Midweek Roundup 1.11.23
A rivalry weekend, a trip to Arizona, rewinding the WJC with Adam Fantilli, Michigan hockey at 100, and a note on the promise of positional fluidity
We write to you today in the midst of an enormous week of hockey at the University of Michigan.
On the women’s side, the Wolverines will travel to Arizona for a weekend poised to play a massive role in determining whether the team will achieve its season goal of qualifying for nationals, taking on a pair of ranked ACHA foes in the Grand Canyon State.
Meanwhile, on the men’s side of the ledger, Michigan will celebrate its 100th anniversary of varsity hockey with a top-ten rivalry clash against Ohio State. Entering the weekend, the Wolverines find themselves nine points down on the Buckeyes in the B1G standings (albeit with two games in hand).
When asked to what extent he finds himself examining the conference standings or Pairwise at this point in the season, assistant coach Rob Rassey said “I think it’s something to be aware of, but it’s not something that we focus on heavily. We always talk about [how] we want to focus on what’s going to lead us to having success versus what our results will lead to. We want to focus on our process and the things that we feel like are going to lead us to have success.
“It’s definitely something that you have teams in the Big Ten right now that we have to catch. There’s teams in the Pairwise we want to try and catch. So I think it’s something to be aware of, but for us, we’re gonna focus on the things we can rely on for our success as a team.”
For Michigan’s men’s and women’s hockey teams, the first official weekend of the second half represents a major inflection point in the fight toward each team’s respective season-long ambitions, whether that battle unfolds across the country against out-of-conference enemies or in the comfort of home against a bitterly familiar Big Ten rival.
Scouting the Buckeyes
Ohio State will arrive in Ann Arbor this weekend on a five-game winning streak and fresh off a sweep over Michigan State in Columbus. With a 14-7-1 record, the Buckeyes sit at sixth in the current Pairwise, one spot ahead of Michigan.
Offensively, the tip of the Ohio State spear is a unique blend of youth and seniority with freshman Stephen Halliday (six goals and fifteen assists) and grad student Jake Wise (seven goals and fourteen assists) tied for the team lead in points. Sophomore defenseman Mason Lohrei, a breakout star for Steve Rohlik’s team as a freshman, is not far behind with seventeen points, all of them assists.
In net, sophomore Jakub Dobes has started all twenty-two games and done so with aplomb, posting a .923 save percentage and 2.12 goals against average. It’s slightly off the .934 pace Dobes set a year ago but impressive nonetheless. The Czechia native stopped fifty-nine of the sixty shots a weekend ago against Michigan State.
Meanwhile, Rohlik’s team is tied with Dartmouth for the nation’s top penalty kill at a 90.9% success rate to date. “They’re just really detailed,” said Rob Rassey of the Buckeye PK. “They block a lot of shots; they’re fast; they’re hard. They’re to ugh to play against overall, so I think it’s going to be a good challenge for our guys on the PP, and we’re looking forward to it.”
The matchup will also represent the first collegiate showdown between Wolverine sophomore Dylan Duke and his Buckeye freshman brother Tyler.
When I spoke with their father Steve earlier in the season, he assured me it would be a matchup worth watching: “I’m sure those two are gonna battle pretty good when they play against each other. When they were little kids playing knee hockey, there were lots of holes in the basement from them going after each other, and I don’t expect any different when they play against each other in a college game.”
WoHo Wednesday
The University of Michigan’s women’s hockey team will play its first games of the new year this weekend from sunny Arizona. The team will kick off its second half against Grand Canyon University Friday, before a two-game set with Arizona State at Tempe’s Oceanside Ice Arena Saturday and Sunday.
As a reminder, Jenna Trubiano’s team closed out the calendar year in white hot form: riding a four-game winning streak into 2023. The team went 8-1 between November and December, outscoring its opponents 47-11 along the way.
The trip to the Valley of the Sun will mark the beginning of the Wolverines’ push for a return to ACHA nationals and offer an opportunity to bolster the team’s résumé against a pair of formidable WWCHL foes.
The ACHA’s top ten teams qualify for nationals, and this weekend’s affairs in Arizona are poised to have more than a little to say in determining that field. The Wolverines sit at 6th in the latest ACHA ranking; the Antelopes, 15th; the Sun Devils, 10th.
Against the Sun Devils in particular, Trubiano’s team can expect to carry a considerable advantage in net. Hallie Mcclelland and Karsyn Hellman have split the ASU crease to date but managed just an .882 save percentage between them. In the opposite crease, the Sun Devils will have to contend with Sandrine Ponnath and her astonishing .950 save percentage and 1.56 GAA. Meanwhile, GCU scores at 3.64 goals-per-game clip and will seek to put a dent in Ponnath’s formidable numbers.
Offensively, Michigan has been led by forwards Julia Lindahl and Maria Di Cresce along with defender Katie German have led the way for a team scoring 3.69 goals a game. That group will look to help guide the Wolverines through its trip to Arizona and further solidify its place in the race for an ACHA Nationals berth.
Trubiano’s team is fresh off its holiday ice time fundraiser generating serious momentum from various corners of the hockey internet, much of it incensed by the fact that the team has to pay its university for ice at a school-owned and operated facility at all. It was wonderful to see the energy the fundraiser generated, but it would be great to see similar dedication to the team’s on-ice endeavors in the throes of the chase for a return to nationals, beginning this weekend.
Local readers can also support the team while treating themselves to burritos by visiting the Chipotle on State Street between 4 and 8 this afternoon and evening.
Michigan Hockey 100
Tomorrow (January 12th) will mark the 100th anniversary of the first varsity game in the illustrious history of Michigan hockey. To help contextualize the significance of this weekend, we turn to the definitive history of men’s hockey at the University of Michigan: John U. Bacon’s Blue Ice.
In describing that first varsity game, Bacon points out the uncertainty that abounded in the build-up. He quotes an article from the Michigan Daily that contends that nine-tenths of the student body had never seen the sport before. He notes that a warm spell the week of the game threatened to derail the affair before it ever got off the ground, with the athletic department not selling tickets until six hours before puck drop. As Bacon tells it, “the quality of the sheet depended not on coils or Zambonis but on an evening of cold wind and a bucket of hot water.”
Under the leadership of coach Joseph Barss, Michigan scored a 2-1 victory over the University of Wisconsin in the first official collegiate hockey game played West of the Alleghenies.
It was a different time, a different sport even, but there was still a sense of the start of something special. The aforementioned Daily piece points out that, despite the risk inherent in trying to make a sport foreign to so much of the student population work, there was reason for hope because “few people who have ever seen a game have failed to become confirmed enthusiasts.”
Even if it was at Yost Ice Arena rather than the old Weinberg Coliseum, one spectator who became a “confirmed enthusiast” after getting the chance to see the Wolverines live was a young Rob Rassey.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of this program,” said assistant coach Rob Rassey after Monday’s practice. “For me, I grew up coming to games in this building and then watching this team play when I was a kid. And I’ve always admired the program and held it in the highest regard, and to be now a part of the history that I know has been here, and just as you walk down the hallways, and you’ve seen the pictures and the walls and just knowing a lot of people that have played here and gone on and had great careers and just impressive people, I feel incredibly fortunate to be here in year one. It’s a special place for sure, and it’s incredibly evident right when you walk in the door.”
Rassey recalls watching the likes of Brendan Morrison and Cam Stewart light up Yost in the early to mid 90s or going down to Detroit to take in the Great Lakes Invitational at the Joe. Though it is just his first season as a formal member of the program, Rassey notes “People take a ton of pride in the block M, and you can see why.”
WJC Rewind with Adam Fantilli
Of the six Wolverines to participate in the 2023 World Junior Championship, just one returned with a gold medal: Canada’s Adam Fantilli.
He reunited with his five American teammates at the airport on the way home from the Maritimes sporting some new jewelry.
“I was wearing [my medal] at the airport, so I was giving it a little bit,” says a slightly bashful but smiling Fantilli after Tuesday’s practice. “But obviously there’s a line because they’re representing their country, I’m representing my country, and we kind of leave that stuff of at the door. We’re teammates, we’re brothers, so all that stuff kind of goes away.”
The freshman center, normally one to ignore any and all media coverage, acknowledges that his nation’s unique fixation with the WJC forced that outside noise onto his radar:
“Wearing that crest comes with a lot of responsibility and a lot of expectations, so I kind of had one mess-up in the first game against Czechia, and I was kind of getting ripped on a little bit in the media, so I was just trying to learn to shut your phone off, not listening to that, and stay focused on your group.”
Fantilli did note that a mutual sense of being under intense scrutiny did help unite the team, saying “We’re all under a microscope and quite a bit of a spotlight, so it’s pretty nice to be able to share that.”
While in Halifax, Fantilli and his Canadian running mates did not exactly have a surplus of unstructured time: “We had some off days, and on those off days, we were given a two-hour, three-hour time slot to spend with our families if they came out, so that allowed to walk around on the waterfront a little bit.”
He adds “Missing New Year’s, missing Christmas with your family is kind of thought knowing that I’m not going to get to go to my house at home for six or seven months…But I had a really good group of family and friends come out to Halifax, and I was really grateful for the showing that I had there with my family, and they were able to get out the day of Christmas, and I was able to spend it with them just for a few hours.”
Amidst an at times difficult tournament, Fantilli did author one of his team’s decisive moments on their gold medal run, laying an area pass in for Zach Dean before burying the return feed to propel the Canadians to a lead they wouldn’t relinquish against Team USA in the semifinal.
For Fantilli, it was less a moment of a weight lifted and more a euphoria at playing a decisive role in one of international hockey’s foremost rivalries:
“Honestly, I wasn’t even thinking stress relief when it happened. I was more just thinking Canada-USA rivalry, I was lucky enough to be able to get a moment in it and just put my team ahead.”
And of course, playing a depth role is a comparatively easy pill to swallow when it culminates in a gold medal.
A Brief Word on Positional Fluidity
Between Fantilli’s move from center to wing for the Canadians and Seamus Casey’s dalliance at center rather than defense last weekend, positional fluidity has been a hot topic in the last week or so of Michigan hockey.
With regard to Fantilli’s move to the wing, Rob Rassey explained that the change in vantage point can be tricky, even if the move from one forward position to another doesn’t appear extreme:
“With any position, there’s going to be little intricacies that go along with it. I think playing on the wing, you play a lot more on the wall, so it gets you a little bit more in wall battles. And you don’t have as much time as a center, who can kind of control the play from underneath it and read the play from below, whereas as a winger you’re kind of along the wall and sometimes above the puck, so it’s just a little bit of a different feeling, and to do it at that level [of the WJC], having not been used to it, is always going to be tough.”
In the case of Casey, Rassey notes that a player’s tactical intelligence can help a player thrive in an unfamiliar role, albeit with a background as a forward from youth hockey:
“For certain guys, I think it’s going to be a little more challenging than others. I think the way Sea plays is he’s incredibly intelligent and incredibly aware. I think if you put Sea on the ice in any hockey game in any position, I think he’d do incredibly well given the chance to just figure things out a little bit. He’s just that kind of player. [Referring to the fact that Casey played forward in his youth hockey career], I think it’s a little bit like riding a bike—you have something you haven’t done in a while you get used to it a little bit. Playing forward in college is a lot different than playing in youth hockey; it’s just a different game. But for Seamus, we just kind of said ‘hey, go play your game. Have fun, man,’ and it was fun to watch.”
When asked whether he believes the further blurring of positional lines (whether between center and the wing or between forward and defense) is the direction in which the game is trending, Rassey responded “I definitely do. I think the way the game is played now, even just if you watch us play, we have five guys moving all over the place most of the time. We’ll ask our forwards to do some things defensively that other teams might not. In terms of center to wing, I think getting guys comfortable playing all three positions is important for their development too, so if they get an opportunity in pro hockey that they’re not limited to just one position—they have the flexibility to play more than one.”
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