Penn State men’s hockey will play in the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive season, drawing Denver as its first round opponent.

The midwest region of the tournament features plenty of familiar opponents for the Nittany Lions. Denver eliminated Penn State from last year’s tournament en route to a national championship, but the familiarity spills over into the region’s other semifinal. Penn State won its season series with Ohio State with a 2-1-1 record against the Buckeyes, and Guy Gadowsky spent seven seasons as the head coach of Princeton before joining Penn State in 2011-12. Can Penn State use this familiarity to win its first-ever national championship, or will last season’s outcome repeat itself this season?

Why Penn State Can Win A National Championship

This is one of the most tired and overused clichés in sports, but defense truly does win championships. If Penn State wins a national championship this season, it will be on the back of the team’s defense and goaltending.

Guy Gadowsky’s Nittany Lions have been notorious for producing a ridiculous volume of shots on goal and scoring on lots of those shots, but the team has also become famous for struggling defensively. The defense enters the national tournament on a bit of a hot streak, as it’s allowed more than three goals just once in the past six games. Big Ten defensive player of the year Trevor Hamilton leads by example by filling shooting lanes and laying devastating hits, and players like Erik Autio and Kevin Kerr are solid in their own end.

Behind every championship team is a great goaltender, and Penn State has just that in Peyton Jones. Jones had an up-and-down regular season, but he plays extremely well when it matters most. If Jones can continue to play well in Allentown and beyond, Penn State has a real chance at taking home the trophy as a three-seed.

Meanwhile, the offense needs to keep playing the way it has all season to give Penn State a shot at a championship. The team averages 3.7 goals per game and has logged nearly 1,500 shot attempts throughout the season.

Players like Andrew Sturtz and Denis Smirnov both had strong seasons and will continue to be expected to produce, but the wealth of scoring this team possesses doesn’t stop there. Sophomore forwards Brandon Biro and Nate Sucese fly largely under the radar most of the time, yet rank second and third on the team with 31 and 29 points, respectively. The duo has teamed up with Smirnov to create a dynamic scoring line that would give even the best defenses in college hockey some trouble.

Why Penn State Can’t Win A National Championship

Although the team is strong in its own right, Penn State does not match up very well with some of the other teams in the midwest region.

Denver is one of the hottest teams in the country entering the national tournament. The Pioneers won the NCHC Frozen Faceoff over St. Cloud State, which just happens to be the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. The loss of Hobey Baker Award-winner Will Butcher to graduation did not deter Denver this season, as the team is still stacked with talent.

Forward Troy Terry is still in the fold and is still one of the best players in all of college hockey. He was selected to play for the United States in the 2018 Winter Olympics after his shootout heroics in the 2017 World Junior Championships and scored 44 points in 37 games for the Pioneers this season.

You would think an Olympian and 100-point scorer would be the best forward on the team, but Terry finished second on the team in scoring to rising star Henrik Borgstrom. The Florida Panthers’ prospect finished fifth in the country with 50 points this season following a 45-point freshman season last year. Borgstrom has scored on an unprecedented 16.3 percent of his shots on goal and is one of 16 players in the entire country to finish this season with more than 20 goals.

Denver also boasts an elite goaltender in the form of Tanner Jaillet, who currently ranks fifth in the country with a 1.85 goals-against average. His .929 save percentage ranks seventh in the nation, while his 21-8-7 record is impressive, to say the least. Penn State could have trouble putting the puck past Jaillet, who backstopped the team to a national championship last season.

Beyond Denver, the winner of the Ohio State-Princeton semifinal could also give Guy Gadowsky plenty of headaches in a regional final. Penn State did win the four-game season series over Ohio State, but the last of those meetings was a 5-1 drubbing by the Buckeyes at Pegula Ice Arena. On paper, Princeton is the weakest team in the midwest region, but the Tigers did win the ever-difficult ECAC conference. They upset fellow NCAA tournament teams Cornell and Clarkson en route to their third conference title and fourth NCAA tournament appearance.

Penn State will open its quest for a national championship on Saturday, March 24 at the PPL Center in Allentown, PA. The Nittany Lions’ semifinal against Denver gets started at 7 p.m. If you can’t attend the game, you can watch the action on ESPN3.