Midweek Roundup 10.12.22
A BU pre-scout, a Gavin Brindley deep dive (featuring he and Seamus Casey’s origin story), a Portillo review, a brief WoHo Wednesday update on last weekend’s sweep, and the latest in injury news
After a rousing season-opening sweep of Lindenwood, the University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team will face stiff competition this weekend from Boston University.
The first weekend of the regular season afforded Michigan’s robust crop of a dozen freshmen the opportunity to express their talents in NCAA hockey for the first time. Adam Fantilli was a two-hundred-foot force and scored his first collegiate goal (twice). On Saturday night, Gavin Brindley, Jackson Hallum, and Rutger McGroarty joined forces to send the Lions into fits as they struggled to keep up with the fleet-footed freshmen trio. Seamus Casey built on a spectacular exhibition debut against Windsor and resembled an upperclassman as he took his first official collegiate strides. Kienan Draper looked every bit his father’s son while playing a feisty fourth-line shutdown role.
Lindenwood challenged the Wolverines a weekend ago in just their second series as a Division I program. This weekend, Michigan will receive a different test from one of college hockey’s most traditional powers. BU is the rare team that can walk into Yost and sense a kindred traditional spirit. The Terriers have a proud history of on-ice excellence stretching from Jim Craig to Jack Eichel that features five national championships and twenty-two Frozen Four appearances.
Scouting the Terriers
This weekend will mark the thirty-first and second all-time meetings between Michigan & BU. The Wolverines lead the series 17-13, but the Terriers stole arguably the most significant of those matchups when they stymied Michigan at the 1997 Frozen Four in Milwaukee. The loss was sandwiched between Wolverine national titles in 1996 and 1998, but a neutral-zone trap run to perfection cost Red Berenson's bunch a three-peat.
Like Michigan, BU is breaking in a new head coach, having just handed the program’s reins over to an alum with NHL coaching and development experience. For the Terriers, that new head coach is Jay Pandolfo, whose coaching career began working on the development side for the Boston Bruins before serving as a Bruins’ assistant under Bruce Cassidy from 2016 to 2021. At that point, Pandolfo spent a season as an assistant under outgoing Terrier coach Albie O’Connell.
Pandolfo’s hiring of Kim Brandvol, a Norwegian-born skating and skills coach who like Pandolfo arrived by way of the Bruins, as an assistant signaled a Naurato-esque emphasis on player development.
The Pandolfo regime scored a major coup earlier this Fall in securing the commitment of Macklin Celebrini, widely considered the top 2006-born player in the world. Celebrini is spending this season with the USHL’s Chicago Steel, following a season at Minnesota’s famed Shattuck-St. Mary’s prep school.
On the ice, the Terriers return their two top scorers from a year ago in defenseman Domenick Fensore (five goals and twenty-six assists in thirty-five games) and forward Wilmer Skoog (fifteen and fifteen, also in thirty-five games). They also bring back junior goaltender Drew Commesso, who posted a .914 save percentage and 2.52 goals against average as a sophomore.
While Pandolfo and company can’t count on Celebrini quite yet, they did add one major impact freshman in defenseman Lane Hutson. Undersized but a dynamic skater and puck-mover, the second round selection of the Montreal Canadiens bears some semblance to Michigan’s own Seamus Casey.
Gavin Brindley & the All-Freshmen Line
We spoke with one of the weekend’s freshman standouts after practice Monday. When Gavin Brindley arrives in what a placard officially marks as the “Coaches’ Reception Area” to meet with reporters, he has a fresh cut across the bridge of his nose—the product of tripping over the outstretched stick of Erik Portillo and tumbling into the boards during the day’s practice.
Growing up in Estero, Florida, Brindley attributes his interest in hockey to his Canadian father Ryan who played for the Estero-based Florida Everblades in the ECHL.
Even if the Florida of the late aughts and early teens didn’t have much of a hockey fixation, it didn’t feel that way to Brindley. The Brindleys lived two minutes from their local rink, and Gavin describes himself as being “always on the ice” throughout his childhood. Ryan coached his son throughout Gavin’s youth career, playing for teams like the Florida Junior Everblades and Florida Alliance, teams that Gavin credits with helping to “put Florida on the map” as a hockey state.
One of Brindley’s teammates on those teams was fellow freshman Seamus Casey, but that duo’s relationship dates back to a point far before college hockey, much less the NHL, were on anyone’s radar.
As Brindley explains it, the pair lived a street down from one another when one day Brindley was outside playing roller hockey. Casey arrived on the scene, asked to join, and a fast friendship formed. “We were like five years old, and that’s kind of how our friendship came. We’re best friends now and best friends ever since.”
That near-lifelong friendship helps explain Brindley’s jubilation at having the best view in the house for Casey’s first official collegiate goal Saturday night.
Brindley set up the goal with a typically slick zone entry before laying the puck on for Casey, who funneled down the slot to wire home a vital insurance goal. The two best friends leapt into a mid-air hug to commemorate the occasion.
When asked what was on his mind when he saw Casey score, Brindley offers a candid stream-of-consciousness: “I was like ‘Oh my God!’ and I jogged back to him. I wasn’t really looking [as Casey shot]; I just heard the crossbar, like bar down, and then I was like ‘oh shit, he just scored.’”
For Brindley, arriving in Ann Arbor over the summer has eased the adjustment period of his freshman fall. Brindley explains that he took two classes over the summer and “just kind of got a feel and train here during the summer…so I know my way around pretty good.”
Though Casey is Brindley’s longest standing friend on the team, the freshman forward also has a history with his new linemate Rutger McGroarty. “Me and Rutger played against each other pretty much our whole lives. We played a little bit together at the end of the year last year and worlds.”
Rounding out Saturday’s all-freshmen third line was Jackson Hallum, with whom Brindley appeared to have an instant chemistry. “Obviously Hallum is an unbelievable player,” Brindley said, “super fast and really good skater, so I think we played really well on Saturday night together.”
The line’s blend of Brindley and Hallum’s speed and offensive dynamism with McGroarty’s physicality suggests the trio may have staying power.
After Tuesday’s practice, Naurato expressed his pleasure with the trio’s performance Saturday night, with the caveat that it was far from a finished product. “I don’t think they’re there yet, but it’s exciting what [Brindley and Hallum] can do down the road.”
When asked whether he had to think twice about putting three freshmen on a line together, Naurato explained “I don’t have a big enough sample size to trust them or not trust them yet. Granowicz or Lapointe or Moyle, these guys know our identity and we’re trying to do. They’re very predictable. These freshmen have a lot of really good habits and then a lot of poor habits—mostly out of their control, so I’m figuring out what their habits are and then how we can tweak it and how quickly they work.”
Naurato went on to explain that experimentation is an essential part of the process in settling on line combinations, “I think that’s where I’m different than other coaches. Maybe it isn’t smart with an interim tag, but I’m letting them fail to see how they figure it out and problem solve. Guys have been doing a good job, but I have to put the wrong guys on the ice and get burned and lose a game or put the right guys on the ice and score a goal to figure out who can do it.”
Portillo Review
Across last weekend’s series with Lindenwood, Erik Portillo faced a total of thirty-eight shots and stopped thirty-three for an unflattering .868 save percentage. The obvious caveat here is that two games is a much smaller (and therefore more deceptive) sample size than the .926 he turned in across forty-two games and twelve hundred shots a year ago.
The raw save percentage figure from the weekend also fails to account for the quality of some of the Lions’ chances. While Michigan dominated Lindenwood on the shot chart overall, that didn’t mean the Wolverines prevented their Missourian foes from generating any quality chances. Lindenwood’s ability to exploit defensive lapses was never clearer than on Andy Willis’ Friday night goal, which he scored off an in-tight 3-on-0 against Portillo.
Despite less than sterling numbers, Portillo was vital for the Wolverines at key moments over the weekend. The junior Swede came up with enormous saves on quality rush and rebound opportunities that kept Michigan afloat throughout the weekend.
Listed at six-foot-six and two-hundred-twenty pounds, Portillo is the biggest Wolverine by some margin. In somewhat counterintuitive fashion, the Swedish goaltender’s long frame helps him dominate the lower recesses of the net. It is a style that bears some resemblance to that of towering NHL goaltenders like the Sabres’ Ben Bishop or Calgary’s Jakob Markstrom.
Over the weekend, we mentioned the unique stress placed on the Wolverines by playing in games in which they operate with a heavy advantage in terms of shots on net but a thin margin on the scoreboard. To this end, at five-on-five, Michigan played to a ridiculous 73.6 CorsiFor percentage, meaning 73.6% of the game’s shot attempts (whether those shots ended up going in, missing the net, or getting saved or blocked) went to the Wolverines.
This shot disparity, combined with the fact that the shots Lindenwood did generate were of considerable quality, and you have a recipe for a difficult weekend for a goaltender.
Even still, if you were to take out a tricky Friday night first period, during which the Lions scored twice on ten shots, Portillo would be up to a more respectable if still underwhelming .893 save percentage. In other words, it wasn’t an easy start to the season, but a slightly below-expectation weekend is no cause for concern in isolation.
WoHo Wednesday
We owe a moment of congratulations to Michigan’s women’s ice hockey team, who earned their first victories of the season last weekend. After traveling north to Sault Ste. Marie, the Wolverines shut out Lake Superior State on Saturday and Sunday to bring their season record to two and one with one tie. Captain Miki Rubin scored the lone goal in Saturday’s contest, before Jessica Simmer and Maria Di Cresce got the Wolverines over the hump on Sunday.
Jenna Trubiano’s team currently sits in seventh in the thirty-two team ACHA’s top women’s division and will host Utah on Thursday night at Yost.
Injury Notes
After Tuesday’s practice, Naurato provided an update on his injured players. Freshman forward Frank Nazar’s Michigan debut won’t come for a “while” as he continues to rehab with the team’s medical staff.
Meanwhile, sophomore defenseman Ethan Edwards went through a skate with Michigan’s three goalies before Tuesday’s practice, suggesting a return to the lineup in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, Naurato expressed optimism that the New Jersey Devils draft pick is “getting back quicker than we thought” but remains “week-to-week” for the time being.
Senior defenseman Jay Keranen missed practice Monday and Tuesday with what Naurato described as “nagging” injuries but would appear available for this weekend’s games.
Junior forward Philippe Lapointe (who did not feature last weekend against Lindenwood) practiced Monday and Tuesday and, like Keranen, would seem available for this weekend’s series.
Beloved family bulldog Salami Naurato, known to his friends as “Sal,” has undergone eye surgery and is “struggling” according to Naurato. There is no timetable for his return to action.
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