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Some players shine by the flash of the highlight reel. Some players hold the line when everything else is unraveling. Bulldogs senior defenseman Joey Pierce is emphatically the latter.
Named captain by his teammates for the 2025-26 season, Pierce represents more than a letter sewn to a sweater. He’s a steady presence on a back end that has been tested repeatedly for his first three years: injuries, transition, lulls in buy-in, and years when results fell short of expectations.
Through it all, coaches and teammates say, Pierce played with consistency, grit and no shortcuts — which earned him the ‘C’.
Pierce hails from Ely, but made his mark in hockey at Hermantown High School and later with the Minnesota Wilderness in the NAHL and the Lincoln Stars in the USHL before arriving at UMD. He’s 6-foot, 195 pounds, shoots right and is majoring in management.
His offensive numbers at UMD have been modest — 97 career games, one goal and 12 assists — but his defensive game has been invaluable. In 2022-23, he played 26 games and had three assists. In 2023-24, he logged 35 games and five assists. In 2024-25, he appeared in 36 games with a goal and four assists and finished plus-5, the best mark of his career to date.
What the stat sheet leaves out — what Pierce lives up to every shift — is defensive reliability: closing gaps, defending rushes, breaking the puck out of the zone cleanly and refusing to take a night off. He defends rushes well, forces attackers wide, kills plays along the boards and thrives in the heavy minutes that aren’t glamorous but often decide games. He rarely shirks physicality and is known for crisp tape-to-tape outlet passes that keep the Bulldogs moving forward.
“I'm really excited,” Pierce said, beginning his senior season. “I think something that I love to do is get through adversity and come out on the other side. I think I've gone through some adversity while I've been here. I think we're right at the point where we're about to come on the other side, and things will be brighter. I can see that light at the end of the tunnel. I'm excited for that.”
He admitted his hockey journey has exceeded even his youthful imagination.
“I don't think I could have imagined this,” he said at the team's first presser on Wednesday at Amsoil. “I’m in a spot where I'm super fortunate every day to drive down the hill, to come to Amsoil. I couldn’t have imagined that in middle school or younger. I’m really proud of it and have worked hard to do it, but I don’t think I could have imagined being here today.”
Pierce is the first Hermantown Hawk to wear the ‘C’ at UMD since Adam Krause did a decade ago. He served as an alternate last season, and the promotion reflects the respect he’s earned.
“It means everything to have that support from my teammates and coaches and everyone else in the program, it does truly mean everything,” Pierce said. “It's an honor. I was just looking at the list of captains on the wall this morning and it's a pretty special group to be in. I talked yesterday with a couple of our captains that I've played under and just how excited they are for me and things. I've already been asking ’em questions, and I know I have that circle I can talk to daily.
“It’s an honor to be the captain of this team. I have a great group of leaders around me that are wearing letters and aren’t wearing letters. I know every day they're going to push me, and I hope to be able to push them too to make our team the best we can be.”
Pierce's leadership philosophy is simple: communication, early and often.
“It's going to have conversations early and often, whether with an individual or a group of guys,” he said. “I think it’s just going to be trying to stop that from happening before it gets to a point where it’s too late, so that’s something I already have written down. Something I’ve thought about before even being named the captain is having conversations with guys early before something gets too big that we can’t fix.”
Meantime, Pierce believes the Bulldogs have turned a corner.
“It feels excellent right now. I’m excited. We have a fun group,” he said. “We’ve got a great sophomore class that proved themselves last year. That’s only going to be better. I think a couple of those guys from where they were last year at a great level will be much better this year, which is pretty special and fun to think about. I think we’ve got older guys in the room that understand what this program should look like and can look like.”
Pierce knows the NCHC demands consistency and discipline.
“To win in the NCHC? I think it's just playing consistently,” he said. “It's playing the way our coaches want us to play. The way the coaches have seen work in the past, they’ve been to the top of the mountain, so we need to remember and respect that. So when they tell us something, we need to adjust in-game. It’s important and might sound small, but it can make the biggest difference.”
Asked whether the team buy-in has improved during his career, Pierce was candid: “I think it's definitely improved. There’s definitely been some times it hasn’t been there from everyone and maybe a small group can create a bigger group that isn’t bought in. So I think that's one of the things we will try to avoid this year.”
The Bulldogs have struggled, but Pierce has been a constant: reliable, heavy, smart, and steady. He has given the program a player to lean on in difficult times, and now, with the captain’s letter, he’ll be asked to lead them out of the struggles and into contention.
He might not show up often on the scoresheet, but in the NCHC — where games are usually decided in the corners, in front of the net, or on the defensive blue line — a captain like Pierce is often the difference between collapse and revival.
