Red Wings prospect and University of Minnesota-Duluth captain Max Plante spoke with College Hockey News’s Avash Karla regarding his decision to return to UMD after winning last season’s Hobey Baker Award.
Max chose to decline a professional contract offer from Detroit to play alongside his brothers, Penguins prospect Zam and Red Wings prospect Victor, this upcoming season, and Max is also remarkably grounded regarding his status as one of college hockey’s best players:
A season ago, Minnesota Duluth’s Max Plante was arguably the most dynamic offensive player in college hockey. The Detroit Red Wings prospect scored 25 goals and 27 assists in 40 games, led UMD in scoring, earned NCHC Player of the Year honors, was named a first-team All-American and became the seventh Bulldog to win the Hobey Baker Award. His 52 points were the most by a UMD player since 2011-12, and his 26 goals were the program’s most since Mike Connolly scored 28 in 2010-11.
Then, instead of turning pro like the majority of Hobey winners before him, Plante quickly announced his intention to come back to Duluth for his junior year.
“Winning the Hobey Baker is pretty special and means you’re a pretty good player,” Plante said. “But I’m still only a 20-year old kid, still haven’t won a conference championship or national championship, and that’s the goal playing hockey. Knowing we had other guys on our team turn down NHL contracts helped me with my decision and my goals. I’d like to keep some of my goals personal. But with the group coming back, we have some real chance to win some games.”
Minnesota-Duluth coach Scott Sandelin has promised that he’s going to start the season with a Plante-Plante-Plante line…
“The boys have never really played together, so if they have the opportunity to do that, especially here at UMD, we’re going to do it,” Sandelin said. “You may see a lot of it, or maybe one game… It depends on how the rest of our team shakes out, and what we feel we can put together as a lineup to compete and win games every night The first game, it’s going to be those three. It’s probably going to be our starting lineup. We’ll go from there.”
It is difficult to find a comparable roster construction in modern college hockey: three brothers, all NHL draft picks, all forwards, all on the same Division I team, with the oldest coming off a Hobey Baker-winning season. Max and Zam already have two years of playing together at UMD. Victor has never played a college season with either of them. The Bulldogs have indicated that getting all three on the same line at some point is part of the plan, although exactly how often that happens remains to be seen.
For Max, Victor’s arrival was a major reason he stayed.
“[Victor coming to UMD] was a huge motivator,” Plante said after winning the Hobey. “To have the chance to play with my two brothers at that high of a level and to try to achieve something that I haven’t achieved yet, to win the national championship.” He called the decision to return one of the hardest he had ever made, but ultimately said he followed his gut.