Late-Season Surge Sends Pioneers Back to Frozen Four

In the final seconds of the DU hockey team’s 6-2 win over Western Michigan to clinch a Frozen Four berth, ESPN’s John Buccigrass summed it up best: “The standard is the standard, and the standard is Denver.”

The standards are indeed high for the Pioneers, who have repeatedly reached college hockey’s mountaintop with a record 10 national championships. But the 2025-26 campaign didn’t always seem destined for the same greatness. Across December and January, Denver had a seven-game winless stretch that coach David Carle called “a precarious situation.”

Since then, a healthier lineup, the emergence of freshman goalie Johnny Hicks, and a 14-game unbeaten streak have set up the Pioneers to contend for their 11th title. But first, they’ll have to defeat top-seeded Michigan.

Blue-blood battle

DU will face perhaps its toughest test of the season at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Las Vegas when they square off against Michigan. The Pioneers and Wolverines are ranked first and second, respectively, for the most NCAA Division I college hockey national championships. DU broke the tie when they won the 2024 title, while Michigan has been in a championship drought since 1998.

In addition to being the most storied programs in college hockey, these two teams also include two of this year’s three Hobey Baker Hat Trick award finalists. Junior Eric Pohlkamp leads the Pioneers and all defensemen nationally in scoring with 39 points, while his 18 goals set an NCHC record for defensemen. If he wins, he’ll be the University’s third Hobey Baker winner, joining Will Butcher (2017) and Matt Carle (2006).

Meanwhile, Michigan senior forward T.J. Hughes, who has 21 goals and 35 assists, leads national scoring with 56 points. He’s also won 57.8% of his faceoffs this year.

Watch, cheer, and share!

Tickets to the game are still available, and Denver fans can take in the action on ESPN2 at home or at one of the many watch parties on and around campus. From the stands in Las Vegas to watch parties across the country, tag @uofdenver for a chance to be featured on DU’s social channels as we celebrate Frozen Four moments.

The lead-up in Loveland

On the road to the Frozen Four, DU hosted an NCAA regional at Blue Arena in Loveland for the third time in program history. The Pioneers opened play on March 27 with a 5-0 beatdown of Cornell behind goals from Jake Fisher, Kieran Cebrian, Sam Harris, Clarke Caswell, and Rieger Lorenz. 

Two nights later, they followed that up with the 6-2 victory over Western Michigan in the sixth matchup between the two squads this season, and the fourth postseason meeting in the past two years. The win avenged a semifinal loss for the Pioneers in last year’s Frozen Four, when Western Michigan went on to win the national championship.

“I want to commend the fans who came out and made this the best regional we’ve been part of, from an atmosphere perspective,” Carle says. “2022 was excellent, and I think this was better.”

The friendly confines of Magness Arena

DU had two very different portions of its schedule this season. Ten of the Pioneers’ first 14 games were on the road, including long trips to Boston and Kalamazoo, Michigan, as well as stops in the Midwest and Southwest. But starting in January, DU made only three short road trips in its final 16 games of the regular season— to Colorado Springs; Omaha, Nebraska; and Grand Forks, North Dakota.

The consistent time on home ice and a regional close to home helped the Pioneers prosper, riding a 14-game winning streak to Las Vegas.

Johnny Hicks is made for the moment 

Another big part of the Pioneers’ unbeaten streak is Johnny Hicks, the freshman goalie who was named the NCHC Frozen Faceoff’s Most Outstanding Player. Hicks took the reins at a pivotal point for the team, when Quentin Miller had just snapped a seven-game losing streak with his best performance of the season in a win over North Dakota. The following weekend, though, Miller exited the game early with an injury, and Hicks came on to stop 22 shots in a 6-0 victory over St. Cloud State on Jan. 24. 

“We have all the confidence in the world in him,” Carle says. “But to come in when he did, to be unfazed, to be the calmest person in the room—I think that speaks to his preparation, his focus, and his attention to detail. Certainly, he’s been excellent for us on the stretch run.”

The Pioneers haven’t lost since, and Hicks has posted a .958 save percentage with 1.12 goals against average, both the best in the NCAA by large margins. He’ll be one of four freshmen goalies between the pipes during the Frozen Four.

Rookies leave their marks

Hicks isn’t the only freshman making waves for the Pioneers. Miller is also a freshman, as are Caswell, Kristian Epperson, Brady Milburn, Eric Jamieson, Kyle Chyzowski, Payton Nelson, Brendan McMorrow, and Reid Varkonyi. Miller and Hicks have been steady in net, while the other eight first-year players have contributed 120 of the team’s 395 points so far. 

While some of those players come from traditional recruiting pipelines like the amateur United States Hockey League (USHL), others were recruited from the Canadian Hockey League (CHL)—whose players just became eligible to play in the NCAA.

What’s old is new 

The CHL is the umbrella organization that governs what are widely considered the three best junior hockey leagues in the world—the Western Hockey League (WHL), the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), and the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). Because players in those leagues receive stipends and can sign entry-level contracts with the NHL, the NCAA long considered them professionals and barred them from playing college hockey.

The emergence of name, image, and likeness (NIL) rules in college athletics changed the landscape, however, and gave NCAA eligibility to players in the CHL this past offseason. The result was an influx of freshmen from a new recruiting frontier.

Most of the CHL players who joined the Pioneers came from the WHL, which includes teams from Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. For Carle, this new pipeline is a throwback to the days of legendary coach Murray Armstrong, who led DU from 1956 to 1977 and won national championships in 1958, 1960, 1961, 1968, and 1969.

“[With] Murray Armstrong coming down from Regina [Saskatchewan] and bringing many players and great families, a lot of our alumni base is in that neck of the woods,” Carle said. “So, for us, it’s kind of a reversion back to what it was pre-1973.”