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At Minnesota-Duluth, internal expectations and belief have intersected.

Although the Bulldogs won a national championship last season, their success in 2011-12 wasn't exactly a sure thing.

They were picked to finish fifth in the WCHA by league coaches. Even Minnesota-Duluth coach Scott Sandelin saw a couple of question marks.

"With what we lost, like any coach, you're going to have some concerns," he said. "And I had some about our scoring. That's probably been the biggest surprise to me. You're going to have your key guys going into every year, but we've gotten good offensive support from all our lines."

Yes, that question has been answered.

Minnesota-Duluth brings the highest-scoring team in the country (4.1 goals per game) into Omaha for a series against UNO, with games at the CenturyLink Center at 6:37 Friday night and 7:07 Saturday night.

UNO's promotional "Sell Out Duluth Night" is Friday — fewer than 1,000 tickets were available as of Thursday afternoon and paid attendance of more than 15,000 is expected.

For Duluth, Hobey Baker Award candidate Jack Connolly leads the nation in points (33, with 12 goals and 21 assists), and Travis Oleksuk and sophomore J.T. Brown aren't far behind. Oleksuk is tied for fourth in the country with 15 goals, while Brown — the outstanding player of last year's Frozen Four — is tied for seventh with 18 assists.

Add in the work of goalie Kenny Reiter, who is 14-2-3 with a 2.18 goals-against average and .921 save percentage, and a blue line corps led by Brady Lamb and Scott Kishel, and you have a complete college hockey team.

"Their all-around game is what stands out to me," UNO forward Matt White said. "They have great goaltending, good defensemen, and their forwards are putting the puck in the net.

"They're clicking right now."

And the Bulldogs are back where they finished last season, at No. 1 in the country.

After a 1-3 start, they've gone unbeaten in their past 16 games at 13-0-3. They share the WCHA lead with Minnesota with 22 points, going 10-2-2.

Connolly, Oleksuk, Reiter, Lamb and Kishel are all seniors.

"Their best players last year were their seniors, and their best players this year are their seniors," UNO coach Dean Blais said. "Scott Sandelin has obviously done a good job recruiting, and their players are developing."

Sandelin, a former Blais assistant at North Dakota, is in his 12th season behind the Bulldogs' bench. After some early fits and starts, the Bulldogs are rolling now. Last year's fourth-place league finish matched the best for a Sandelin team since his 2003-04 team finished second.

The past four seasons the Bulldogs have gone 84-43-18.

"Every coach relies on his seniors, and juniors, too, and this group has won a (WCHA) Final Five and a national championship, and has had three 20-win seasons," Sandelin said. "They've had a lot of success together. All those things help create a good environment around the team, and a belief in each other. That was a huge thing last year. I don't know if (the belief) is there yet this year, but it's getting there."

The Bulldogs' confidence has shown up big in road games, where they have gone 21-5-7 the past two seasons, including 7-0-3 this year.

Sandelin said he's pleased with how his team started the second half of the season, with a sweep at No. 8 Western Michigan last weekend. Energy was high in the building, even though attendance at Western's smaller arena was less than 4,000 each night.

"Players feed off big crowds," Sandelin said. "The home team certainly does, and sometimes the visiting teams do, too. Hopefully there'll be big crowds both nights ... give us some tickets and we'd send some more of our fans down."

Contact the writer:

402-444-1027, rob.white@owh.com

twitter.com/RWhiteOWH

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