Friday Notebook 11.10.23

Parsing a difficult weekend in Madison, "hammering the little things" with Gavin Brindley, and WoHo stays unbeaten ahead of a road trip to Lindenwood

Last weekend, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team suffered a disappointing sweep at the hands of the Wisconsin Badgers in Madison.  This weekend, the Minnesota Gophers— defending Big Ten regular season champions—travel to Yost Ice Arena for a Friday-Saturday set in a neat distillation of the insatiable gauntlet that is Big Ten hockey.

In year one under new head coach Mike Hastings, the Badgers seem to have blossomed from the conference’s lone light weekend into national title contenders in a matter of ten games.

Hastings and Wisconsin swept Minnesota the weekend prior to their triumph over the Wolverines, and the two weekends combine to issue a declaration of dangerous intention to the entire Big Ten.  The Badgers stepped into the ring with the conference’s two titans on consecutive weekends and emerged unscathed.

From a Michigan perspective, the losses in Madison can be more about Wisconsin’s growth than some debilitating issue of the Wolverines’. 

The Friday game was a back-and-forth affair in which Wisconsin overturned a 4-2 deficit to claim a 5-4 result.  On Saturday, a controversial replay review gave the Badgers a late power play, which would produce a game-winner with six seconds remaining.

Michigan didn’t play poorly on either night—probably better on Saturday than on Friday, but on both occasions well enough to win—only to see the all too familiar sight of late leads slipping away.

“Everything looks good except the record,” said Brandon Naurato, noting that the team fared well with respect to its internal objective sheet. “But I think for us, it’s good for us to have a little bit of adversity, good for us to look in the mirror.  So we’re just getting back to some fundamental stuff away from the puck.”

Most notably, discipline and penalty killing have cropped up as clear areas where the Wolverines need to improve.  The team is third in the nation in PIMs at 142 (trailing only Lindenwood and Michigan State).  That comes after finishing the ‘22-23 season second in the nation in penalty minutes (trailing only RIT) and first in ‘21-22.

That problem has been compounded by the fact that the Michigan PK is struggling.  At a 73.3% success rate, the Wolverine kill ranks 56th among the 64 Division I men’s hockey teams, dead last in the Big Ten.  The pattern of blown leads—whether resulting in losses or just tighter victories than necessary—is inextricable from the team’s struggles short-handed.  In six of ten games this year, Michigan has conceded a third-period power play goal, including both losses last weekend.

Beyond the PK however, there is legitimate reason for optimism about what Michigan has cooking, and, in truth, despite some disappointing early results, nothing of consequence is off the table with respect to the season’s ultimate ambitions.

If the NCAA Tournament began today, Michigan would be there, and with their post-December performances in both of the last two seasons, the Wolverines have offered compelling evidence that talk of second-half improvements and getting hot at the right time isn’t cheap.

It wasn’t until the second half of the season a year ago that the Wolverines developed a credible scoring threat at five-on-five beyond what was then the top line of Adam Fantilli, Dylan Duke, and Mackie Samoskevich.

This year, that process has come together much more quickly.  The top line of late has been Rutger McGroarty, Gavin Brindley, and Duke, and that trio has proven already that they can create chances and convert them against any opposition, even without Fantilli around.  All three players are in the top ten nationally in scoring.

However, it’s not as though Michigan has suffered from a lack of offense behind those three.  Instead, centers T.J. Hughes and Frank Nazar have helped ensure that the Wolverines have three capable scoring lines, and Seamus Casey is up to his familiar tricks in providing offense from the back-end.  Meanwhile, Garrett Schifsky has been the pleasant surprise of the freshman class with eleven points in ten games despite spending minimal time out on the power play.

The early season has tested Michigan’s depth.  With Ethan Edwards missing the first half due to off-season surgery, the Wolverines started the year without a player who should have been central to the team’s blue line.  Meanwhile, Johnny Druskinis’ remarkably poor decision-making in the preseason left the team without a player who could have been a quality depth option, and Tyler Duke has battled injuries that kept him out of the UMass series and one of the two games against Lindenwood.

That’s called freshman Josh Orrico into greater responsibility than he might otherwise have expected at this stage in the year, and it’s placed greater pressure on sophomore Luca Fantilli.  However, by and large, Michigan has weathered that storm, and with Edwards’ return approaching, reinforcements are on the way.

However, with Jackson Hallum—who’d shown tremendous signs of growth in what should have been the first quarter of his sophomore year—now out for the year having been injured last weekend in Madison, the depth up front will be tested in short order. In nine games this season, Hallum scored three goals and gave six assists—a pace that would have blown away last season’s totals in 39 games (six goals and 11 assists).

And one thing that won’t happen any time soon is the schedule relenting.  Now that the Big Ten grind has begun, it will hardly abate until the end of the season.  That reigning regular season champion Minnesota comes to Yost this weekend, licking some wounds of its own, offers a reminder of the week-in, week-out difficulties the conference presents its combatants.

With Logan Cooley, Matthew Knies, and Jackson LaCombe all off to the NHL, the Gophers are out to a 4-3-1 start to their new campaign.  Normally, Michigan-Minnesota (who have met in the last two Big Ten Tournament finals) is a clash of the Big Ten’s elite, and by season’s end, we might look back on this weekend as just that.  However, heading into Friday night, it looks a bit more like an anxiety bowl than a collision of the conference’s elite.

“After the weekend, someone will write an article on Michigan or Minnesota that they’re in a very, very bad spot, and I’m betting on our guys,” said Naurato Tuesday.  “They’re doing some soul-searching too.  And I’m sure they’ll come out hard, and they want more.  They’re not happy with where they’re at.  I don’t think we’re unhappy.  We just want more, and we’ve got to get back on the track.”

“Hammering the Little Things” with Gavin Brindley

With nine goals and six assists in ten games, sophomore Gavin Brindley leads the nation in goals and is tied for fourth in points, sharing that spot with teammates Seamus Casey and T.J. Hughes.  After Tuesday’s practice, I had a chance to catch up with Brindley about his hot start to his sophomore season.

Gulo Gulo Hockey: How are you feeling coming out of the Wisconsin series, between playing reasonably well but not getting the results you would have wanted? 

Gavin Brindley: “Tough weekend obviously. You come to Michigan and expect to sweep every weekend. Tough night, first night: Up a goal with four minutes or whatever it was left and give up two back-to-back shifts, it was tough. And then Saturday, honestly, I thought we played pretty well. Barzo played great, just gotta continue to stay out of the penalty box.”

GGH: As a player, how do you approach the fact that the Big Ten is good top-to-bottom in terms of what you’re going up against every weekend?

GB: “Big Ten is pretty good this year, so making sure you're on your game every night is really important. I think for the transfers and for the freshman, they've gotten a taste of what it's like to play in rivalry games, and Minnesota is coming into Yost this weekend, it's a big one for our group and a big one for Michigan.”

GGH: You’ve spent the whole year with Rutger and lately it’s been Dylan Duke on the other wing.  What has gone well for your line as you adjust to life without Adam?

GB: “I think our line has been really good. With Duker with us now, it's been great. He's really good at what he does. And with Rut, I think our chemistry has been pretty good this year so far. And the three of us gotta keep pushing this team and helping this team win every weekend. So we just gonna keep doing what we're doing, and hopefully we'll get some results here.”

GGH: Where have you seen improvement from Rutger from last year to this?

GB: “His skating has gotten tremendously better.  He can move up and down the ice.  The transition from freshman to sophomore year, you’re a little bit more comfortable, and I think both of us, and Duker as well, we’ve shown that transition pretty well so far this year.  Being able to get up and down the ice is huge for Rutger, and now that he’s able to do that all the time, he’s a huge threat out there.”

GGH: For you, what has felt different about sophomore year, as opposed to being a freshmen?

GB: “It’s pretty weird to be honest.  I’m still the youngest on the team, and I’m a sophomore.  Just getting acclimated to Ann Arbor and living in a house now with three other guys, you definitely get a little different taste than being in the dorms…Feeling really comfortable around the rink and coaches and around the guys…I feel like [as a team] we caught on a lot quicker this year [to what the coaches wanted], especially our sophomore, junior, senior class.  It came like second nature for us.”

GGH: You obviously play a big role on both special teams.  What has gone well for the PP so far, and where is there room for improvement on the PK?

GB: “The chemistry has been really good on the power play…I think we're number one or number two in the country right now...Just keep working on chemistry, getting the reps in practice and hammering on what we need to do and what we need to get better, different looks.  We want to have a million different looks to throw at a team when they're PKing against us, so being able to master that is huge. And then on the PK, I think it's just a work in progress. Like I said, hammering the little things: Blocking shots, stick detail, clearing pucks 200 feet. So it's basic things, but if you don't do those things, the puck ends up in the back of your net, so you got to hammer those things and make sure that you kill penalties in big moments.”

GGH: Do you think playing both special teams helps you out as far as something you pick up on from the power play that might translate to the PK or vice versa?

GB: “Any time you’re out there PK or power play, that’s a job.  You’re not getting thrown out there as a little booster; you’re going out there to do a job.  All those little things, they matter, and you gotta make sure you do all those things.  If not, you’re gonna be taken off those units.”

GGH: Before we wrap up, I gotta ask about Adam and the Blue Jackets.  Do you have much of chance to watch them, and are you in touch with him much these days?

“We watch quite a bit.  Watched the game last night against Florida.  We watch a ton of hockey, so watching Adam and the Blue Jackets is pretty cool…We talk almost every day, and he’s coming to drop the puck on Friday, so it’ll be cool to see him.  And a lot of family of his coming into town to watch his game against Detroit too, so it’ll be good to see him.”

WoHo Extends Unbeaten Start Against Niagara, Travels to Lindenwood This Weekend

With six games now under their belt, the University of Michigan women’s hockey team remains unbeaten and untied to start the year. The most recent victory came on October 29th in the form of a 3-0 shutout win over Niagara.

Lucy Hanson continued her torrid start to her Michigan career, first getting the Wolverines on the board late in the opening period (with assists from Megan Mathews and Ava Heung), then extending that lead with an unassisted goal in the second.  Hanson is up to five goals and two assists in six games in maize and blue.

Kelsey Swanson provided an extra insurance tally with two minutes and change to play in the second, with an assist from Julia Lindahl.  In goal, Sandrine Ponnath was perfect, stopping all 32 shots she faced for the shutout victory.

Jenna Trubiano’s team will be back in action this weekend, traveling to metro St. Louis (the longest road trip of the regular season) for a two-game set with Lindenwood on Friday and Saturday.

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