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Young halfway through senior season at Minnesota-Duluth

For Blake Young, the start of 2018 marks the final stages of his college hockey career, as he’s officially in the final stretch of his four-year stint with the NCAA’s Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs.

For Blake Young, the start of 2018 marks the final stages of his college hockey career, as he’s officially in the final stretch of his four-year stint with the NCAA’s Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs.

“It still feels like I’m just walking through the doors as a freshman,” Young said.

“It’s crazy how fast time goes by. If you blink, you’ll end up missing something, so I’m really just enjoying everything that’s left for me down there.”

The 23 year old from Battleford is enjoying his best season to date with the Bulldogs, as he’s scored five goals and picked up three assists in 21 games.

“I’ve gained a lot of confidence out on the ice this year and I’ve grown more into my role of being a power forward and an energy guy,” Young said.

“What I do on a nightly basis might not show up in the score sheet, but it resonates with the rest of the team as what I do allows our skilled guys to have more scoring opportunities.”

Young, who headed down south after two seasons in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League with the Battlefords North Stars, has also moved into more of leadership role on the team as one of six senior players on the Bulldogs roster.

“We really try to show the younger guys what it means to Bulldog and how to play the style of hockey that we are known for,” Young said.

“When I came down to Duluth in 2014, I think I was the second youngest guy on the roster. We had some great older leaders on those teams like Adam Krause, Derik Johnson and Justin Crann, plus some younger guys like Dominic Toninato and Andy Welinski that really helped me out along the way.”

After losing to the Denver Pioneers in the national championship game last April, this year’s Bulldogs lineup has a dramatically different look to it with a number of players moving on from the collegiate ranks.

“It’s always tough when you lose as many core guys that we did,” Young said. “We lost our starting goalie [Hunter Miska], five of our starting defencemen [Brenden Kotyk, Dan Molenaar, Neal Pionk, Willie Raskob and Carson Soucy] and three of our top scoring forwards [Alex Iafallo, Adam Johnson and Dominic Toninato] to either graduation or the pros.

“There’s a new group of guys that are maturing and doing well in adapting to their new roles, but there’s still going to be that learning curve over the first part of the season.”

While the Bulldogs currently have a 9-9-3 record and find themselves in seventh place in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, the team has had to deal with numerous injuries over the first half.

“I think we have had five guys out with separated shoulders and couple of concussions, so we’ve had our lines jumbled up a bit and everyone’s been playing with a lot of different guys as a result of that,” Young said.

“Having more guys healthy in the second half will help, but we still need to focus on having a full 60-minute effort in each game. We’ve had a few lapses so far this year and it’s allowed the other teams to come back and win. We need to fix that in order to climb up the standings.”

Thanks to a pair of wins last weekend over the Yale Bulldogs and the Dartmouth Big Green to win the Ledyard Classic in Hanover, New Hampshire, the Bulldogs have worked their way up to 16th in the latest USCHO national rankings.

They are one of six NCHC teams ranked in the top 20 nationally, with the St. Cloud Huskies sitting in first place, the Denver Pioneers in fourth, the North Dakota Fighting Hawks in sixth spot, the Western Michigan Broncos ranked 12th and the Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks residing in the 18th spot.

“I feel like our conference is the hardest to win in on a nightly basis,” Young said. “You look at a team like Colorado College, who were near the bottom of the standings in my first two years there, and now they are beating Denver who are the defending national champions.

“That just shows the skill level that’s there among all eight teams. If you take a night or two off, you’ll find yourself at the bottom of the standings.”

The next game for the Bulldogs will be on the road as they’ll take on the Colorado College Tigers on Friday, Jan. 12.

They return to Duluth on Friday, Jan. 19 to face the North Dakota Fighting Hawks.