Holiday Roundup: December 22, 2021
Get ready for all the Michigan hockey this holiday season, both foreign and domestic
After a brief hiatus with our beloved Wolverines out of action, we’re back to bring you all the Michigan hockey coverage you’ll need to carry you through to the new year. Today, we’ll offer an abbreviated World Juniors preview, get you ready for the new look Great Lakes Invitational, unpack the NHL’s decision to abstain from Beijing, and let you know what to expect out of your friendly neighborhood Michigan hockey newsletter over the Holidays.
World Juniors
To be frank, esteemed reader, we are ill-equipped to offer any sort of comprehensive guide to the World Juniors. We are utterly devoid of insight when it comes to the Austrian blue line or Finland’s forward depth.
For a thorough, team-by-team preview of the tournament, I would recommend Lauren Kelly’s offering for SportsNet, which offers strengths, weaknesses, and X-factors for each of the event’s ten sides.
If you’re willing to traverse a paywall, Cam Robinson has another outstanding preview at EP Rinkside (which incidentally is an exemplary if extravagant investment if you’re so inclined).
While I can rival neither Lauren nor Cam in their breadth of junior hockey knowledge, I can catch you up to speed on Michigan’s involvement in the 2022 edition of this annual holiday classic.
The Wolverines will be represented by five players at this year’s event: three Americans and two Canadians. Matty Beniers, Mackie Samoskevich, and Luke Hughes will represent Team USA, and Kent Johnson and Owen Power, our neighbors to the north.
In one more reminder of the cruelties of the last twenty months, Thomas Bordeleau will be unable to participate after a positive COVID test, having missed last year’s edition after being identified as a close contact to what turned out to be a false positive.
For a moment, it appeared Johnson would suffer a similar fate, with illness keeping him out of the Ohio State series, but Johnson did end up with the requisite health and test status to place him into Canada’s camp.
To the surprise of no one, he wasted no time in dazzling once he got there.
On the American side, Matty Beniers will wear an “A” for the tournament, surprising only insofar as it isn’t a “C.” At last year’s tournament, thanks to the US’s ridiculous forward depth, Beniers was cast in a defensive role, scoring just three points. This year, look for the Massachusetts native to carry a greater offensive load.
Perhaps the only one of the five Wolverines competing this year unlikely to play at the top of his team’s lineup is Gulo Gulo favorite Mackie Samoskevich. I say this not as an indictment of the Connecticutian but only because he of his comparative lack of experience. With that said, if Samoskevich’s recent run of Big Ten form carries over to Alberta, he will march up the lineup in no time at all.
The NHL Network featured the Samoskevich family in one of its WJC preview segments, which you can watch below.
The Great Lakes Invitational
This year’s Great Lakes Invitational will adopt a new format for this year. Rather than a tournament, this year’s event will take on a “showcase” model with on-campus games for the first time ever. Michigan and Michigan State will each host Michigan Tech and Western Michigan but will not play one another; there will be no overall winner.
Though no champion will be crowned, this year’s field is an impressive one. Western carries the nation’s number four ranking into the tournament (one spot behind the Wolverines), and the Huskies are number eighteen.
Michigan will, of course, be without its five WJC participants, and we have no word yet on Bordeleau’s status. Even still Brendan Brisson (too old to remain eligible for the World Juniors) and Jacob Truscott (among the final cuts for Team USA) will be there to lead the way for the Wolverines in what should be a good test as they transition into the back half of the season.
Michigan will take on Tech on the twenty-ninth and Western on the thirtieth.
No NHL in Beijing
The NHL confirmed what has seemed inevitable for about a week now—that NHL players would not participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics due to COVID concerns.
From a Michigan perspective, this raises the question of who then will play in these games, and college hockey players appear a likely solution. Of course, this is hardly a fait accompli, and many of the same reservations NHL players had about playing in Beijing will apply to NCAA ones as well.
Games are currently scheduled between February third and twentieth, which would mean missing series against Michigan State and Ohio State at a minimum.
One issue that continually came up when the NHL was weighing the risks of sending its players was the possibility of positive tests once players were in China, which could lead to an indefinite quarantine in a foreign country with minimal clarity as to living quarters and who would be footing the bill for room and board.
You may recall that Michigan withheld Owen Power from last year’s World Juniors because of the lengthy pre-tournament camp required by Hockey Canada. It is not clear who would make the decision about sending NCAA players (i.e. schools, conferences, or the players themselves).
If NCAA players do end up in Beijing, the five WJC participants would presumably be locks for their respective nations, as would Brisson (free from the WJC’s age restrictions) and a healthy Bordeleau. For now, all we can do is wait and see.
Holiday Scheduling
Lastly, you can expect two more editions of Gulo Gulo in the coming days: a GLI review on New Year’s Eve (perhaps an attempt at deflecting from pre-National Semifinal anxieties) and another the following day to recap the WJC group stage.