"I Know I'm a Goalscorer, and When I Get Hot, I'm on Fire"
On William Whitelaw's confidence, scoring, and unique journey to Michigan; also featured: a winning November formula on the men's side & stars and depth shine as U-M WoHo closes out first half
Like any goalscorer worth their salt, University of Michigan sophomore winger William Whitelaw doesn’t want for confidence.
“My whole life I’ve scored a lot of goals, throughout the last ten years of me playing hockey, and it’s something that doesn’t really go away,” he says after the Wolverines’ Tuesday practice, still wearing his skates and pads from the afternoon’s session.
He scored his first goal at Michigan in the season opener, then suffered through eight games scoreless. Now, he has three goals in his last four games. “I definitely should have scored a lot more to start the year, just a little snakebitten in that category,” he says. “[I’m] just sticking with it and doing the dailies every day. I know I’m a goalscorer, and when I get hot, I’m on fire. So I think that’s one thing that I need to continue: staying in that mindset.”
For Whitelaw, the dailies are simple: “I shoot a lot of pucks, having good habits in shooting, not going through the motions of shooting.” The dailies embody the work rate Whitelaw—a 2023 third round draft choice of the Columbus Blue Jackets—demands of himself, but getting lost in the shooting may be more meditative than practical, and finding the back of the net took more than raw effort.
First, he had to adapt to a polar opposite brand of hockey to the one he played as a freshman under coach Mike Hastings at the University of Wisconsin. Then, Whitelaw had to embrace that not every goal would come from the lightning bolt of a shot through which he has always defined his game.
“It took me a little while to get used to it,” Whitelaw explained, of adapting to Michigan’s possession-driven game under coach Brandon Naurato after playing a a hyper-defensive game under Hastings. “It’s a completely different style than what I played before, but it’s really good. I’m starting to get in the groove a little bit…It took a little bit to get going, but I think I should be good now.”
It’s not that Whitelaw doubts the potency of his shot. For the goalscorer, as for the fighter pilot or the race-car driver, confidence is at once a side effect of and prerequisite for success. Nonetheless, he recognized that he couldn’t be a volume goalscorer at the collegiate level leaning only on his shot.
“I’m finding different ways to score,” Whitelaw explains. “I think my shot’s extremely elite. I can beat goalies, but that’s a big thing in the NHL and that’s one thing they preach about here is finding other ways to score. Whether that’s getting tips at the netfront, getting lost behind the net, stuff like that. That’s helped me find other ways to score too.”
Whitelaw’s teammates have taken note of the conscious effort to make his way to the net. Asked about Whitelaw’s recent offensive surge, junior forward Josh Eernisse cited his teammate’s latest goal as an example of an attitude Whitelaw has embraced, along with the rest of his teammates.
“The one on Friday night,” Eernisse recounts. “Just a down low, dirty play. I don’t know if he got it on the first whack or the second one, but he’s just finding different ways to mold his offense. I think he’s got one of the hardest shots on the team. He can really rip the puck…but now he’s finding ways to create a little more offense in some of those dirty areas, which I think is kinda the MO of our team this year. We don’t necessarily have as much skill…To really be successful, it’s going to those hard areas. And I think that’s an adjustment he’s made in the last couple weeks.”
Eernisse noticed the dailies too. He sees Whitelaw “just working really hard in practice, winning those puck battles and all the little things, and then you get rewarded at the end of the day. It’s really exciting to see guys like William find their stride.”
In Whitelaw, junior defenseman Tyler Duke sees self-awareness: “He knew that he needed to be better a little bit from the beginning of the year, and it’s great to see him having success now. I could see it too. He’s just a really good player, and I’m happy to see him get on the board and build that confidence up to keep going.”
Whitelaw holds himself to high expectations, and he is pragmatic about meeting them. Even when the puck wasn’t going in, he never doubted his offense, but he knew that rounding out his game was essential to reaching the next level at his size. “My offense has always been there, and that’s one thing they’ve always been big on and just continue to be a better 200-foot player and be better defensively,” he offers, in reference to the feedback he received at Blue Jackets Development Camp last summer. “It’s one thing they harped on, just getting bigger and stronger. I’m a five-foot-nine player. Obviously, there’s not many of those in the NHL, so you gotta be strong and be a really good 200-foot player.”
Conversing with him brings out the same qualities. Whitelaw is direct, never guarded but intentional with the words he choses. That demeanor informs a willingness to chart his own path: a Minnesotan by birth who began his collegiate career at Wisconsin, only to decide that the Badgers he joined were not the ones he was recruited to following Tony Granato’s firing and Hastings’ arrival as his replacement. Last summer, At the conclusion of his freshman year, he entered the transfer portal. Instead of going back home, he decided to venture to a different rival of the flagship university of his home state, heading further east to Ann Arbor.
In explaining that process, Whitelaw shows his customary cogency: “I just went with what I thought was best for me. Obviously, when I was originally recruited to Wisconsin, it was Tony Granato there. [He’s] a great friend of mine now and mentor. I still talk with him all the time, so that was kinda my thought process. I felt comfortable with him. And then he was the one who originally convinced me to stay at Wisconsin…because I was thinking about looking elsewhere after [Granato was fired]. He spoke very highly of the program. That’s what made me stay…and at the end of the year, I thought it wasn’t the right spot for me. It was pretty overwhelming at first, when I first hit the portal, but ultimately I decided this would be the best spot for me.”
Conversations about the transfer portal tend to induce hysteria, but not for Whitelaw. It cannot have been an easy process—to choose a school through the whirlwind of recruiting, after deliberation decide to stick with that choice after a coaching change, then conclude at the end of his freshman year, that he needed something different—but through it, Whitelaw appears to have remained clear-headed. He sees value in his experience as a Badger, even in the aspects of Wisconsin’s style of play that ultimately made him decide Michigan would be a better fit.
“I definitely think going to Wisconsin helped a lot,” he says. “I think Hastings teaches his players to play really hard, and I think that’s one thing that he really taught me, and it really helped me a lot, that aspect of the game. I just think going there, getting the experience of college hockey—from a systems standpoint a little bit and a new environment, [this season] definitely seems like a little bit of a freshman year, but from the pace of play and the size and speed of college hockey, it doesn’t feel like it.”
As for what appealed about Naurato’s Wolverines, Whitelaw says, “I thought obviously what they do here from a hockey standpoint, from a development standpoint, the alumni that’s come through here speaks for itself. I just thought going through it, talking to a lot of other schools, having dinners—I just felt home here. That’s ultimately what led me here.”
After seven wins in eight games in November, Michigan has two series left before its holiday break, and Whitelaw looks forward to both—this weekend back home in Minnesota against the Gophers and next weekend hosting Wisconsin at Yost.
“Oh yeah, I’m pumped,” Whitelaw says of his team’s December slate. “Going to Mariucci, I have 20 family members going, so that’ll be fun, see the family, and play a bunch of kids that I grew up playing with in Minnesota or playing against in youth hockey, it’ll be good to play there. And obviously, playing Wisconsin here will be pretty fun.”
That last line is the only time Whitelaw seems to leave something left unsaid, veiling his typical directness, but in the wry smile across his face as he picks the last two words—pretty fun—his candor persists.
Finding November Rhythm: “We Can Figure Out a Way No Matter What”
With a 2–1 win last Saturday night at Yost over Western Michigan, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team completed the month of November with seven wins in eight games, the lone blemish the previous evening at Lawson Arena in Kalamazoo.
“I think Friday night was maybe one of our worst games as a team this year, so that was very unfortunate,” assessed junior forward Josh Eernisse Tuesday. “Just kind of all areas of the board: Defensively we could’ve been a little bit better, we didn’t have much offense, the kill was good I guess if you wanna find a positive. I think that was the story of the weekend. But then I think we responded really well on Saturday night. That was our best defensive performance of the year as a team, and so that’s really exciting. Finding ways defensively to win like that, while still putting up two goals on a good team. That was exciting to bounce back like that after a poor performance on Friday night.”
Per Eernisse, the improvement from Friday to Saturday didn’t require screaming, yelling, and angst; instead, it emerged from a focus sharpened by a substandard performance. “I think everybody knew that Friday night just wasn’t good enough, individually and as a team for most guys,” he explains. “And so the messaging in the room was just like We know what Michigan hockey is. We know what we need to get back to. The coaches set the standard throughout the week and prepared us. We kinda got away from our gameplan, so those were the things we needed to get back to. It wasn’t like guys were mad or there was tension in the air or anything like that. Each guy just knew what they needed to do, and then we executed on Saturday night.”
For coach Brandon Naurato, the most satisfying aspect of the month lies in the Wolverines’ ability to thrive in “a lot of different types of games.” “I think the ability to play in different situations—whether it’s power play, PK, high scoring games, low scoring games, tough environments on the road, at home,” he said Tuesday, at his weekly press availability. “We kinda got a little bit of everything, so I think…it builds belief and trust in the room that if we’re down a goal one nothing, up one nothing, up 17–12 in Penn State or whatever, we can figure out a way no matter what. So I think that’s really good.”
To that quip about Penn State (referring back to the weekend before last when Michigan won 6–5, then 10–6 in State College), it feels as though every time the Wolverines and Nittany Lions have collided since the formation of the Big Ten for hockey in 2013-14, chaos ensues. Naurato sees that as a symptom of Michigan failing to dictate the game’s style and flow against a high-event frenetic PSU team under coach Guy Gadowski. “Even the last couple years when we’ve won, like when [Luke Hughes] had four goals here, we just weren’t good,” he says. “With all that chaos, we gotta look into it, but I think it’s just young kids that instead of dictating our game, sometimes you can fall into playing the other way.”
The peril of falling into the trap another team sets will persist this weekend, when the Wolverines travel to Minneapolis to face Minnesota. Michigan is not well equipped to trade chances with the high-flying Gophers. Instead, it is much better suited to the sort of hockey Eernisse described from the Wolverines’ most recent outing against WMU. “They’re number one in the country in even strength goals scored,” pointed out Naurato of Bob Motzko’s team. “I think they’re top three in preventing slot and inner slot chances. They’re really good defensively as well. They’re just super deep. They have a lot of good players.”
With sweeps of the Nittany Lions and Notre Dame under its belt, Michigan travels to Dinkytown a perfect 4–0 in Big Ten play, but while both those teams have posed the Wolverines problems in recent history, neither represents the conference’s upper echelon. “It’s a good start,” Naurato said Tuesday. “It’s good to get sweeps, and we’re really gonna get tested this weekend, and we’ve played teams like this, so we’re prepared. It’s just whether you execute.”
Michigan has never won the Big Ten regular season championship in its history, and in recent years, that has tended to stem from slow starts to conference play digging too deep a hole to climb out of. When asked about that crown as an objective, Eernisse replied, “I think the message is just we want to be successful. More than necessarily the regular season Big Ten trophy, we wanna play at Yost come playoff time. The last couple of years, maybe the first round’s here, but then after that, you’re on the road. So what better place to have playoffs than a place like this in front of home fans. I think that’s what we’re pushing for.”
As Naurato pointed out Tuesday, Michigan has lots of recent history of playoff success at 3M Arena at Mariucci, but the Gophers have had their way in the regular season series. The Wolverines have won at Mariucci in each of the last three Big Ten Tournaments (the first two in the championship game, the third in the semifinals a year ago). “We’ve had some success against Minnesota in the playoffs at that rink,” he says. “They’ve kinda taken it to us in the regular season…They’ve kinda owned us, pretty much 3–1 every year, so our guys feel good about going there, but that means nothing when the puck is dropped.”
As has emerged as a theme for the Wolverines’ first half, the objective this weekend will be to bring the hard postseason formula (a heavy forecheck paired with defensive responsibility) to regular season action.
WoHo Closes First Half with Stars and Goaltenders Shining
After splitting a home and home with Indiana Tech on November 21st and 22nd, the University of Michigan women’s hockey team concluded the first half of its season at 8–3–3, presently ranked eighth by the ACHA computers.
When we caught up with coach Jenna Trubiano at the start of November, she stressed the value of the deepest roster she’s seen in her time around the program, whether as player or coach. “What I am seeing is we’re getting production from every spot in our depth chart,” she told Gulo Gulo Hockey at the time. “I think our first-year players are finding their roles and embracing them, and obviously having returning players that have produced before—like [Julia] Lindahl, [Lucy] Hanson, and [Emily] Maliszewski—getting them on a line together has been really incredible for us.”
With the first half now concluded, Michigan’s depth is clear. Fourteen different Wolverines have found the back of the net. It’s also clear that a two-headed monster of Lindahl and Hanson—already established entering the season as their team’s two most gifted scorers—have each taken their game to even greater heights.
In twenty-four games last season, Hanson had twenty-four points and Lindahl twenty-five. This year in fourteen games, Hanson already has twenty-one (a dozen goals and nine assists), while Lindahl has twenty-three (nine goals and fourteen assists). Both are no more than a few games away from career offensive highs just halfway through the season.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the rink, Michigan’s depth extends to its goaltenders. Senior Sandrine Ponnath and junior Avery Schiff each have six starts. Ponnath has a 2.11 goals against average and .928 save percentage, while Schiff boasts a 2.30 and .926. Sophomores Emma Johns and Paris Heiserman each have one start, with Johns making twenty saves on twenty-one shots and Heiserman twenty-four on twenty-seven. Those numbers are a testament to the quality of Michigan’s team defense, but you would also be hard pressed to find a deeper goaltending room in all of college hockey.
The achievements the Wolverines seek will have to wait for the end of the year, but through fourteen games, Michigan has established a clear foundation as the sort of team whose top-end scoring, depth, and goaltending promise to make it a bear for any postseason opponent to wrestle with.
Thanks to Michigan Athletics for this week’s preview image. Please also check out THN.com/Detroit for daily Detroit Red Wings coverage.