Friday Notebook B1G Playoff Preview Edition 3.7.25
Looking ahead to Michigan's first round series at Penn State and checking in on Kent Johnson, Adam Fantilli, and a magical season in Columbus
Over the course of the 2024-25 regular season, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team lost two players and added one. The Wolverines beat the teams presently rated second, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, fourteenth, and sixteenth by the Pairwise, but they also lost the Duel in the D to nemesis Michigan State for the second year in a row, and they endured a run of being shut out three games in a row.
Now, Michigan begins its postseason journey, entering the time of year at which the program’s distinguished itself of late, though not quite to the tune of being the last team standing. In that regard, for the Wolverines, playoff hockey means meeting a programmatic expectation. In the words of freshman defenseman Dakoda Rhéaume-Mullen, “The fact that getting to the Frozen Four every year is Michigan’s standard…I think that’s more of what we’re using for motivation.”
In the first round of the Big Ten playoffs (best-of-three, unlike the tournament’s semis and final), the Wolverines host Penn State. Michigan rates number eleven in the Pairwise; the Nittany Lions sit at fourteen, as it stands the last team on the right side of the NCAA Tournament cut line. If PSU sweeps this weekend, it would flip the two teams’ Pairwise positions, and the Wolverines would be vulnerable to missing out on the Tournament if conference tournament upsets moved that line even a single spot.
“It’s looking like whoever wins this weekend is gonna get in the tournament,” Rhéaume-Mullen pointed out. “They beat us, they’re probably gonna jump us, and if we beat them, I think we’re in a good spot. I mean, it’s more in our hands, instead of somebody else’s, which is what we want it to be, so I think we’re happy with where we’re at.” Happy to have their NCAA fortunes in their hands, yes, but coach Brandon Naurato described his team as “not comfortable” with their present standing, instead recognizing that “we have work to do.”
“Even if we were automatically in right now, I don’t think it changes anything,” Naurato continued during his media availability Tuesday afternoon at Yost Ice Arena. “It’s not just about getting to the next game and then hoping you get to the next one. You have to feel good about your game as an individual, [and] you have to feel good about the game as a team, because at some point the tide’s gonna turn on you with the momentum shifts, and you have to believe that you can turn it back.”
After a split in Columbus to wrap the regular season last weekend (four of six points, with a 2–1 overtime loss Thursday, then a 4–3 regulation win Friday), Naurato believes his team is rounding into just such a belief about itself. “This is the best I’ve felt about our group,” he proclaimed. “This week in practice and last week and taking steps…There were some hard conversations Friday morning from Thursday, and it’s just like, ‘Are you gonna do it and we’re gonna have success, or are you just gonna be on your own page?’”
Okay, so what is it? What will it look like to find postseason success?
In the abstract, it’s our familiar theme from the start of the second half: the idea that hockey’s fundamentals (races and battles, puck management, shift management) are more important than the presence of high-end skill in a lineup or tactics. As Naurato put it Tuesday, “Whether you’ve got twenty first rounders or the group that we have, you’ve gotta get the most out of everybody. Everyone’s gotta be bought in…It’s nothing to do with talent at this time of year. It’s understanding how to play winning hockey and how to play for the team and do it the right way and the hard way.”
More specifically, in consideration of the opponent, this weekend will require the Wolverines to navigate pandemonium, the specialty of Guy Gadowsky’s Penn State. The Nittany Lions thrive on run and gun hockey. They want to play in transition, they are hyper-aggressive in gambling to force those opportunities, and they have no conception of a bad shot, preferring to fire at any opportunity.
As Naurato describes them, “They just create chaos everywhere. It’s absolute chaos. And if you feed into that, it can be trouble…If you lose your cool or lose your emotions against this team, they’ll put three goals up in two minutes.”
PSU has been one of the best teams in the nation since the calendar turned to 2025, dropping just three games in regulation over that span (including one at Yost on the first day of February). The Nittany Lions most important player wears the extra equipment, junior UConn transfer Arsenii Sergeev.
When Sergeev plays, Penn State is 15–7–0. When he doesn’t, the Nittany Lions are 3–5–0. For the season, he has a 2.57 goals against average and .918 save percentage (both career bests), but in the second half especially, he has been lights out. In eighteen starts in 2025, Sergeev has allowed two goals or fewer a dozen times.
Sophomore Aiden Fink is the clear top gunner within the Nittany Lions attack: twenty-three goals and forty-seven points in thirty-four games. In support of Fink, former U-M commit Charlie Cerrato has been among the best freshmen in the conference with thirty-one points in thirty-two games played. In slowing down Fink, Cerrato, and company, Michigan has two priorities: owning the middle of the ice and winning one-on-one match-ups.
“Taking advantage of their aggressiveness would be us managing the puck first and foremost, but then if we do turn it over, [the priority is] your tracks, your reloads, and then protecting middle ice, whether it’s in the neutral zone or the D zone,” per Naurato.
Fifth-year captain Jacob Truscott has plenty of experience against the Nittany Lions, and he spoke to the importance of individual match-ups to beating them. When asked about thwarting PSU’s chaos, Truscott replied, “A lot of its body positioning, just being in good spots. We’ve been emphasizing just beat your guy. Beat your guy up the ice, beat your guy back to the net, things like that…If you eliminate your guy, it’s gonna be hard for them to score.”
It’s hardly an earth-shattering bit of analysis to suggest that game one of a best-of-three series is pivotal, but that doesn’t make it any less true. “You lose Friday, you gotta win two in a row, so I think Friday’s game’s gonna be huge,” said Rhéaume-Mullen. “I think just looking at it as a normal game that we’ve been playing these last few weekends, because you don’t want to be out there gripping your sticks. We want to play Michigan hockey, go out and make plays, and that’s when we’re at our best. So I don’t think we’re gonna change much, we’re just gonna keep it going.”
Like every Friday night at Yost, it will be rowdy, and the visitors will want to come out flying, eager to land an early punch. Between the opponent’s style and the conference and national playoff stakes, this Friday’s first five minutes will be even more frenetic than usual. If the Wolverines are to prolong their season and meet their standards, they will have to prove their equanimity in a hurry.
A Brief Injury Update
Per Naurato, Michigan is not expecting to have freshman goaltender Cameron Korpi this weekend. As of Tuesday, Korpi had not practiced since being injured on Feb. 14 against Minnesota. That means fifth year Logan Stein will be handling the goaltending duties against Penn State.
Young Columbus Wolverines Finding NHL Traction in Different Directions
We don’t devote a lot of time in this newsletter to Michigan alumni, but last weekend in Columbus provided cause for an exception. After the Wolverines completed their work for the weekend Friday evening, the Blue Jackets hosted the Detroit Red Wings at Ohio Stadium Saturday night in a game (and ESPN broadcast) that became a defacto advertisement for U-M hockey, despite the hostile environment, thanks to the abundant presence of the program’s alums on both sides of the match-up.
At the center of the action were the two youngest of those former Wolverines: Jackets forwards Adam Fantilli and Kent Johnson, both in the midst of career-best seasons for a Columbus team that has exceeded every expectation. Johnson has a career best twenty goals and forty-three points in forty-eight games played, while Fantilli (in his second NHL season) has already set career highs with eighteen goals and twenty assists for thirty-eight points in sixty-two games. What stands out their mutual ascendance is the diverging styles in which they’ve taken strides, relative to the players they were as Wolverines.
At Michigan, Johnson’s ridiculous vision and hands leapt off the ice on a nightly basis, but there were also qualities to his game that were decidedly un-NHL, for lack of a better term. Some of Johnson’s routes and play away from the puck, which was effective at springing him into unexpected areas and putting opponents into difficulty at the NCAA level in large part because of his hockey sense, scanned as anathema to an NHL coach.
In his first two full seasons with the Jackets, Johnson battled injury and struggled to live up to his billing as the fifth overall pick in the 2021 Draft. His light frame and propensity for lurking in high ice in the offensive zone saw him struggle to make the same offensive impact he did at Michigan. This season, his opportunity has grown (averaging almost four extra minutes a game, relative to the ‘23-24 season), and he’s taken full advantage, playing to just shy of a point-a-game pace.
As Fantilli put it last Thursday following Columbus’ morning skate at Little Caesars Arena, Johnson’s “been given a lot of opportunity this year too. Personally, I’ve always seen the skill that he has and what he can do in games, and he’s been given opportunities and gaining confidence through that. He’s been taking advantage of the opportunity.”
To Naurato (a U-M assistant during Johnson’s sophomore season in Ann Arbor), Johnson’s work off the ice has helped make those tools Fantilli alluded to more impactful. “I know he spent a lot of time in the gym,” Naurato said last week. “I think his body changed a lot. I think he’s learning the league, the style of play inside the league, over the three years. I think he’s doing what people expect him to do, like without the puck—inside plays, harder hockey. And then Kent’s vision and IQ and skillset is unbelievable as we know, but I think it just takes time to grow his body into a man’s body and maturity, and I think that’s coming.”
In picking up a power play assist during the Stadium Series game against the Red Wings, Johnson showed the way his game has evolved since his days as a Wolverine. After the Jackets won a draw, Johnson (who lined up at right defense) immediately rolled low toward the goal line as Zach Werenski (another U-M alum, of course) and Kirill Marchenko exchanged passes at the point. Johnson received a pass from Werenski with his skates just below the circle to the left of Detroit goalie Cam Talbot.
Without so much as dusting the puck off, Johnson sent a pass straight to the goal mouth for Dmitri Voronkov, who re-directed it home past Talbot. The simplicity of the play (direct, without any need for the alacrity as a stickhandler he showed throughout his time at U-M, creating a quality opportunity in the inner slot) showed Johnson’s departure from certain collegiate habits and the ways he’s blossomed as a creator in the best league in the world.
Fantilli, too, has benefitted from a growing role, but unlike Johnson, the 2023 third overall pick used those extra minutes to look even more like the version of himself that dominated college hockey to the tune of thirty goals, sixty-five points, and the Hobey Baker.
At Michigan, Fantilli was a force of nature. His combination of physical strength, quick and powerful skating, and a lethal shot made him nothing less than unstoppable in his NCAA days. In graduating to the NHL after his freshman season, he naturally couldn’t make the same immediate impact in Columbus.
However, in Saturday’s Stadium Series, that same style shone through. Fantilli’s line with Vronkov and Marchenko dominated the game in transition, forcing Detroit onto its heels and creating numerous chances (including a pair of Fantilli shots off the post). He looked every bit the overwhelming power forward he was at U-M. At the end of the night, the hockey gods smiled on Fantilli for the performance with an empty-net goal to clinch the Jackets’ 5–3 win, a just reward for a dominant night.
“Obviously [center Sean] Monahan got hurt, so he got a chance to play on that top line, and he’s just taken off,” Naurato observed Tuesday. “It’s just such a hard league…It just takes time…He could have another fifteen years in the league—what’s he gonna be?”
Fantilli himself reflected that experience at the NHL level has proved more valuable than he perhaps anticipated when jumping into the league at just nineteen years old. “Just playing in the league, you learn a lot from being around guys and playing games, and, as much as a lot of people don’t want to think it coming into the league, experience helps a lot, and it means a lot,” he said. “So just playing games, being around guys, and being around great centermen that we’ve had on this team, especially watching them in the areas that I want to be in eventually. I’ve been given a lot of opportunity lately, and it’s been great.” He cited Monahan and Boone Jenner as two players from whom he’s absorbed a lot.
Still just 20, Fantilli wants for nothing in his offensive toolkit, but his most important asset is underneath the hood. As Naurato put it, “His motor is off the charts. He doesn’t stop; he doesn’t get tired. He’s always hunted and been hard and competitive, but I think maybe too much to where he was running a little bit early, and it’s such a controlled pro league. He’s learning to pick his spots…He’s always had a good brain, but his brain has taken major steps.”
For Fantilli, part of the process of adapting to the NHL has been learning to make an impact on nights when not firing to his utmost offensive capacity. Unlike at U-M, he can’t put up points every night, so there have to be alternate paths to making a contribution. “You can’t just go out there and have a hat trick every night,” he said. “You gotta affect the game in other ways, whether it’s physicality, faceoffs, passing, scoring. You just gotta affect the game somehow. You can’t just go out there and be a non-factor all night. You gotta be doing something. If it’s not scoring, you gotta find your way.”
And so, in their own ways, Johnson and Fantilli—one deviating from his Wolverine form, the other returning to it—have reinforced U-M’s infiltration of Columbus, via the export of highly effective hockey players.
Thanks to Michigan Athletics for this week’s preview image. Please also check out THN.com/Detroit for daily Detroit Red Wings coverage.