LINEUP CHANGES: Zane Demsey was a surprise scratch on defense. He had dressed for all of the RedHawks’ first 15 games and has been a solid shutdown blueliner overall.
Hampus Rydqvist replaced him after being a scratch Friday and snapping a string of 102 straight games played.
Up front, Morrison returned to the lineup, replacing Artur Turansky.
In net, Dahlmeir started for the second straight game, snapping a seven-game rotation between him and Bruno Bruveris, who ultimately replaced him in the second period.
STANDINGS: Miami remains buried in ninth place in the NCHC with one point, five clear of Minn.-Duluth and North Dakota, which the RedHawks host in two weeks.
MU has slipped to 59th out of 64 in the PairWise rankings.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Obviously it was a forgettable game, so let coach Anthony Noreen explain it better than anyone else ever could:
“It’s one of those times that, obviously it’s embarrassing, nowhere near good enough, feel like it’s a reversion to some old and bad habits,” Noreen said. “I’ll be the first to say it’s got to start with me, and (the coaches) and I need to be better, but the mentality here, and the output here, it needs to be different. Tonight we certainly didn’t have our legs. We looked slow, we looked tired, at times we looked disorganized, we took some bad penalties and were poor on special teams — just a bad combination.”
Noreen was asked about the upcoming off week before hosting North Dakota on Dec. 6-7.
“We’ve got to do some soul searching here, for sure,” Noreen said. “The unfortunate thing about tonight — and there haven’t been many of these (blowout) nights — it feels like a wasted opportunity to play the game that we love and a chance to get better, so we have to make sure that’s the last time that happens. We’ll get back to work this week, we certainly have plenty to work on — we’ve got time — and we’ll be ready for the home games in two weeks.”
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