If I'm choosing the route, the route I'd take is to find

a way to improve on the offense. And while the less successful (missing the NCAAs) seasons are generally a failure at both ends of the ice, the offensive woes are usually a little more pronounced.

The 11 NCAA teams were ranked, on average, 19 in offense among all NCAA teams and the 6 that failed to make it were ranked 42. There is a similar correlation defensively, but the range is smaller. The NCAA teams averaged a 9th place ranking among all NCAA teams while the 6 that missed were 29th on average. So when the offense goes south, it makes it all the way to Miami, but when the defense wants a warmer winter it only makes it as far south as South Carolina.

I don't think it stretches the imagination to know that the less successful seasons experienced problems on both offense and defense, but to me it looks like the bad seasons are caused more by the failure to put pucks in nets.

Related, the cliche that defense wins championships has always been a bit of a pet peeve with me, because it often is not true. Since Notre Dame first got a chance to play for an NCAA title in 2004 16 NCAA champions have been crowned. 8 had offenses that were ranked higher than their defense, and 8 were better defensively. The average ranking for the offense was 9.3 and for the defense it was 8.7. Interestingly Yale had both the worst offense (24th) AND the worst defense (25th) of any team that claimed a title in this stretch. 10 times a team with a top-10 offense won, and 9 times a top-10 defense won, while 5 times the top-3 defense won and 4 times the top-3 offense took home the big prize.