CHICAGO — Denver’s Tanner Jaillet has been named the winner of the 2017 Mike Richter Award as the top goaltender in Division I men’s college hockey.

Jaillet, the NCHC goaltender of the year, is 27-5-4 with a 1.83 goals-against average and .928 save percentage.

The other finalists were Michael Bitzer of Bemidji State, Hunter Miska of Minnesota Duluth, Cal Petersen of Notre Dame and Charles Williams of Canisius.

More coverage to come.

CHICAGO — Denver defenseman Will Butcher was named the winner of the 2017 Hobey Baker Award as the top player in Division I men’s college hockey.

The announcement came after a ceremony Friday at Navy Pier.

Butcher, the NCHC player of the year, has led the Pioneers to the national championship game. He’s second in the nation for defensemen with 37 points.

A 27-member selection committee chose the winner from a 10-player list of finalists. Northeastern forward Zach Aston-Reese and Union forward Mike Vecchione also were in the top three in voting.

More coverage to come.

CHICAGO — Have you heard? It’s an all-NCHC final Saturday night. You know what that means? Lots of questions about how Minnesota Duluth thinks it’ll match up against Denver.

As it turns out, playing a team from the same conference may not matter as much as people would like to think. The Bulldogs and Pioneers met for two games this season, a split in Denver last December, with the Pioneers winning 4-3 and the Bulldogs taking the 3-1 game the following night.

“It was a little quirk in our scheduling,” said coach Scott Sandelin. “I think you take some of that [familiarity] for sure, but they’re a team right now that’s playing as well as they probably have.

“Our guys are familiar with their team, maybe not to the extent like that was talked about before where you played teams four or five times, but I know one thing. Our guys are looking forward to the opportunity.”

In Wednesday’s news conference, the day before Minnesota Duluth’s semifinal match with Harvard, the media seemed stuck on the fact that the Bulldogs were about to face the top offense in the nation, a team that averaged more than four goals per game.

In answering questions about how Duluth would react to Harvard, Sandelin brought a little of the talk back to his own team. “They do have some difference makers,” said Sandelin. “So do we.”

Now the Bulldogs are tasked with stopping a Denver team that has averaged 5.67 goals per game in the NCAA tournament. Again, there were questions about how to stop a powerful opponent. Again, the Bulldogs pushed back a little, as diplomatically as they could.

“We’re a team that can get up and down the ice too,” said senior defenseman Willie Raskob. “The games we played in Denver were two very good games. I think that’s going to be the type of game it’s going to be. We’re a good skating team, they’re a good skating team. I think it will be a fun game.”

“It’s one game,” said Sandelin, “and all you’re asking your players to do is go out there and play their best game. And one team’s going to probably play a little better or maybe it’s a bounce or a break, and that’s what’s going to decide the game.

“I think it’s going to be a great hockey game if both teams play up to their capabilities.”

CHICAGO — Spend five minutes with Minnesota Duluth coach Scott Sandelin and you can tell he’s a smart man. How smart? Smart enough to listen to Wendy, his wife.

“I’ve told my wife a couple of times, I don’t know if I’ve ever figured this group out all year, and she just told me, ‘Don’t worry. They’re doing fine,'” Sandelin said Friday. “So sometimes that happens.”

It’s easy to pick apart and hyper-analyze a team you’re coaching. It’s something the media likes to do, too, especially the day before a national championship game. Figuring out what makes a team tick, however, is counterproductive. Some teams are difficult to reduce to a simple explanation.

That is the sum total of this year’s Minnesota Duluth team. And that is a good thing.

The Bulldogs have been at or near the top spot in the USCHO.com Division I Men’s Poll and PairWise Rankings all season, sharing the space with Denver and occasionally a couple of other teams but never far from No. 1.

The team has hovered somewhere between seventh and 10th in team offense and defense all season and they’ve won a lot of games by a single goal. But they’ve won, most notably in the second half, when they’ve gone 16-3-4, and they have just one loss in their last 20.

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that because all our games have been so hard and grinding,” said Sandelin, “and sometimes you go through those streaks where you just feel you’re really on top of the world.”

They’re a team that appears loose in practice this week but a team that played a tight, tense game against Harvard on Thursday night, pulling out the 2-1 win in the final minute of regulation.

“It’s a pretty surreal feeling,” said senior defenseman Brenden Kotyk. “We’ve all had different paths, but I think we’ve come together as a team. Everybody brings something a little different to the table and I think that’s why we’ve been so successful.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been on a team that’s as close-knit as the team we are now,” said senior defenseman Dan Molenaar. “We love coming to the rink. We just love being with each other.”

Sandelin said that his team has had “some tremendous parts,” and that may be the only way to define Minnesota Duluth. Sandelin seems to have taken his wife’s advice to heart and let go of trying to get a fix on the group as a whole.

The players and coach talk a lot about chemistry, but that chemistry is a byproduct of experience rather than simple serendipity.

“I’ve been through streaks where you just feel like you can’t do anything wrong,” said Sandelin, “and this is one where I just feel like every game we have a chance to win. Our guys do, too, and they know it’s going to be a hard or a tight game, so I think just mentally they’ve grown stronger that way.”

CHICAGO — When Denver takes the ice Saturday against Minnesota Duluth for the national championship, the game will feature many intriguing storylines.

One big one will be Denver’s top-ranked defense, which gives up on average only 1.83 goals per game, against Minnesota Duluth’s top line of Alex Iafallo, Dominic Toninato and Joey Anderson. That line has been very effective in the postseason.

“They’re a great college line, and I think maybe the best line in the country,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery. “And I think you’ve just got to know when they’re out there and match their intensity. Their intensity, I think, fuels that team. And I think the third player that fuels that team with intensity is [Neal] Pionk on the back end.”

Against North Dakota in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff, the line accounted for five points, with Anderson scoring the game-winner on a power play with 51 seconds left. In the NCAA tournament, the line has 13 points in three games and has contributed to or scored the game-winner in all three games, all of which were one-goal wins and two of which came in overtime.

“I think just our transition to defense,” Denver defenseman and captain Will Butcher said when asked about containing that line. “After we make a play on the rush, we have to get back and reload and also get a couple of guys back. We have to have guys angling bodies, angling the puck. Give TJ [goaltender Tanner Jaillet] enough room to make the save and cover up his rebound if he has one.”

One key for Denver will be the play of the line of Matt Marcinew, Evan Janssen and Logan O’Connor. That line often has been matched against the other team’s top lines during Denver’s postseason run, in part because of Marcinew’s skill as a faceoff winner.

“I think Iafallo, Toninato, Anderson, they’re all high-end skill guys, but it’s nothing we haven’t faced before,” said Marcinew. “Toninato is a big, strong kid, he can take pucks to the net. We have to get in front of him. Iafallo, he’s going to try to go inside and dance through us. We have to keep him to the outside and play the body and win one-on-one battles and we’ll be able to contain them just like we did earlier in the season.”

Denver’s depth also will be important, particularly if Minnesota Duluth plays a physical style and clogs up the neutral zone. When the two teams played in December, Denver won on Friday when Troy Terry and Dylan Gambrell had strong games, with Terry having three points. Saturday, Terry was held pointless and Duluth won.

Countering Duluth’s ability to clog up space will be important for the Pioneers. That style was what enabled North Dakota to beat Denver in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff in Minneapolis in March.

“I think one of the biggest things is going to be getting pucks past them in the neutral zone, chipping pucks and breaking the space,” said Marcinew. “If they try to clog up the neutral zone, we can chip pucks around them, chip pucks by them, and with our speed I think we’ll be able to eat them up that way, and then control pucks in their zone.”

Denver has been getting more balanced production in the second half. Colin Staub has been especially effective, getting two goals against Michigan Tech in the regional and contributing two assists against Notre Dame on Thursday. When Denver beat Duluth in December, Staub had an assist on Denver’s first goal.

“It’s nice that we have four lines and Coach has the confidence to put out all four lines and our line just wants to go out there and contribute in whatever way we can,” said Staub. “And last night we were fortunate enough to be able to get two goals, and it really helped our team get started with [Emil] Romig’s first goal of the game, and that’s just what we want to provide.”

“We go out and play our style and hopefully we can gain momentum and roll our lines over like we did yesterday in the first period,” said Montgomery. “Yesterday’s first period, that was, to me — I was behind the bench and I didn’t have to worry about any of it. They were just rolling the four lines and they were playing at an incredible rate.”

CHICAGO — Back in December, the then-No. 1 Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs faced the then-No. 2 Denver Pioneers in a two-game set at Magness Arena in Denver. The series was a split, with Denver winning Friday and Duluth winning Saturday, and both games were essentially one-goal affairs, with Duluth netting an empty-netter in the 3-1 win Saturday.

They’ll decide the season series in the national championship game Saturday.

“That weekend was a lot of fun as a player. It was back-and-forth hockey,” said the Pioneers’ Colin Staub, who had two assists in Thursday’s semifinal against Notre Dame. “It was a lot of speed. It was pretty physical. … It was 1 versus 2 that weekend and there was a lot of hype going into it and it was a lot of fun for players. And the split kind of made it a little more of a rivalry coming into this game now. And we were really excited to be able to see who comes out on top.”

Both of those games were back-and-forth affairs, with Duluth getting the early lead in both. Denver rallied Friday to take a 3-1 lead in part due to the play of Troy Terry, who had three points.

“I think we’re confident coming from what we gained from that series, but we’ve grown a lot from where we were in December,” said Evan Ritt. “We can roll four lines. And we’re getting a lot more offensive production. And we’re shutting teams down defensively. So we feel good, but it’s a one-game playoff so anything can happen. So we’ve got to be focused and ready.”

One potential wild card in this matchup will be freshman forward Henrik Borgström, who did not play in the series in December because of illness.

“Anytime you can inject one of the most talented offensive players in college hockey into a lineup that the team hasn’t seen, you can watch film on them, but when you get on the ice, it’s a different world, especially for goaltenders,” said Denver coach Jim Montgomery. “The first time they can see him shoot a puck, they can look at it on film, but the puck gets on you real quick. If you’re not used to it, it’s by you. And the first time he’s let it go on most of the goaltenders, I’m talking great goaltenders in the NCHC, like [North Dakota’s] Cam Johnson and the freshman at Western that had a great year, too [Ben Blacker], he puts it by them and they’re not used to it, has an NHL release, and hides his release. Kind of like Luis Tiant on the mound, puts it behind his hip, and he all of a sudden whips it at you.”

Borgström knows that Duluth likes to play physically, and the Bulldogs have clogged up the neutral zone effectively in all their postseason games, but he expects that if Denver can stay focused on its own play, that will lead to success.

“Duluth is from the NCHC, the best conference in college hockey,” said Borgström. “They’re a heavy team. It will be a tough matchup for us for sure, but I feel like as long as we come to this game with the same aggressiveness and tempo we did last night, I think we’ll be just fine. We just have to forecheck hard. I think we don’t have to change anything.”

CHICAGO — Here’s how Denver’s practice at the United Center looked on Friday, one day before the Pioneers play Minnesota Duluth for the national championship.

[youtube_sc url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12sSA20UHVU&feature=youtu.be]