To play college hockey at North Dakota is not for the weak. That would be Arizona State.
Fighting Hawks associate head coach Matt Smaby put the Sun Devils on blast before their recent two-game series in Tempe.
Although he is not wrong about the current landscape of college hockey, it was a surprise to see the university share the full pregame speech to his players on social media.
North Dakota is a college hockey school.
The University of North Dakota is located on the easternmost border of the Peace Garden State in Grand Forks. The 143-year-old campus sits just a few miles west of Minnesota, less than 100 miles south of Canda.
Characterized by long and frigid winters, Grand Forks is lucky if the temperature gets above 15º Fahrenheit in the winter. Nightly lows often plunge below zero. The sun is out for only eight hours per day during the most brutal months of the year. It’s dark and cold on the plains.
College hockey season lasts from early October to the Frozen Four in early April. It’s not a warm sport.
The Fighting Hawks are one of the most successful programs of all-time with eight Division I national championships in 1959, 1963, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1997, 2000 and 2016. They often finish atop their conference and rarely miss out on the NCAA Tournament. You get the idea.
However, as fun as it is to win, to play hockey at North Dakota is not for the faint of heart. The grind of a college sport at the Division-I level is one thing. The bitter cold is another.
This was the scene outside of Ralph Engelstad Arena prior to a recent game:
This is what we do for UND Hockey 🔥 5-0 good guys. pic.twitter.com/v47QLL0Bdx
— Scofarr (@scofarr) January 17, 2026
Brr. It’s dark and cold.
Arizona State presents a stark contrast.
Even though it does not seem like a school that would have a hockey program, Arizona State burst onto the scene as an independent in 2015. The Sun Devils may not be ranked inside the top-25 like the Fighting Hawks but they reached the NCAA Tournament in 2018 and played their way to the NCHC semifinal during their first year as a member of a conference last season.
And it’s a lot more luxurious of an experience.
Temperatures in Tempe rarely drop below 40º. The high temperature during hockey season does not fall below 70º. It’s always sunny and warm. There is no snow.
North Dakota associate head coach Matt Smaby recently used this discrepancy between the two programs as fodder during his pregame speech. He (not-so indirectly) called Arizona State soft. Shots fired.
To be fair, Jackson is not wrong. It takes a specific kind of person to go to school at North Dakota instead of Arizona State. They’re built different. And the Fighting Hawks defeated the Sun Devils in both games by a combined score of 12-7 so his motivational speech worked!