David Carle earned win No. 200 behind the Denver bench on Saturday night, but all he cares about is getting eight more in the next six weeks.

The 36-year-old joined Murray Armstrong and George Gwozdecky as the only Pioneers coaches to reach that mark as his team completed a weekend sweep of Arizona State with a 4-1 win that also clinched the No. 2 seed in the upcoming NCHC Frozen Faceoff, which starts next weekend with the quarterfinals.

“It’s great,” Carle told The Denver Gazette. “Happy for our guys. It’s been a really good regular season, in a lot of ways. We finished second in our conference, not an easy task at all. To get that, especially in this new format, I think was a big deal.”

No. 8 DU (21-11-3, 17-6-1) had already earned the right to have home ice for the best-of-three quarterfinals next weekend, but now has secured home ice through at least the semifinals with the conference tournament on campus throughout. Carle’s group will host No. 7 seed Miami (Ohio) beginning next Friday at 7 p.m. 

With the NCAA regional in Loveland at the end of March, the only game the Pios could potentially play outside of Colorado prior to the Frozen Four in Las Vegas is a potential NCHC championship game at No. 1 seed North Dakota.

Carle talks a lot about the skill that is ending another team’s season, and while it won’t be do-or-die for DU until Loveland, the young Pios got some practice this weekend as their sweep prevented the Sun Devils from qualifying for the NCHC tournament and sends them back to Tempe for the start of a long offseason.

“It’s not easy to end a team’s season,” Carle said. “A lot of respect for (ASU coach) Greg Powers and their staff. Our league was as deep as it’s ever been this year. They’re a team that should be continuing to play, but with the format we have, unfortunately for them they’re going home. Not an easy thing to do, but a learned habit and a learned skill that we’re gonna need to take into next weekend and beyond.”

It certainly helps that the Pioneers are playing their best hockey of the season over the past six weeks. 

Dating back to the Jan. 17 win at North Dakota that snapped a six-game winless streak dating back to before Christmas, DU finished the regular season with a 9-1-1 record over the final 11 games, including five straight victories in regulation.

During this stretch, the Pios have allowed two or fewer goals in nine of the 11 games and have relied on a veteran defensive corps and a red-hot freshman goaltender in Johnny Hicks, who has an incredible 8-0-1 record, a save percentage of .958 and a goals-against average of 1.14 in place of an injured Quentin Miller, who was also in the midst of an impressive freshman season before he went down.

“A lot of confidence and belief in himself and he’s got the team believing in him as well,” Carle said of Hicks. “Can’t say enough good things about what he’s doing for us and giving us a chance every night.”

DU has also scored three or more goals in eight of the final 11 games as the forward group defined by its depth is showcasing an ability to have all four lines contribute in any given weekend.

This weekend, it was the experienced line of seniors Rieger Lorenz and Samu Salminen with emerging sophomore James Reeder. Salminen snapped a nearly three-month-long scoring drought by scoring four goals (two in each game) to lead the nine-goal effort across the weekend.

“I gotta give the credit to the whole team for how we’ve improved,” Salminen said. “We had a tough stretch there in January, but we grew up a lot as a group and individuals.”

Like it has been for years now under Carle, the postseason is when the season really begins for DU. The Pios are well aware of what’s left to accomplish: eight wins between now and April 11 gets them an NCHC championship and another national championship.

With Carle leading the way, there’s belief in every corner of the Pios’ locker room.

“He’s an unbelievable guy outside of hockey, but how intelligent he is and how much he cares about us and this program and the people who built the legacy here — he wants to be the one that keeps it going,” Salminen said. “He’s starting to prove that he’s probably one of the best to ever do it in college, and we’re super fortunate to play for him.”