This season hasn’t been easy for Mike Burda. It just looks that way.

Despite the Illinois hockey club’s perfect record and Burda’s own impressive statistics, the sophomore goaltender had all he could handle last Saturday as the Illinois hockey club took on rival Ohio. With the game deadlocked in the decisive shootout, Burda didn’t just save shots – he saved his team’s perfect season.

“I was so nervous; it was terrible,” the Buffalo Grove, Ill., native said. “My team bailed me out.”

Thanks to Joey Resch’s goal following a Burda save, the Illini ultimately prevailed in the 11th round of sudden death. For the series, Burda made 42 saves on 43 shots, not including seven in Saturday’s shootout.

With football season over and basketball floundering, it’s nice to know there’s still a top-tier sports team winning in orange and blue. Sporting an incredible 25-0-0 record and the No. 1 ranking in the nation, Illini hockey is the talk of Champaign.

Thanks to an offense that is scoring an average of 5.7 goals per game, the Illini are eyeing their second national title in four seasons.

Yet, going into the season, the defense was an unknown entity. After the departure of several senior defensemen, as well as All-American goaltender Mike DeGeorge, Burda found himself sparring with fellow sophomore D.J. Kohler for playing time in the crease. Head coach Chad Cassel described the competition as “wide open” before the season started.

“With us coming in and having probably the most dominant offense in the nation, the defense was really the question mark, and the goaltending,” Burda said.

Now, as the postseason looms, the Illini defense has removed a lot of doubts. Just as the offense has shredded opponents, Burda and his defensemen have been equally stout, earning three shutouts in the sophomore’s last six starts.

“I’m just glad that I’m really starting to step up and fill that role and complete the whole team. The defense is just a full threat, a complete package,” Burda said.

Much like starting a pitcher in baseball or a quarterback in football, a goaltender is arguably under more scrutiny than any other position in hockey. While a blunder by a forward can ultimately be inconsequential in hockey’s free-flowing style of play, a goaltender, as the last line of defense, has his errors magnified like no one else on the ice. If a goalie allows a puck into the net, a red light flashes, the horn blares, and the action stops while the defeated netminder is left to contemplate his missteps.

Adding to the difficulty is the dimensions of the University Ice Arena. While a regulation size NHL rink is 85 feet in width, the aptly-named “Big Pond” is approximately 30 feet wider, drastically increasing the areas the goaltender must pay attention to. Adapting to the eccentric rink can prove to be difficult at first.

“There were some points where guys were shooting from angles that really don’t exist anywhere else,” Burda said.

This season, though, the sophomore hasn’t let the pressure or the rink get to him. Burda has won each of his 14 starts this season, while allowing an average of 1.41 goals per game and saving 93.1 percent of his opponents’ shots.

He has compiled these stats with a goaltending style of simply doing anything and everything to keep the puck out of the net.

“I am definitely a very unorthodox goalie,” Burda said. “You’ll see me rolling around the ice, or my legs up in the air, whatever it takes.”

Despite his recent success, Burda knows his playing time is anything but safe. With Kohler undefeated in his 10 starts, the depth chart can change for each series. It’s no surprise that Cassel isn’t making any concrete decisions.

“He basically just tells us who’s starting each weekend, and so far it just keeps being me and me again,” Burda said. “So I’m kind of getting the hint that he’s leaning towards me, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Burda also feels that the Illini still have their most important hockey games ahead of them, with the Central States Collegiate Hockey League tournament in two weeks and the American Collegiate Hockey Association national tournament at the end of February.

“The Penn State sweep and the Ohio sweep, those are awesome, but league and nationals, that’s the goal,” Burda said. “I mean, we could (lose both tournaments) and those two losses would mean everything to us.”