“Like, if two guys say hey, we’re going out to eat, you want to come? Yeah, definitely.” A Frozen Four Preview
Michigan prepares for a Frozen Four date with Denver, with hopes of more to follow
If I had to guess, I’d say the various returning members of this year’s University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team have been thinking about this coming weekend since March 26 of last year.
It’s possible they transfixed their focus on the season opener. Or maybe winning the Big Ten regular season title. But I doubt it.
I bet all this year’s veteran Wolverines have been fixating on playing (and winning) these two games since March 26, 2021.
Of course, on that date, the NCAA’s Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Committee announced that the Wolverines—the nation’s eighth ranked team and a would-be two seed in the NCAA tournament—would not be eligible to participate in that tournament due to positive COVID tests.
In that moment, the news was numbing. According to historical precedent, the NCAA’s policy was to wait until after banners were captured and hung to deny championships to talented freshmen at Michigan.
It would later become controversial, for unpredictable reasons.
The immediate consequence was unsubtle. Michigan’s tournament run ended before it began. The most gifted crop of freshmen ever assembled in college hockey would not have a chance to test their mettle in the sport’s fiercest crucible.
A year and a bit later, and the uber-talented Wolverines have played themselves past the precedent they established a year ago. They are Big Ten Tournament champions, and they breezed (for better and worse) past American International and Quinnipiac to clinch this weekend’s trip to Boston.
Late afternoon Thursday, Michigan will meet the Denver Pioneers at T.D. Garden in Boston, with a trip to Saturday’s national title game at stake.
Michigan’s loaded roster centers around its sophomore class, but given the team’s ridiculous NHL pedigree, it is conceivable for the majority of the team’s stars to take their final shifts in maize and blue this weekend.
In an interview with the Athletic’s Corey Masisak, sophomore centerman Thomas Bordeleau offered an insight into the team’s perspective:
“My mindset right now is just to have as much fun with this group of guys as I can right now, because it’s going to be the last time we all get to play together. We could have almost half the team leaving. So it’s really been about enjoying it right now. Like, if two guys say hey, we’re going out to eat, you want to come? Yeah, definitely.”
For a bit of context, Bordeleau was discussing his mindset’s adaptations after an eighteen-month stretch in which the Houstonian Quebecois missed out on two World Juniors, an NCAA Tournament, and likely an Olympics because of positive tests to him and those around him.
In reflecting on a tumultuous year of his own, Bordeleau made his way to a point of credit toward his team’s mentality: that the 2021-22 Wolverines hold in common a fervent desire to maximize their shared opportunities, whether to make the most of their precious journey to the Frozen Four or share as many meals as they can, regardless of their plans at season’s end.
When Michigan takes the ice on Thursday, it will represent a unique coalition of college’s most decorated program (its leader in national titles and Frozen Four appearances) and its most decorated roster, one of record-setting pedigree. If all goes according to plan, that pairing will burnish one another’s image by weekend’s end, having made the most of the 2021-22 season.
The Assembled in Boston
Though single-elimination hockey tends toward chaos, it will be a field of favorites gathered alongside the Wolverines this weekend. Minnesota, a two-seed, was the only non-one-seed to emerge from the tournament’s opening weekend.
The Gophers are well-familiar to Wolverine fans by now, with Michigan having knocked off their Big Ten rivals in three of five contests this year. Though Michigan holds a slight edge in the season series, including a decisive B1G Title Game in Minneapolis, there is a reason the Gophers won the league’s regular season crown.
Denver, the Wolverines’ semi final opponent, bears a striking resemblance. They are an offensive juggernaut who make hay by virtue of the supremacy of their top-end skill. At the head of the spear rests Hobey Baker finalist Bobby Brink, a 5’9” second round selection of the Philadelphia Flyers and the nation’s leading scorer.
In the final corner, Minnesota State is perhaps the most consistently dominant program of the last half decade in men’s collegiate hockey. Unfortunately, that reputation has not yet translated into the postseason, where disappointment has become perennial. The Wolverines and Mavericks met in Duluth in October, facing off in the title game of the Ice Breaker Challenge, with Michigan emerging victorious. Minnesota State relies on veteran goaltender Dryden McKay along with prolific forwards Julian Napravnik and Nathan Smith.
Suffice it to say that all four teams could emerge from the weekend triumphant.
Three Things that Probably Have to Go Right for Michigan to Win
In the spirit of any good “keys to the game” segment, profundity emerges only from the most rudimentary, or you might even say self-evident. As such…
Triumph of “Natural Scorers”
In an article by the Michigan Daily’s Paul Nasr, Mel Pearson is quoted as saying
“We got guys that can score. There’s different things you can do to try to make people scorers, but we have natural scorers — things that we can’t teach them.”
There is something charmingly self-aware and self-effacing in that sentiment from Pearson, and he is of course correct. A team of Michigan’s offensive pedigree is blessed with attacking gifts a collegiate coach could never convey. With a roster this stacked, the task of coaching must feel more like getting out of the way.
Throughout the NCAA Tournament, we’ve highlighted the way Michigan has thrived due to a combination of scoring from its stars and its depth. The second-round victory was a triumph of the fourth line, yet as this tournament enters its latest stages, Michigan will need its elite offensive firepower to carry it to victory. That will never be truer than Thursday’s semifinal against Denver, the rare team with a legitimate claim to rivaling the Wolverines’ arsenal.
When Pearson talks of “natural scorers,” no name springs to mind quicker than that of Brendan Brisson. While not necessarily as influential a player as his linemates Matty Beniers and Kent Johnson, Brisson is as decisive as any player on Michigan’s loaded roster.
He has a lethal one timer.
Along with some craftier tricks in his bag.
The best news for Michigan is that Brisson enters the Frozen Four on a sizzling run of form, with nine points in his last four games.
It’s awfully difficult to imagine the Wolverines leaving Boston victorious without a prolific weekend from their Californian sniper.
Finishing games
Our second key is somehow more obvious than our first (which we remind you was that Michigan needs its goal scorers to score goals to advance). Michigan needs to radically improve in finishing off games from where it was in its regional. To survive this weekend, the Wolverines will be unlikely to get away with the sloppy third periods that characterized their stay in Allentown. Against both AIC and Quinnipiac, the Wolverines surrendered multiple third-period goals, allowing the opposition to feel hope in games that should have been over.
In Pearson’s blunt words (lifted from a recap of the Allentown regional in College Hockey News):
“Our third periods have not been good. I think that’s part of being a young team and learning how to finish games. You can’t recreate that in practice. That’s the hardest thing. We’re going to have to talk and see if we can come up with something because we can’t have that happen again.”
As discussed in our opening musing, the margin for error is gone, even for this young team. This core is unlikely to have another walk down this path to the Frozen Four, so there is precious little time for the Wolverines to learn these lessons.
The good news is that neither stumble in Allentown ended in disaster, and the Wolverines are on to the Frozen Four.
As much as we at Gulo Gulo love the Wolverines’ offensive panache, an emphasis on sound third-period hockey will be essential to advancing any further. This doesn’t mean that the Wolverines should forget their style and skill in a game’s final frame if they lead. There is no better way to finish off an opponent than scoring more.
With that said, opportunities to do so must be chosen carefully, capitalizing on the offensive risks of an opponent trying to claw back into a game rather than exposing one’s own defense to wanton risk.
In a shudderingly bold prediction, we at Gulo Gulo expect that if the Wolverines play well with third-period leads, they will have no problem bringing home a national championship.
Goaltending
To complete our hat trick of startling insights into Michigan’s formula for success in this weekend’s Frozen Four, the Wolverines will need Erik Portillo to maintain his steady presence in their crease.
All season long, we have left the sophomore Swede under-discussed, thanks to his remarkable consistency and our own trepidation around goaltender analysis after opening the year by pointing out that the netminder was an obvious scapegoating candidate.
Now, Portillo enters the biggest weekend of his career to date having won six straight starts and having captured the B1G Tournament and Allentown Regional Most Outstanding Player honors.
Portillo boasts thirty-one wins and a .926 save percentage as he enters the Frozen Four and continues to bail out his teammates at least once a game, covering up a defensive lapse that really ought to have had severe consequences.
When the Maize and Blue suit up in Boston, an effective Portillo is a prerequisite for success. The good news is that’s the only game we’ve ever known from the first-year starter.
A Prediction
Michigan, twice more.