There has been a national trend of colleges that traditionally had state universities attached to the title to shorten that up to the name of the city when publicizing athletic teams.
Among those adopting that strategy has been the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which is now the Omaha Mavericks in most literature — including that being distributed for next week's Frozen Four in Boston.
The Mavericks were picked to finish sixth by the coaches before the second season of the eight-team National Collegiate Hockey Conference. This didn't give them much credit for the man behind the bench, Dean Blais, a tremendous player for the Gophers of yore, and a coaching legend for a decade (1994-2004) at North Dakota.
"I'm sure the reason we were expected to finish down there was the outstanding players we had lost and the young guys we would be playing," Blais said. "I wasn't sure myself, until we went on the road to Western Michigan and Cornell early in the season, and came back with three wins and a tie."
The Mavericks finished third in the first season of NCHC in 2013-14 but missed the 16-team NCAA field. Then, junior All-America winger Josh Archibald signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins and outstanding junior defenseman Jaycob Megna signed with the Anaheim Ducks. Late in the summer, defenseman Nick Seeler announced he was transferring to the Gophers.
"We had no clue Nick was considering that," Blais said. "We were left with two very big holes in our defense."
Omaha opened this season by splitting a pair of home games vs. Minnesota State Mankato, the team that would wind up as the No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
"Then we went to Kalamazoo [Mich.] and Ithaca, New York, in back-to-back weekends, with nine freshmen and seven sophomores in the lineup," Blais said. "We were that young, and not real big, but our players stood up to two physical teams to go 3-0-1.
