As Friday, Dec. 5, ticked over to Saturday, Dec. 6, on the East Coast, a hockey rink in Lynchburg, Va., is exactly where you would find the Minot State men’s ice hockey team, as it was participating in the second of two annual “Midnight Mayhem” hockey contests hosted by Liberty University.

The Beavers emerged with a 5-0 victory in front of more than 4,000 fans at LaHaye Ice Center, but that result – while ideal – was far from the most interesting aspect of the more than 1,600-mile trip across time zones. The win was just a footnote on a journey that featured early mornings, late nights, flight delays, altered routines, plenty of food and rest, team bonding and even a baptism.

The history of “Midnight Mayhem” and Minot State’s involvement

“Midnight Mayhem” has been part of Liberty athletics for more than a decade, dating back to 2012 when men’s lacrosse head coach Kyle McQuillan introduced the concept that spring. Since then, the idea has expanded to both volleyball and hockey. The hockey program played its inaugural “Midnight Mayhem” contest on Nov. 13, 2015, defeating the University of Delaware, 3-2. The Flames have hosted the event every year except for 2020-21 due to COVID-19, typically playing two midnight games each season, once in late-September/early-October and again in early December.

Mike Kraft/MDN The Minot State men’s hockey team traveled to Lynchburg, Va., over the weekend to compete in Liberty’s “Midnight Mayhem,” a midnight hockey game in which the Beavers won 5-0 in front of more than 4,000 fans at LaHaye Ice Center.

The Flames tend to fare well playing at midnight, sporting a 14-4 record in those contests. Opponents have included Delaware, Alabama, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, West Chester, the University of Ohio, Michigan-Dearborn, West Virginia, Niagara, Maryville, Pittsburgh, Drexel and Minot State. Indiana University of Pennsylvania has participated the most, playing in the event four times. Delaware has played three times.

The Beavers hold the designation as being the opponent from the furthest distance away to play a “Midnight Mayhem” game. And last weekend wasn’t their first time taking part. Many players on the current Minot State roster – 13 to be exact – were with the team when they played the midnight game the first time back during the 2023-24 season. The Beavers won that contest as well in a 4-2 victory. Junior forward Colby Joseph was one of those players with prior experience playing in the unique event. ,

“It was a different ballgame from my perspective going into that,” Joseph said. “I knew that it was going to be a tough environment and they were going to pack the rink and have lots of fans, but I knew that it was just a game and you have to keep it inside the glass. The nerves were there but it was a different type of nerves.”

Talks between Minot State coach Wyatt Waselenchuk and Liberty coach Kirk Handy began in the summer with both teams looking to build out their schedules for the upcoming season. Waselenchuk said that he is always looking to play the best of the best, which is why his first 10 phone calls are to the top 10 teams asking if they would like to be on their schedule, either at Maysa Arena or on the road. When he and Handy talked, the Flames head coach asked Waselenchuk if he would be interested in being part of “Midnight Mayhem.” The Beavers coach agreed without hesitation. Liberty’s first “Midnight Mayhem” game this season was against Delaware, in which the Flames came away with a 7-1 victory.

Ultimately, the decision was less in the hands of the hockey program and more dependent on the thumbs up from the Minot State Athletics Department. The American Collegiate Hockey Association doesn’t have reimbursement policies when taking flights or long bus rides to road contests. Waselenchuk said the team typically gets one flight a year in their budget. The MSU Athletics Department gave the Beavers the thumbs up and approved the trip over the summer and the midnight contest was added to the schedule.

Despite the sizable distance between the two campuses, Minot State and Liberty are no strangers to one another. They have been staples on each other’s schedules, having played every year dating back to the 2020-21 season. Prior to joining the Midwest College Hockey Conference at the start of last season, the Beavers and Flames were consistently playing one another four times per season, each hosting a weekend series. The Beavers are 18-7 against the Flames dating back to the 2012-13 season. Liberty won the first five meetings of the series, but Minot State has dominated since, winning 18 of the last 20.

“We’ve had some pretty good success and although we’re on other sides of the country we have a pretty darn good rivalry with them,” Waselenchuk said. “We played them in the semifinals at nationals the year that we won it in Boston. We’ve typically played them four times a year prior to this season. It’s two programs with a lot of respect for one another.”

Travel, sleep, food and studying: the leadup to “Midnight Mayhem”

The altered sleep patterns the Minot State hockey team were going to experience over the ensuing 48-72 hours began at the crack of dawn on Thursday, Dec. 4, with its 5 a.m. flight out of Minot. The Beavers arrived at the airport bright and early, as the process of checking in a hockey team with all of its equipment can take upwards to 90 minutes or more if everything goes according to plan.

The 5 a.m. flight was a change from the original flight they had booked during the summer. The original flight departed at 11 a.m. and went from Minot to Minneapolis to Raleigh, followed by a 2.5-hour bus ride from Raleigh to Lynchburg. But weeks after booking the flight, it changed to a 5 a.m. departure and added an extra layover in Atlanta. Add in a couple of delays and the Beavers didn’t arrive at their destination until closer to 6:30 p.m. that night.

Players did what they could to pass the time. In flight, many chose to catch up on lost sleep, while others watched movies and television offered through the airline. Joseph spent the majority of the flights listening to music – old country being his genre of choice. As for the coaching staff, they were doing what coaches do: watching film and getting prepared for the weekend games.

In between flights at the airport terminals, players shifted their focus to their studies. With finals rapidly approaching, many used their down time and the luxury of the airport Wi-Fi to work on school work, completing research papers and projects or studying for upcoming exams.

The Beavers didn’t spend much time out and about in Lynchburg on Thursday other than to grab some food from the local grocery store to have with them in the hotel. They turned in early to catch up on lost sleep.

Waslenchuk said the most difficult aspect of playing at midnight is all the down time leading up to the game, especially when it comes to fueling the players’ bodies. On a typical gameday on the road, the Beavers will have a team breakfast at the hotel if it is sufficient enough and then have lunch around noon, which usually consists of sub sandwiches. The pregame dinner is around 2:15 p.m. for a 7 p.m. puck drop and that features a healthy dose of carbohydrates and protein. And then the postgame meal is whatever the team is in the mood for, as most local establishments are still open by the time they leave the rink.

But all those times got thrown out the window with the time of the game being roughly five hours later than the standard puck drop. Instead of being in the midst of a game, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, the Beavers were instead just sitting down for their pregame meal. To bridge the gap between meals, the staff provided players with plenty of snacks and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

“That was pretty crazy playing a game at midnight,” Minot State goaltender Will Dyke said. “You’re taking your pregame nap at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and you wake up and it’s dark out. You’re eating your pregame meal at 7 or 7:30. It was definitely something out of the ordinary. It’s nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Once you got to the rink it felt a bit more normal and you got into your routine.

To kick the jet lag out of the legs, the Beavers conducted a morning skate around 11 a.m. It wouldn’t be until 9 p.m. when the Beavers would return to a much more filled and hostile LaHaye Ice Center.

Shutting out the noise: “Midnight Mayhem” triumph

By the time the Beavers had taken the ice for pregame warmups, the empty arena they had skated around in the morning was filling up rapidly, nearly half of the 4,000-seat rink occupied by screaming fans. At the time of puck drop, the place was sold out.

“It’s tough to put into words,” Joseph said. “A rink like that with 4,500 fans and they hate you. They’re booing you and they’re putting their thumbs down at you. You have to enjoy it and laugh at it and can’t take it personally. They’re there to watch you play. It’s hard to put into words how loud it is and when they do their prayer before the game and everyone yells amen, that gives you chills. With them streaming on ESPN, it adds that realism and feels almost like the pros.”

The nerves were flowing leading up to puck drop, but once the game began, a feeling of normalcy took over.

“You’re walking to the place where all you hear about is 4,000 people screaming and shouting and everyone is against you, so for sure walking into an unknown situation like that makes you a little more nervous, but once the puck drops and play gets going, all that goes away and your brain shuts off a little bit and it comes naturally to you again,” Dyke said.

The Beavers didn’t give the crowd much to cheer for, as they jumped on the Flames early with a three-goal first period and never looked back. If they were experiencing any effects of sleep deprivation, they weren’t showing it in their play. Joseph got the Beavers on the board first, netting a power-play goal at 6:13 of the opening frame. The “Midnight Mayhem” game holds a special place in Joseph’s heart, as it was the contest where he scored his first collegiate goal as a freshman two years ago. This goal wasn’t his first, but rather his 12th of the season and 51st of his career. He would add another the following night for his 13th of the year and 52nd in a Beaver uniform.

“You put that midnight game on a pedestal because you know it’s tougher and there are more eyes on you. It’s still a game, but you want to go out there and perform,” Joseph said. “At the end of the day a goal is a goal, but it’s kind of nice to go into a tough building against a really good hockey team and a tough environment. It’s special scoring there and it’s cool and it’s awesome to see so many guys have that experience playing in that midnight game.”

Joey Moffatt extended Minot State’s lead midway through the period and Jaxon Grosdidier made it 3-0 with five minutes remaining, as the Beavers took a 3-0 lead into the intermission.

“It was awesome,” Waselenchuk said. “There’s 4,000 people, but I didn’t think it was overly loud and that’s just me and my mental focus on things throughout the game. I don’t think the crowd affected us. Obviously, getting up early on them might have dampened the mood a little bit, but when you walk out onto the bench as a coach and you look around a little bit you’re going, ‘this is pretty cool, there’s a lot of people here,’ but once that puck drops, I couldn’t have told you if there was 20 people in there or 4,500 people there. It was business as usual.”

After a mostly quiet second period, Minot State found the back of the net with 2:21 left in the frame when Matt Egan scored his third goal of the season. Brett Tataryn put a bow on the decisive victory at 7:43 of the third period, handing the Flames their first shutout loss in the “Midnight Mayhem” contest. Prior to Saturday, Liberty hadn’t scored fewer than two goals in the event. It was also the first time the Flames had been shutout this season, the last such time coming against Niagara University on Nov. 1, 2024.

Dyke – playing in his first “Midnight Mayhem” – earned his first shutout victory of the season, stopping all 24 shots he faced while dealing with heckling fans throughout most of the contest.

“For the second period they have a little balcony right behind your net and they’re screaming things down at you and trying to get in your head,” Dyke said. “It felt good for sure to quiet them and not give them anything to talk about. The fans on the other end of the ice behind the glass are up against the glass the entire game trying to show you a picture, holding up their phone trying to get your attention. Not giving them anything felt good and it was a very satisfying feeling to get the shutout in that environment in that situation where everyone is against you.”

The Beavers held a 33-24 edge in shots, outshooting the Flames 16-7 in the opening period to set the tone for the night.

More hockey and an unexpected pregame baptism

By the time the final horn sounded, it was 2:30 a.m., on Saturday, around the same time they were showing up at the Minot airport Thursday morning. The Beavers picked up their stuff and left the arena around 3:30 a.m. and headed back to the hotel, where they microwaved some pizza and waited for the adrenaline of the game to wear off so they could get some sleep, which took until roughly 5 a.m.

The players went to bed, but the coaching staff did not. Waselenchuk and assistant coach Tyler Grimshaw burned the midnight oil, going over game film and putting together a plan for the team’s next game, which was just a bit over 12 hours away at 7 p.m.

There was an optional team breakfast that most players elected to forego to catch up on lost sleep. But by 11:30 a.m., the team was up. The coaching staff went and got sub sandwiches and the team went over game film. There were some mobility drills to keep the body fresh, as well as the pregame dinner at its more standard time.

From there, the team headed back over to the Liberty campus, not to get ready for their second hockey game in less than 24 hours, but rather to witness one of their teammates get baptised.

The process began on Friday when Jeremy Dewar – a junior transfer – approached Waselenchuk with something clearly on his mind. Waselenchuk could sense Dewar was nervous about something, which was unlike his typical demeanor. That’s when he told Waselenchuk that he wanted to be baptised while on campus, and the Minot State coach gave his blessing.

Dewar, who played his first two seasons at Division III Anna Maria before joining the Beavers this season, almost ended up at Liberty University, but ultimately elected to go to the private Catholic university in Paxton, Mass., instead.

Dewar’s baptism became a unifying moment for both programs. The entire Minot State team arrived on campus around 4 p.m. on Saturday and were escorted over to the athletic training facility, where Liberty’s full team and staff also joined. Approximately 65 people were on hand to witness the religious ceremony of initiation, cleansing, strengthening and welcoming into the community of Christian believers.

“It was so cool how the Lord brings us together in the sport,” Joseph said. “With Liberty being a Christian school, they were there, and it showed that we went to battle with this team and we’re going to do it again, but for something like that it’s bigger than the game and at the end of the day we’re adults chasing our dreams. For our teammate to be able to go through something like that and for us to experience and be there for him was special.”

Three hours later, the two programs were foes once again, about set to drop the puck on the second leg of their weekend series, this one taking place five hours earlier. It was another emotionally charged night for the Flames, as Saturday’s contest served as their Teddy Bear Toss, where fans throw teddy bears onto the ice following the home team’s first goal. The teddy bears are then collected and donated to local hospitals and charities.

The Beavers nearly kept the teddy bears from flying, as they again were pitching a shutout through the first two periods. Minot State didn’t show too much in the way of fatigue from the previous night, scoring just 2:04 into the game on Sheldin Howard’s fifth goal of the season. Logan Cyca gave the Beavers a 2-0 lead after the first 20 minutes, scoring with 3:10 remaining.

Joseph and Tataryn added second-period goals to stretch the advantage to 4-0. Joseph’s goal came on the power play just 54 seconds into the middle stanza.

The box score would indicate that the Beavers were just as sharp as they were the night before, but Waselenchuk felt like the team was fighting uphill throughout the second half of the contest. At times he grew frustrated with some of the mental mistakes, but then reminded himself of the level of difficulty required to do what his team was currently performing. There were also clear signs that his team was tired throughout Saturday’s game.

“I thought they did a great job of having a great start, scoring some timely goals and then doing a good job of sticking with our structure in the D zone and making sure we were taking care of the puck and eliminating our turnovers,” Waselenchuk said. “You could tell guys were pretty tired. We’re not a team that ever sits on the bench, and at any given time, there were probably 10 guys sitting down. It was definitely telling for sure.”

The Flames finally managed to get one by Dyke in the third period. Ryan Finch scored at 3:02, sending teddy bears onto the ice and giving the fans something to cheer about for the first time all weekend.

Dyke finished with 25 saves, earning a pair of victories in net with 49 total saves. The Beavers outshot the Flames 37-26 on Saturday, including a 17-5 margin in the third period.

Returning to

the Magic City

With two wins and four points secured, it was time for the Beavers to make the long journey back to the Magic City. After a postgame meal and a (mostly) full night’s sleep, the team departed from the hotel at 7:45 a.m. to take the team bus from Lynchburg to Raleigh to catch its 11:45 a.m. flight out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

The travel itinerary was much lighter compared to their flight into town, with just one layover in Minneapolis. That flight out of Minneapolis, however, ended up being delayed by 1.5 hours. The Beavers arrived back in Minot around 6 p.m. On the flight, players did more of the same as they did coming to Virginia: watching movies, listening to music and sleeping. The coaches did more film study and were in the midst of preparing for a mid-week game against in-state rival Jamestown.

While most players returned to their dorms or off-campus residencies and crashed for the rest of the night, Dyke, fellow goaltenders Blake Sittler and Sheldon Biggeley, and Waselenchuk headed to Maysa Arena to teach a goalie clinic. Upon the completion of teaching the clinic, the trio of goaltenders, too, spent the rest of the night catching up on lost sleep.

The good, the bad and everything in between

Every road trip comes with its share of positives and negatives, and Dyke, Joseph and Waselenchuk all experienced theirs at some point over the course of four days.

For Dyke, his favorite part of the trip took place in the third period of both games when he would look out at the crowd and start to see them funneling toward the exits because they knew their team had lost and he had played a big role in their unhappiness. Everything about the experience in Virginia was memorable for the Minot State netminder. Getting from Point A to Point B and then back to Point A? Not so much.

“I would love to do the games again,” Dyke said. “Going down there was super fun and playing at midnight was a great experience. The travel back and forth? No. But the actual experience down in Lynchburg playing a game was unreal and the highlight of my hockey career for sure. I’d love to be able to do it again and experience that again another time.”

Joseph enjoyed the fact that they came away with two wins over a top-10 opponent and looked dominant in doing so. He felt like the team reached another level over the weekend that will resonate across the league that the Beavers are once again going to be right there in the thick of things come the end of the season.

“We as a group took a huge step forward and it was so good to see everything clicking and to see how good we can be when we’re in that space and it showed us that this is our new standard,” Joseph said. “That was pretty hard to beat. Playing a midnight game is cool, too, but that was my favorite part was us coming together and being a brotherhood and going into a tough building and winning two games by a good margin.”

His least favorite part of the trip is something many frequent flyers can relate to. The airline lost his duffel bag, and as of Tuesday night, Joseph still had not yet been reunited with his belongings, which included all his clothing as well as his toiletries.

Waselenchuk loved every aspect of the trip, but what stuck out to him the most was all the time he had to talk with both his players and his coaching staff. While communicating with his team and staff is nothing out of the ordinary, these talks were less of a coach-to-player and coach-to-coach relationship, but rather man-to-man. It allowed him to get to know everyone on more of a personal level to an even greater degree than prior to the trip.

Aside from the lack of sleep, Waselenchuk had very few complaints about the weekend.

The Beavers would gladly sign up to participate in “Midnight Mayhem” again, and they have floated the idea to their athletic department about potentially hosting such an event one day. The University of Jamestown would be a likely opponent in the case that it ever occurred, as Waselenchuk had talked to Jimmies coach Dean Stork about the idea a couple years ago. Stork was on board.

But Waselenchuk also understood how difficult all the logistics around hosting the event would be for everyone involved. Unlike at Liberty University, alcohol is served at Beavers games and liquor licenses only permit sales up to a certain time. The arena staff would have to work late into the night and then be right back to work just a short time later to open the rink the next morning. But if it were to happen, Waselenchuk thought they could pair it with either a Tauros game or a Minot State women’s hockey game as the prelude.

Whether “Midnight Mayhem” ever comes to Minot is something to be determined, but the memories from this past weekend is something the players will always remember.

“You have to soak it in because not many people get to experience a midnight game. It’s something we’re going to tell our kids about and luckily my two years there I have good experiences playing in that game,” Joseph said.