"Break the Wall": Koopa Troopas & the Art of Forechecking
Dissecting the forecheck with Andrew Copp & Brandon Naurato, plus WoHo looks to keep the momentum going on the road after successful trip to Oxford, and Evan Werner's breakout
A week ago, University of Michigan men’s hockey coach Brandon Naurato said that his team was working on “different ways to manufacture offense based on guys’ skillsets…which is probably more off the forecheck and grinding in the O zone.” He added that his team—still seeking its sources of secondary scoring—could use the confidence boost of a game in which a bunch of pucks find the back of the net. The Wolverines enjoyed two such games last weekend at Agganis Arena, beating the Boston University Terriers 5-1 and 5-4 (in overtime) on consecutive evenings.
Naurato saw lots to build on: “Coming back in two third periods, power play had three goals, PK killed four of five, we only took five [penalties], so we were disciplined, outside of a couple turnovers we didn’t give up much off the rush. All the standard stuff to play winning hockey I think we did…It’s a good weekend and a good feeling, and now we reset.”
That reset has to come quickly. Big Ten conference play opens this weekend, and Michigan’s recent Kryptonite—the Notre Dame Fighting Irish—will visit Yost to mark the occasion. Over the summer, Irish coach Jeff Jackson announced that the 2024-25 season would be his last, which is to say we have at least one more year of absolute certainty of Notre Dame’s hyper-defensive identity. As Naurato summated this week, “They’re always above you, and they don’t give you much. You just have to fight for every inch of ice.”
Among the calling cards of Jackson’s Irish is a refusal to allow clean zone entries and offense off the rush. That only increases the imperative for Michigan to lean on its forecheck to ignite the attack. For a better sense of the details underlying an effective forecheck, I consulted with two Wolverine alums and unabashed hockey nerds: Naurato and Detroit Red Wings forward Andrew Copp.
From his locker on Tuesday afternoon, a few hours before the Red Wings are due to fly to Chicago, Copp says that the intricacies of the forecheck are too great for more than a crash course in the time available.
“I might miss the plane if we go through all the details,” he says, with the ensuing riff offering compelling evidence that this entry point is more than a quip. “Part of it, especially as F1, is initial effort, but I think it’s a lot of anticipation, it’s a lot of reading, it’s a lot of having a good stick. It’s understanding Is that D alone? Is the center filling for their D, so he’s gonna be their F2? What hand is this guy? Does this guy play the puck well? Does he have too long of a stick? Are his forwards softer on the wing, so he might not rim it as much? F2, you’re reading where is this puck getting steered? As F1, you wanna steer it a certain way, you wanna put this guy on his backhand most of the time. The reads and the anticipation [are] endless.
“As a basis, I don’t wanna say effort, but it’s anticipation. It’s playing on your toes. It’s IQ, and a lot of the times, it’s trust—especially if you’re F2 or F3—and you’re trying to anticipate, trying to be aggressive, and jumping in: you’ve gotta trust that F1 and F2 are pulling out, otherwise you’re going to give up a three-on-two. So the detail, the anticipation, that’s pretty much endless. We didn’t even talk about puck placement. We haven’t talked about the D being involved in the forecheck. We haven’t even talked about how our breakout sets up our forecheck. So yeah, we could be here all day.”
[While the appellations F1, F2, and F3 may appear alienating, they simply refer to the first, second, and then third forward to enter the offensive zone, or the first, second, and third forward up ice. The shift in nomenclature is a reflection of an increase in positional interchangeability, particularly among forwards, across the highest levels of hockey. While left wing, center, right wing might provide a general structure, a player’s responsibility at any given moment is dictated by their positioning on the ice, not the formal title of that player’s position on the depth chart.]
Naurato began the conversation at puck placement, pointing to the way a purposeful dump-in can make life that little bit more difficult for an opposing defenseman retrieving the puck. “Keep it away from the goalie,” he advocated. “We don’t cross-corner dump, because when you cross-corner dump, the puck bounces out, so it’s a free touch, versus a D having to go back and pull a wobbly puck off a snowy wall. It’s just that much harder, now you’ve hit him. He’s gotta make a more difficult play.” It’s an incremental difference, but that millisecond of doubt or distracted concentration can prove the difference between a turnover or a successful breakout.
Copp, meanwhile, stresses the importance of trust in the two other forwards you are forechecking with to ensure that the energy you expend doesn’t go to waste. “[Trust] is a huge part of it, especially as a centerman,” he says. “If you’re F1, that’s a lot of skating back and forth. If you’re spending a lot of energy as a centerman as F1, you need to rely on your F2 and F3 being in the right spot and anticipating the play, because if they’re not, then you kinda waste a 200-foot sprint, and now you’ve gotta sprint back and play D zone against Sidney Crosby. The trust in the forecheck is a huge part.”
One key way trust manifests on the forecheck is having confidence that the two forwards behind you will be in the right positions to pounce on a potential turnover or defend the ensuing rush should the opponent break out successfully. “There’s a huge middle lane drive talk in the league right now, so a lot of the times if it’s an entry, a controlled entry, you’re gonna be F1 a little bit, so it’s that trust that F2 and F3 are gonna be there and moving their feet to either get pucks back or to be in the right situation for the rush going the other way,” says Copp.
The “middle lane drive” refers to a forward without the puck skating off the heels of a defenseman upon entering the offensive zone to find an open lane for a pass. In an ideal sequence, it starts with an entry via the middle of the ice, then a pass wide that creates a mini two-on-one as the player who just made the pass cuts into open space off the defenseman. This exchange can happen before or after the blue line, though the latter is probably more consistently dangerous. After making the initial cut, the forward without the puck can either receive a pass or re-route to the net, where he would then stop for a screen, tip, or rebound. To Copp’s point, it’s an attacking structure that is generally going to lead to the center being F1, because more often than not, they will be the player to carry the puck through the center of the ice and thus become the forward to make the middle lane drive, pushing them farther up ice than either of their two linemates.
To Copp, another dimension of forechecking trust stems from the fundamental connection between a successful forecheck and a clean breakout. As he explains, “The cleaner you break the puck out, the more guys you can get up the ice. The D rounds the net, hits a guy, everyone continues their speed, the D are already up, so when that puck gets chipped in, we already have two guys that never had to stop in our zone and are now hitting the blue line with a ton of speed and our D are already up and can pinch on rims or be involved in the play. When we have to stop, or we don’t really cleanly break it out, and the center has to go to the corner and win the battle to bump it to the wing, and then that wing gets pinched down on, so now there’s just one guy. And he’s chipping it, and it’s kinda like a one-on-two, where two guys are stopped in the corner or on the hash mark as opposed to clean breakouts with everyone skating.”
At the risk of over-simplification, those clean breakouts enable speed away from the puck, providing literal momentum to initiate the forecheck. That same ambition is at the root of Naurato’s emphasis on puck placement: “Puck placement is a big thing, whether you’re rimming it or placing it in the strong side corner is a big deal. And it’s not always going to be perfect, sometimes you’re under pressure and can’t control it, but as much as you can, just keep advancing the puck north.”
At this point, Naurato turns to an analogy he used with his team in the lead-up to the BU series: “I gave them an example last week, and I was trying to make them laugh. I was like, ‘You guys ever play the game Mario Brothers?’ So I’m like if there’s a brick wall in front of me, and then there’s doors, and the Koopa Troopas open the doors. When the door opens, what do you do? You speed up. When the door closes, what do you do? You slow down. So if there’s a wall in front of me, I’ve got to put the puck behind that wall. The only people that can break that wall are people without the puck, so once it goes through, or on the line rush, if I break through, then I would break through without the puck, well it should back you up. Well now, if we back up ten feet, all this space behind us is available. If I don’t run a route, and I just let [a teammate] skate with the puck, the wall is still there. So somebody else has to break that wall so we have space.”
To bring it back to Notre Dame, “breaking the wall” by way of speed away from the puck becomes paramount. Jeff Jackson’s Irish are built to slow down their opponent, but it’s easier to slow down the player with the puck than those without it. Against Notre Dame, attacking off the rush is generally analogous to attempting to run through a brick wall as Mario, but because of that, there is room to exploit behind that wall, if you can access it.
The work around when approaching the offensive blue line against Notre Dame is to dump the puck in, allowing the players away from the puck to initiate the forecheck with their speed, taking advantage of the ice that is available behind the wall the Irish seek to create to defend against clean entries to their defensive zone via the line rush. In this way, “breaking the wall” achieves a similar end to Copp’s “middle lane drive”: exploiting the space a team gives up deeper in its defensive zone, because of that defending team’s commit to denying easy access across the blue line.
Meanwhile, the seriocomic comparison to Super Mario Bros. was meant to provide levity but also to simplify the forecheck to a mantra: “break the wall.” Naurato says that on the bench against the Terriers, he hummed the Super Mario music as an aural cue for his players, saying “I don’t know if it works, but it’s like a mind hack, so now they’re on the bench saying, ‘break the wall.’”
For Naurato, the ability to succeed in this kind of forechecking game is a critical component to credible championship contention. Under his leadership, Michigan’s bread and butter is puck possession and creating offense from the offensive zone. However, as Naurato has said on more than one occasion, teams that thrive in the NCAA Tournament are teams that can win many different ways. That means having options off a Plan A is essential.
“In our O zone, everyone sprints out on us in high ice, so we can’t get into it,” he points out. “Well, if we don’t put pucks behind them down low, then we’re in trouble, so now you have a low game and a high-ice game.” Naurato likens this to being a basketball team that can beat you with three pointers (i.e. possession-based playmaking in high ice) and with plays in the paint (i.e. a more direct forechecking game, that privileges field position over puck possession).
In the end, though, the area where Naurato saw the most progress from his team in Boston concerned recognition of another of Copp’s central theses of forechecking: Clean breakouts set up the forecheck for success. Here again, Copp’s wisdom reflects the “break the wall” mantra. The key benefit Copp ascribed to clean breakouts is the way they hasten a transition and create more speed away from the puck with which to hit the offensive blue line and begin attacking. In other words, clean breakouts create ideal conditions (speed away from the puck all over the ice, for both forwards and defensemen) with which to break the wall.
So where did the Wolverines grow most against BU, and will it most benefit them to replicate this weekend against Notre Dame? Without wishing to sound all New Age-y, an understanding of the interconnectivity of each phase of the game. As Naurato puts it, “If you don’t have a forecheck, you can’t play in the O zone. If you don’t break out, you can’t generate off the rush, so everything is connected in origin to the next thing. They’re getting it eight games in, how everything is connected.”
Odds & Ends
WoHo Takes Three Points at Miami ahead of East Coast Swing
Last weekend, the University of Michigan women’s hockey team traveled to Goggins Ice Arena in Oxford, Ohio for two games against Miami University. The Wolverines took the first 3-1, then drew the second 1-1.
The Saturday victory reflected the depth formula that Michigan has struck in the season’s early going, with three different scorers finding the net in Sam Carr, Allison Fleszar, and Lucy Hanson. Avery Schiff made her second start of the season in goal and delivered another outstanding performance, making thirty-five saves on thirty-six shots. For the season, she now boasts a .962 save percentage with a goals against average of exactly 1.00.
Though they didn’t manage a victory, the Wolverines arguably exerted greater control over Sunday’s game than did the RedHawks, with a commanding 26-12 advantage in shots. Lucy Hanson scored a power play goal in the second period (one of three U-M PPGs for the weekend), but that was all the offense Michigan mustered, while Sandrine Ponnath took back over the goaltending duties and made eleven saves on the twelve shots.
On the whole, three of four points is a successful weekend on the road. The Wolverines have another trip this weekend and a longer one, traveling East for two games at UMass-Amherst Friday and Saturday, before a Sunday game at the University of Rhode Island. They enter the trip unbeaten in six games and looking to build on their momentum.
Quick-Study Werner Delivers Secondary Scoring in Boston
Secondary scoring has been a challenge throughout the young season for the Michigan men, but last weekend in Boston appears a significant breakthrough, with five different Wolverines finding their first goals of the season.
Sophomore Evan Werner—a transfer from Colorado College—lead that outburst with two goals Friday and a third Saturday, his first three in his new uniform. It was the culmination of a productive week for Werner. “He came into my office Wednesday, and he was talking about something with shooting that he was struggling with,” Naurato recounted on Monday. “For me, it’s not that it’s in his head, but it’s all confidence, so we went out and shot pucks for 25 minutes Thursday. We talked about some technical stuff.”
“Obviously Nar has a pretty good background working with a ton of good players at the highest levels,” Werner says, before adding, deadpanned: “He has got a pretty good shot himself. I don’t know if he’s told you that.” Of the “technical stuff” discussed, Werner explains the pair spent some time, “just working on a lot of little things, like weight shifting, different accuracy things…He’s helped a lot. It’s helped put more of a goalscoring mindset for me.”
Naurato ascribes full credit to Werner for seeking out the help, putting in the work, then immediately implementing the new technique into live game action. As a head coach, he has to attend to lots of daily tasks that have nothing to do with hockey. There is none Naurato prefers, however, to time spent with his players: “It’s rewarding for a coach to work on something, and then he has success and does it…NIL, transfer portal, donors, regents, all this extra stuff—I just want to spend time with these guys. When you spend time with these guys, that’s what helps.”
The Wolverines added Werner via the portal as a sophomore, effectively committing to him for three full seasons, as opposed to a graduate transfer who arrives with just one year of eligibility left, no matter how well the season goes. For Naurato, this is by design, and also a further credit to Werner. “I like it because you get him for the long haul, and now they’re in your system,” Naurato says. “He’s very cerebral. He’s a smart kid [and] smart hockey mind. He knows what he knows but takes in information quickly, so as he’s figuring it out, because he wants to play the way we want to play.”
Under coach Kris Mayotte, the Tigers don’t play a dissimilar style from Naurato’s Wolverines, but there was still a bit of an adjustment in Werner’s move from Colorado Springs to Ann Arbor. “There’s a little bit of a difference,” he said. “I feel like at CC we were a bit more of a defensive team. Here, there’s a little bit more offense or a little bit more creativity, but I feel like the NCHC—depending on the game—is a little bit tighter defensively…The Big Ten has the reputation of being a little bit more offensive and highly skilled, I think. Obviously, both of the conferences are really good, but I do think the NCHC does have a little bit of that older, tougher little bit to it.”
Despite those adjustments, Werner says of getting comfortable at Michigan, “It’s been a pretty easy process. The guys, the coaching staff—everyone’s great. I think it took me a little bit of time to get settled in the new team, new system that we play compared to where I was before. Now that I’m settled in and got some games under our belt, I think I’m fitting nicely.” Especially after last weekend, there can be no denying that point.
Thanks to Michigan Athletics for this week’s preview image. Please also check out THN.com/Detroit for daily Detroit Red Wings coverage.