Friday (the 13th) Notebook 10.13.23

Looking ahead to UMass, WoHo stays unbeaten, and Rutger McGroarty's lightning start

After a season-opening split at Yost Ice Arena against Providence, the University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team sits ranked sixth in the latest USCHO poll.

A 4-2 Saturday defeat before a 5-4 Sunday bounce-back victory might not have made for the smoothest start to the season, but head coach Brandon Naurato still saw plenty of positives in his team’s performance against the Friars.

“I thought we did a lot of good things,” Naurato said after Tuesday’s practice.  “[On our objective sheet,] there’s a lot of green in areas that we’re tracking, and green means that we beat them in that specific category.  Green means that we beat them in that specific category.  Even Saturday night, the first game, we won every category except special teams, and Sunday, we won every category and tied two, and I think it was special teams.”

Looking Ahead to UMass

This weekend, Michigan will hit the road for the first time on the young season, traveling east to the William D. Mullins Center in Amherst, Massachusetts to take on the UMass Minutemen.  Greg Carvel’s team is unranked, but not so far removed from winning the 2021 national title.  The Wolverines last saw UMass in January ‘22, with the soon-to-be Olympic trio of Brendan Brisson, Matty Beniers, and Kent Johnson helping to steer Michigan to a sweep of the then-reigning national champions.

Last Saturday, the Minutemen knocked off American International at home 5-3.  AIC outshot UMass by a considerable margin (25-39), but the Minutemen went 1 for 2 on the power play, while holding the Yellow Jackets scoreless in five attempts.

On Sunday, UMass traveled to Hanover, New Hampshire to take on Dartmouth at Thompson Arena in what was officially an exhibition contest.  The Minutemen took a 5-1 decision over the Big Green.

“Same as Providence, same as Quinnipiac, same as Notre Dame,” said Naurato when asked what he expects from Carvel’s team.  “[They’re] obviously very well coached; they won a national championship three years ago, they’re probably not happy about their season last year, so they’ve got something to prove, similar to Providence.”

“They play 1-3-1 in the neutral zone, and their whole line is suffocating offense,” the head coach continued.  “They’re gonna put five guys in every quadrant of the ice, and we’ll have to do more of the same with how we break that down offensively.”

Naurato added that, as of Tuesday, he had not made a final decision on the plan in net for the weekend.

As Seamus Casey noted after Tuesday’s practice, the series will offer a chance to rekindle the flames in college hockey’s interminable rivalry between East and West. Growing up in Florida, a college hockey desert, Casey wasn’t raised in that rivalry, but he’s become well acquainted with it through his experience with USA Hockey.

“Growing up, I was never part of those debates, but, for example [at the World Junior] Summer Showcase, there’s always chirping going on between Hockey East and Big Ten guys,” Casey says.  “The locker room can get divided, all in good fun.  We’re always chirping the Hockey East guys, and they’re chirping us.  No one cares about the Beanpot, and they think it’s the best thing ever, just funny stuff.”

At last year’s World Juniors, Casey—along with Rutger McGroarty, Gavin Brindley, Dylan Duke, and Luke Hughes—played with UMass’ Ryan Ufko and Kenny Connors, earning a bronze medal together in Canada’s Maritimes.

It will be another early test for Naurato’s Wolverines against an eastern foe whose style makes them a natural foil to Michigan’s possession-heavy brand of hockey.  ESPN+ will carry both games (7 PM, Friday and Saturday).

Michigan WoHo Rolls Through the Soo, Stays Unbeaten

Last weekend, the Michigan women’s hockey team stretched its streak of perfection to four games to open the 2023-24 season.  Playing at the Norris Center in Sault Ste. Marie, the Wolverines rolled through Lake Superior State on consecutive days by 4-1 and 4-2 scores.

Eight different Wolverines found the back of the net to account for the team’s eight goals, and freshman goaltender Emma Johns debuted and earned the win in Sunday’s game.

On Saturday, Megan Matthews, Emily Maliszewski, Ally Fleszar, and Julia Lindahl provided the offense as Sandrine Ponnath turned away 36 of the 37 Laker shots that came her way.  Michigan was outshot 18-4 in the first, but Matthews nabbed the period’s only goal.  Early in the second, Sophie Jaremko answered for Lake State, but the Wolverines seized control from there, with Malisszewski, Fleszar, Lindahl, and Ponnath guiding the team to victory.

The following afternoon, Lucy Hanson netted the game’s first goal early in the second period after a scoreless first.  Once again, the Lakers answered (this time through Haley Howe), but Jessica Simmer countered before the period was up to send Michigan to the locker room for the second intermission with a 2-1 lead.

Lake State pulled even at the 5:40 mark of the third, but Katie German answered within two minutes, and Kelsey Swanson provided an insurance tally.  In net, Johns stood tall in her ACHA debut, stopping 37 of the 39 shots that came her way.

Jenna Trubiano’s team returns to action tonight, playing their first game at Yost for the season, against Grand Valley State.  On Sunday afternoon, the Wolverines will be back in action at Yost, hosting Niagara University.

Rutger McGroarty’s Fast Start to the New Year

With a goal and four assists in the season’s opening weekend, Rutger McGroarty took home Big Ten First Star of the Week honors for his performance against Providence.  Of course, according to McGroarty himself, weekend one heroics are nothing to write home about.

“I did it for one weekend, but at the end of the day, that means nothing,” the Nebraskan winger said after Tuesday’s practice.  “Just continuing to grow as a player and grow as a team, that’s what I’m looking forward to.”

His coach was more willing to heap praise on the sophomore’s performance.  “He spent a lot of time—him and Dylan Duke—working on their skating over the summer,” said Naurato, after Sunday’s game against the Friars.  “All these guys came back in better shape, better versions of themselves.  Rut’s just faster, he’s hungry, and he may not be wearing a letter, but he’s a leader in the room.”

Against Providence, McGroarty was perhaps Michigan’s most visible forward—involved in all phases of his team’s game, physical and fleet-footed as he flew around the rink, showing up all over the score sheet.  If the season’s first weekend is any indicator, there will be no sophomore slump for Rutger McGroarty.

“I feel like I’m deadly below the dots, down low in the offensive zone, and just taking the right routes, getting to the net, knowing when to get to the net,” McGroarty offered, when asked to describe his biggest asset as a player before deflecting to his teammates.  “And then obviously it helps when you play with guys like Gavin Brindley, who can find you in those spots, or Seamus Casey, just a bunch of guys who can find you in those spots.”

In the season’s early going, McGroarty and Brindley have reprised their potent partnership from the second half of last year, with freshman Garrett Schifsky replacing Adam Fantilli down the middle.  Of Schifsky, McGroarty said, “I thought [against Providence] he was awesome.  He brings an aspect—he’s hard, physical, he can make plays.  He didn’t feel like he had to be Adam at all.  He was just playing his game and bringing what he could to our line and to the team.”  Naurato concurred, saying Sunday of Schifsky “not many people know yet, but he’s good.”

For McGroarty, a second season in Ann Arbor has brought about an added sense of comfort that is manifesting on the ice.  “Last year, you know what you’re capable of, but it’s actually going out there and doing it and having the right habits off the ice, eating the right foods, getting to bed at the right time, just taking care of myself away from the rink and developing a routine,” he explains.

Whether away from the rink or on the ice, McGroarty feels he has a better understanding of how to succeed than he did at this time a year ago.

“I talked to Nar at the end of last year, and I was like ‘Man, I was not sure what you were saying [at the start of the season,]’ because he’s such an unbelievable hockey mind and sees a lot of stuff that other people don’t see,” he continues.  “And so just having a year under my belt, having him coach me, running those routes and just getting comfortable with the system, I feel more comfortable now.”

As a freshman, McGroarty appreciated the way his coach welcomed questions and uncertainty, making it easier to navigate the then unfamiliar waters of college hockey.

“The main thing that Nar did is that he is really comfortable with guys coming in and talking to him, asking to watch video,” McGroarty says.  “It’s almost weird if you don’t go in and watch video with him.  He loves it.  He loves every second of it, and he loves teaching us.”

From there, came the summer of hard work Naurato alluded to.  “I would say a big part of it is cardio, and, like I was saying, just taking care of my body and making sure I feel 100%,” the sophomore said.  “Because once I’m 100%, my skating isn’t really an issue.  It’s when I get tired that my stride starts to break down, and it’s not as good as it should be.  So working on that cardio, working on just the longevity of my body and then also just mechanically I continued to work with Barb Underhill this summer and just getting stronger, faster in the weight room.”

After the season, McGroarty “took like a month off [after the season], didn’t even look at the ice rink and just be a normal kid, especially because we’re still in school at the end of the last season…Being a Division I athlete, you miss out on the normal kid life, so just being a normal kid for a month was really cool.  It’s good for the body, good for the brain, just to calm down a little bit.”

However, by the end of that lay-off, the hard-working winger was desperate to get back to hockey.  “I was kinda losing my mind a little bit towards the end,” he says with a smile.  I gotta be in the gym, gotta be on the ice, I gotta be doing something or I don’t know—I start to stress out.”

For most of the summer, he would skate twice or three times a week, eventually ramping up to four as the season drew closer.  “My schedule was skate at like 7:30/8 and then workout at 10, 10:30, go home, get a good meal in me, hit the golf course.”  “Not bad at all,” he says of the routine, grinning again.

When asked for the NHL player he models his game after, McGroarty cites the Tkachuk brothers, Matthew and Brady—“Their competitive edge, they can score, they can make plays, they’re not the best skaters, but they somehow find a way to do it.”  It’s a lofty comparison, especially given Matthew’s torrid form in carrying the Florida Panthers to the Stanley Cup Final last spring.

But, in considering the totality of McGroarty’s game, the parallels are clear.  In both cases, skating is the one area of relative weakness in profiles that are otherwise astonishingly complete.  Like Matthew Tkachuk, McGroarty is defensively reliable, useful in build-up play, able to play in multiple spots effectively on the power play, physical enough to overwhelm opponents, and capable of lighting up the scoreboard.  And, as Naurato alluded to, McGroarty is a player whose leadership resonates with his teammates.

It’s a formidable package for the rest of the Big Ten and nation to reckon with.

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