The halfway point of the regular season has arrived, and David Carle is ready to make a claim about the NCHC.

“The future national champion sits in our league,” the Denver hockey coach said this week.

That’s not a bad message for Carle to send to his sixth-ranked Pioneers team, considering they’re currently at the top of the NCHC standings heading into a weekend series at St. Cloud State, DU’s final series before a long holiday break that carries the team into 2026.

Carle’s claim is also rooted in history. The NCHC has won seven of the last nine national championships with the Pios winning three of those. Also, since the conference began play in 2013-14, there has been only one season where the NCHC wasn’t represented at the Frozen Four and there have been multiple seasons where the NCHC has two of the final four teams remaining.

This year looks to be similar. 

In this week’s USCHO poll, the NCHC occupies spots four through seven in the standings, with, in order, North Dakota, Minnesota Duluth, Denver and Western Michigan all looking like teams capable of getting to Las Vegas for April’s Frozen Four.

“The best way to look at it is what our nonconference record is as a league,” Carle said. “This is where the strength of our league starts to (show). Yes, we’ll cannibalize each other a little bit, we’ll make each other better, we’ll harden ourselves, but we’ve positioned ourselves as a conference to be, at minimum, a three (bid) league. If not, probably four and (with) a window to get five teams in the NCAA Tournament because of how well we did nonconference-wise.

“I think our league, the coaching and style of play will prove out that we’ll be more prepared for the NCAA Tournament than the Big Ten teams will be.”

The reason Carle’s group is on the path back to the NCAA Tournament is depth.

There have been times during the season where the DU coach has been frustrated with the lack of scoring, but now, at the halfway point of the regular season, the Pios own the No. 4 offense in the country. They’ve done it with just one player in the top 10 nationally in goals and with no players in the top 30 in points per game.

That’s thanks to a defensive corps that has combined for 24 goals, the most in the country, and a lineup consisting of four trios that could all be considered DU’s No. 1 line on any given night.

“We have to list them in a certain order on a line chart, (but) I couldn’t sit here and tell you who our first and fourth line is,” Carle said. “That’s a good problem to have with the depth of what we’re doing and the back end (defensive corps) I gotta think leads the country in goals. There’s a lot of depth throughout, there’s a lot of weapons, and it hopefully makes us hard to prepare for. On a given night, we know that any line can step up and contribute.”

This past weekend, in a sweep of Miami (Ohio), it was the all-freshman line centered by Clarke Caswell and flanked by Kyle Chyzowski and Kristian Epperson. Caswell currently leads all DU forwards in points with 15, while that trio as a whole has combined for 31 points with Chyzowski scoring goals in both games last weekend.

“I really enjoy it,” Chyzowski said of his line. “Three CHL guys. Obviously Caswell coming from the WHL, I played against him a lot. I thought we really clicked well early and I’ve been playing with Epperson all year, so I’ve got a good feel for him. Being able to be together for the last month or so, I feel like we’re starting to build a lot more connection. It’s nice that they keep that trust with us. I do think we’ve been progressively getting better each weekend.”

Those three help make up a team that is the sixth-youngest in all of college hockey and that stat gives Carle optimism that his team has yet to find its stride, which is a scary thought for a group that hasn’t lost in regulation since the end of October and is two points ahead of second place in the NCHC. 

“I think we’ve gone through ups and downs, which has helped us,” Chyzowski said. “Being able to face that adversity early, obviously taking a while for us to get our first sweep as well, it kinda forced us to start to look ourselves in the mirror and see where we were at as a team. I think it took a lot of adjusting for a lot of our freshmen. We have 10 of us and it’s not easy to enter this league, as I can say for myself. It’s hard. 

“Now that we’re starting to roll and guys are starting to get comfortable with it, you’re starting to see our team blossom.”