GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- For all you UND hockey fans out there, it's quite an early Christmas present this Fighting Hawks team has unwrapped for you going into the holiday season.

A team bolstered with 10 freshmen and six players from other colleges via the transfer portal has worked miracles to place itself contention for league and national honors at approximately the halfway point of the season.

It's not only the bulk of the team that is new this season, but the same can be said for the majority of the coaching staff, headed by first-year head coach Dane Jackson.

By completing a rare four-game sweep of the season series with Omaha recently, the Hawks climbed into first place in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference and fourth place in the national rankings at this point in time.

That's a miracle in progress indeed, with the staff hitting a home run with a very strong rookie class and a group of transfers who have contributed much to this season as well,

In fact, in a recent home game, the three stars of the game as voted on by the media were all players brought into via the transfer portal this season. That's what I call hitting a grand slam homer, to borrow a baseball phrase.

This has also been a team that best defines the term "team.''

Every game, it seems, it is a different player or group of players who play major roles in the success of this team. You'll be hard pressed to find individual players from UND ranked high in national scoring, but the team play has been excellent.

 The goaltending with rookie Jan Špunar and transfer Gibson Homer -- again the freshman/transfer combination on this roster --  has been outstanding. Špunar, with a 9-0 won-lost record in his nine starts to begin his college career, passed the previous rookie record at UND held by the legendary Ed Belfour and Jordan Parise.

With all the newness found in this program this year, from coaches to players, it was hard to know what to expect once the games rolled around.

I think very few of us would have predicted that going into Christmas break, this team would be leading the very tough NCHC and ranked fourth in the country nationally.

With 16 regular-season games remaining on the schedule beginning with Mercyhurst on Jan. 2-3, the future is bright for UND.

UND has several players in camp now with the Canadian and U.S. teams preparing for the upcoming World Juniors Tournament. As we have seen in past years, players almost always return to their college teams after the tournament as more polished, seasoned players after competing with and against the best young players in the world.

So that is something to keep an eye on as well, both watching them play in the World Juniors, and then paying special attention to them as they re-join their college team.

But in the meantime, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Virg Foss has covered UND hockey teams for either the Grand Forks Herald or UND since 1969. He can be reached at virgfoss@yahoo.com.