“He wanted more out of himself, and he’s looking in the mirror, and he just took steps”: Mackie Samoskevich’s Journey from a Connecticut Backyard to Michigan’s Top Line
From playing day after day with his sisters on a backyard rink built by their father in Connecticut to Fortnite, egg sandwiches, and starring on Michigan’s top line, this is Mackie Samoskevich.
For Mackie Samoskevich, playing hockey was not so much a choice as a birthright. The Sandy Hook, Connecticut native doesn’t remember exactly when his parents set into motion the family’s backyard rink, but he suspects it predates him.
“I don’t think I was born yet. They put down pavement; it was a whole job. I remember seeing a picture of all the machines out in the backyard,” Samoskevich says with a smile.
The backyard setup precluded the Samoskevichs from installing the pool they’d also fancied, but it invited a childhood with sticks and pucks ready to hand at all times for their three children. “[My parents, Fred and Patty] definitely wanted the pool for sure, but I think [the rink] helped us out in the long run,” assesses the sophomore with his customary self-effacement.
Mackie, his elder sister Melissa, and twin sister Maddy (whose attempts at pronouncing her brother’s given name Matthew led to the nickname Mackie taking hold) laid the groundwork for their hockey careers on that backyard rink, whether on its wintertime ice or in its alternate summer concrete incarnation.
As Samoskevich explains it, “My dad hadn’t played to a high level, but he grew up loving the game. I think his dad had gotten him into it at a pretty young age, so he was always a fan of hockey and always wanted his kids to play hockey. It definitely worked out.”
In keeping with his soft-spoken disposition, the winger again undersold his siblings’ and his success. Melissa now works as the director of player development and operations at her alma mater Quinnipiac, while also continuing her playing career in her third season for the Premier Hockey Federation’s Connecticut Whale. Maddy, the lone blue liner amongst the three siblings, is a junior for the Bobcats with six assists already in just eleven games. With a 10-1 record, Quinnipiac sits at fifth in the latest USCHO poll.
For the siblings, a shared bond of playing hockey helped brighten the day-to-day grind of sharpening their skills. “We’d always be in the backyard, shooting together and playing games,” Mackie says. “Just having that was super special. It’s really nice to have days where I’m feeling tired and they get me out of the house [to play together] or vice versa.”
Ten games into his sophomore season at Michigan, Mackie has stepped outside of the shadow of last year’s Olympian teammates like Brendan Brisson, Kent Johnson, or Matty Beniers and into the running for the Hobey Baker. He has eight goals and seven assists for a neat point-and-a-half per game.
A year ago, Samoskevich was no afterthought for the Wolverines, even as a freshman on one of the most talented rosters in the history of NCAA hockey. He scored twenty-nine points in forty games and received the Big Ten’s All-Freshman honors. Still, he did so without the burden or opportunity, depending on one’s perspective, of putting in the longest shift in the team’s offensive engine room. Despite his impressive point total, Samoskevich played only third-line minutes with some power play time mixed in as a freshman, before flourishing with a greater role as a sophomore.
According to his head coach Brandon Naurato (an assistant a year ago for his first season in Ann Arbor), it makes more sense to frame Samoskevich’s sophomore ascendance as the byproduct of his limited freshman role rather than a natural development once roster turnover made more room for him.
“He wasn’t great right away,” Naurato says. “Did he deserve more time? Sure, he deserved more time, but [playing on the third line] might have been the best thing for him because he’s like ‘I don’t like playing twelve minutes, I think I should be playing seventeen, I’m going to do something.’ He’s always been an elite player, and he’s taken another step. He went through some pain that made him stronger. Not even pain, but he wanted more out of himself, and he’s looking in the mirror, and he just took steps.”
One of Samoskevich’s new responsibilities is taking shifts on the penalty kill, a decision Naurato explains was at its most basic an effort to “take care of the boys.” He added “your best players should play in all situations. It’s better development for him long term. He may not start in the NHL and play in the same spot [on the flank] that he can on the power play, but what if he can come in and he can kill? What if he learns how to check?”
Naurato points to former Wolverine Carl Hagelin as an example of an offensive star in college who ended up with two Stanley Cups and $30 million in the bank by becoming one of the NHL’s top penalty killers and checkers.
Samoskevich adds that earning minutes on the PK has been a tool to stay engaged in any game state: “It definitely helps because when you’re not killing, you’re sitting on the bench for two minutes, three minutes, and maybe extends a little bit more. It’s nice to just get out there.”
For Samoskevich, that the beginning of his freshman season provided a challenge came as no surprise: “I think that your first year anywhere when you go up a level, it’s gonna be harder, and it’s gonna be an adjustment period.”
From his head coach’s point of view, Samoskevich’s progress is well deserved: “He’s a really hard worker and a very cerebral player, and I’m happy for him. He’s way harder, way harder. [In the early going of his freshman season] it was all skill. When he first came here he wasn’t soft. He just didn’t know how hard it is to have success.”
Both coach and player also point out the importance of observing the habits of future NHLers in the form of then-sophomores Owen Power, Johnson, and Beniers. Naurato points out that it was impossible to ignore the work that trio put in as sophomores despite their shared status as top-five NHL picks.
“I’m not saying I [knew how hard it was to become a pro] at that age,” Naurato says. “And I wasn’t even as close to as good as [my players today], but just being around those guys all the time you see that any successful person in life—they’re not successful because of their job title. They’re successful because of the path and failure.”
Meanwhile, Samoskevich admired the way the teammates one year his elder embraced leadership, even though it was only their second year on campus: “It was nice to have the guys in the sophomore class that we had and just see how they handled that role. Just how they [went] around their everyday, their little habits. Owen was such a creature of the small little things that build up everyday.”
Adjusting to new environments is nothing new for Samoskevich. Though Connecticutian by birth, Michigan’s burgeoning star forward has been on a roundabout tour of the Midwest pursuing his hockey career since his early teens. First, it was Shattuck-St. Mary’s, the famed Minnesota prep school whose alums include Nathan MacKinnon, Jocelyn and Monique Lamoureux, and Brisson. Then it was Chicago and the USHL, where Samoskevich won a Clark Cup for the Steel, before moving on to Ann Arbor.
When asked about his travels through a region that is not his home, Samoskevich smiles. “I’ve loved it. Minnesota was definitely different. Definitely colder. I wasn’t used to that when I was fourteen, but I think it was a good thing to get out at a young age, just learn how to take care of myself away from my parents.”
Though the move to Shattuck carried with it a step toward independence, it did not take him beyond family bonds. “The reason why I went out there is because my sister [Melissa] went out there. It was a good program, and she loved all four years, so I thought I’d go out there with my sister [Maddy].”
Six years after leaving Fairfield County for Faribault, Minnesota, Mackie Samoskevich is a vital cog in college hockey’s most formidable line. Alongside Adam Fantilli and Dylan Duke, the quiet confidence with which Samoskevich carries himself off the ice manifests as a creative flair.
When you watch Samoskevich play (regardless of teammates), you first notice his release and his skating. If the puck is on his tape with an unfettered look at the net, there’s a good chance you won’t see it again until the goaltender is fishing it out from behind him.
If has open ice to skate into, you aren’t catching him.
Yet even as his shot and top speed command attention, there is something more mesmeric about the way he can jaunt through the neutral zone without having to slam the accelerator to the floorboards.
There is almost a playful quality to the way he sidles past one defender and traipses around another, before laying the puck on for his teammates.
There was something defiant in the backhand he roofed in an October home victory over Western Michigan. Having received an expert keep-in from Luke Hughes, Samoskevich—using nothing more than his patience—reduced Bronco defenseman Jacob Bauer to sprawling across the ice in desperation. From there, Samoskevich had no real options other than a backhand but still seemed to deceive WMU goaltender Cameron Rowe by preceding his instantaneous release with still more patience.
During a period of the season in which Naurato has made experimenting with line combinations an expressed focus, Michigan’s top line of Fantilli between Samoskevich and Duke remains untouched. It is not hard to understand why. Through ten games, the trio accounts for twenty-one of the Wolverines’ forty-six goals (45.6%).
Though they had never operated as a triumvirate before, neither Duke nor Fantilli was a new linemate for Samoskevich.
As freshmen, he and Duke settled into a role abreast of Johnny Beecher on the Wolverines’ third line. Duke’s ruggedness along the boards, along with his craftiness at the netfront, paired neatly with Samoskevich’s speed and skill.
“There’s definitely a lot of chemistry that we carried over from last year,” Duke explains. “We had a really good understanding of how we play and how our different skill sets can work together and create a lot of sustained o-zone time, and you know, score a lot of goals.”
Meanwhile, Fantilli and Samoskevich played alongside one another with the Chicago Steel. As Duke said of him, Samoskevich emphasizes a shared understanding of approach as central to the strong chemistry he’s demonstrated with Fantilli. “We got coached together [in Chicago], so we think the game alike.” Ever one to downplay his own success, he adds “I think it’s coming along, and I think it’s just gonna keep getting better and better.” 2.1 goals per game between them, and Samoskevich believes the line remains a work in progress.
That Samoskevich has a near perfect split of his fifteen points (eight goals, seven assists) bespeaks an intentional commitment to being a dual threat player. Though he grew up a Ranger fan, Samoskevich’s favorite NHLer is the Islanders Mathew Barzal. The young winger attributes some of his knack for graceful rushes up the ice to studying Barzal’s game.
Samoskevich says that he loved Barzal’s playmaking, “how he creates space for his teammates. I think that was the biggest thing that made me fall in love with him, and there’s so many videos of him just skating around the zone and then all of a sudden the play just appears from him.”
While the forward his teammates affectionately refer to as “Samo” sharpened his playmaking craft by studying the Islanders star, he credits his fearsome shot to the hours logged out on the backyard rink. “I think I developed [my shot] by myself. Like I said, in the backyard, it was something I did day in and day out. It’s better to be more a passer AND a shooter, dual threat. It’s harder to defend and makes me more dangerous as a player.” It is the closest Samoskevich ever comes to boastfulness, and, given his production, it is more than deserved.
When he’s not on the ice, Samoskevich garners attention from his teammates for his commitment to a housebound lifestyle. In a mid-October edition of @umichhockey’s weekly Monday Question, several teammates expressed that they would love to experience the winger’s “insane routine” featuring naps, movies, and DoorDash.
Duke, who lives with Samoskevich in addition to sharing top-line duties with him, pauses when asked for something he’s learned about his fellow sophomore. The Ohioan winger jokes that he doesn’t want to “throw [Mackie] under the bus” before revealing that his room- and line-mate is an expert at making egg sandwiches. According to Duke, Samoskevich will use whatever bread is on hand at their house, “but he loves his ketchup with his eggs.”
When the pair aren’t enjoying Samoskevich-prepared egg sandwiches, they are liable to be found on the virtual battlefields of Fortnite. As Duke tells it, the duo, along with Luke Hughes and Ethan Edwards, have “a little squad going.”
Based on Duke’s scouting report, “Edwards is definitely the best. Mackie is mediocre, in the middle. Luke’s just under Mackie, and then I’m the worst by far.” Evidently, Duke’s workmanlike streak on the ice extends to video games—“I’m more there just to carry shields.”
As Sara Civian’s semiweekly style rankings for Bleacher Report attest, interest in pregame fashion has—like an attacking penalty kill or the fluid interchange of a center and his wingers—come into vogue in NHL circles in recent years. Perhaps this image from prior to his team’s October 16th contest with BU is the best distillation of Samoskevich.
The photo depicts the forward walking into Yost: a Michigan toque perched atop his head with a crisp blue-checked suit paired with Adidas slides. The hint of a bandage peeking out from beneath the strap of his right sandal suggests that the footwear may be the byproduct of injury.
Even if that were the case, it’s hard not to read more into his pregame stylings. The sharp tailoring of his suit suggests focus, self-seriousness, and performance, yet the sandals show that even at his imperious best, Samoskevich projects a certain ease. If nothing else, the pregame flip-flops appear appropriate for a player selected in the first round of the 2021 NHL Draft by the Panthers and thus for whom a professional future in South Florida awaits.
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