Midweek Roundup 11.30.22
Midweek Roundup 11.30.22
Rob Rassey with a word on Harvard, a Wisconsin preview, Italian Heritage & Maintaining Focus with the Fantilli brothers, and a check-in with Topher Scott on hockey operations and youth development
After an emotional and triumphant weekend for anyone in Maize and Blue last weekend, the University of Michigan’s hockey teams will see their first action of December on Friday and Saturday.
On the women’s side of the ledger, Jenna Trubiano’s team will return to action for their first time since the successful trip to Utah and the Beehive Showcase for a home-and-home with UM-Dearborn. The action will begin at Dearborn Fieldhouse on Friday evening, before the return leg comes to Yost Saturday afternoon. It won’t just be a clash of warring Wolverines but also of two ranked sides in the most recent ACHA poll. As Trubiano and company continue to vie for a spot in ACHA nationals, they will look to take maximum points from their in-state and in-university-system rivals.
Meanwhile, Brandon Naurato’s men’s team will travel to Madison, for a two-game set with the University of Wisconsin.
On the injury front, the Wolverines are inching closer to full health with Jackson
Hallum (who missed the Harvard series after a knock suffered in practice last week) upgraded from a light-blue, non-contact jersey Monday to full participation in practice Tuesday. Meanwhile, Jay Keranen appeared to practice as a forward, with Johnny Druskinis and Luca Fantilli continuing to work together as a defense pair, suggesting that Druskinis’ strong performance against Harvard will merit a place in the lineup again this weekend.
In a conversation after Tuesday’s practice, assistant coach Rob Rassey mentions that the context of the illness outbreak earlier this month remains relevant, even if the worst and scariest is over.
“It’s something that—I don’t know if you want to say re-centers or humbles or just kind of makes you think differently,” Rassey says. “That was definitely a tough week for us, and I think it was great to see how everybody handled it—the maturity, the persistence, the resilience. As a coach, you don’t necessarily prepare for weeks like that, and to see how everybody came together, I thought it was great…I always try to find the positives in it, and we really came together as a team and hopefully we can use that to our advantage going forward.”
From an on-ice perspective, Rassey has reason for optimism after a strong weekend performance by the penalty kill (which he runs) against a dangerous power play, conceding just one goal while short-handed over the weekend. “We had a pretty good feel for what they were going to try and do,” explains Rassey. “And, for us, the goal was just to try and take away a few of their options and make them check down, like a quarterback checking down, and keep them to the outside and don’t give them any opportunities at the front of the net, so that’s what we tried to do. I thought our guys did a really good job of [executing that plan.] I felt like the guys blocked shots when we needed to, which is a huge part of being good on the penalty kill, being ready to sacrifice and being tough to play against.”
Though Rassey’s preparations for the weekend involved scouting a team he once coached, he noted that with James Marcou (his replacement on Ted Donato’s staff) running the power play he couldn’t lean on his experience with the program for schematics, even if it was useful in terms of personnel. Rassey leaned on his usual film study to make sense of the Crimson’s approach, but with an added familiarity with the players executing Marcou’s tactics.
Before Harvard’s pregame skate Friday and again after Saturday’s game, Rassey “checked in and said hello,” adding that he remains “great friends with a lot of people on their coaching staff and extended staff” and enjoyed the opportunity to coach against a group of seniors he had worked with when they were freshmen.
When asked whether he prefers the Big Ten-style weekend series or ECAC’s mixed weekend opponents, Rassey explains that both structures have their pros and cons: “There were certain games [in the ECAC] where you’d go play somebody then drive four hours and then play another team the next day. As a coach, it was a little more challenging because you had to pre-scout two opponents. Now [in the Big Ten,] you just have to worry about one for the week, so it’s a little different from that side of things. I will say too it’s hard to beat a team two times in a row. It is. Play a team Friday, you learn what their strengths and their weaknesses are, and so it’s really hard to beat a team twice in a row.”
Scouting the Badgers
In our Big Ten preview, we wondered at what point we would have no choice but to accept that Wisconsin’s 2020-21 campaign (in which the Badgers took the Big Ten regular season title on the back of Cole Caufield’s Hobey Baker-winning campaign) was an aberration relative to the rest of the Tony Granato era. Fourteen games into this season, we are past the point of wondering.
Granato’s Badgers are 6-8-0, with an 0-6 mark in B1G play. Curiously, every series they’ve played has been a sweep, one way or the other; either the Badgers win both or lose both, but they’ve yet to split.
Their harsh 0-6 record in conference play offers a reminder of just how unfriendly the Big Ten can be to a struggling team. In the most recent USCHO poll, Granato’s Wisconsin is the lone unranked Big Ten team. It has been swept by Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan State. The Spartans’ year-one success under Adam Nightingale—after a prolonged period in doldrums of their own—seems unlikely to portend good things for Granato’s long-term future in Madison.
“I think it speaks volumes to the quality of the conferences,” said Rassey of the preponderance of ranked Big Ten teams. “There are no easy games in the Big Ten, and it’s every night you’re gonna face a quality opponent with goad coaching and good players and usually a good environment, and it’s definitely challenging every game.”
There are some bright spots though. Granato’s acumen as a recruiter means the cupboard is not bare of talent, and the Badgers will host the Wolverines looking to extend a four-game win streak. Over the last two weekends, Wisconsin earned home sweeps over Long Island University and Lindenwood. It may not be the stiffest competition, but it’s not a time to turn up your nose at any sense of momentum.
To date, the Badgers’ best player has been freshman forward Cruz Lucius, a fourth-round pick of the Carolina Hurricanes. Lucius’ older brother Chaz played last season at Minnesota, before turning pro in the Winnipeg Jets’ organization. Cruz has six goals and five assists in fourteen games, setting the pace for the Badgers offensively. On the back end, sophomore Corson Ceuelemans (a first-round draft choice of the Columbus Blue Jackets) has three goals and six assists in eleven games played.
In net, senior Jared Moe has done most of the work between the pipes for Granato. In eleven games played, Moe has a 5-6-0 record, with a 2.75 GAA and .917 save percentage.
The Fantilli Brothers on Keeping Priorities Straight, National Pride, Thanksgiving as Canadian Expats, and Italian Roots
After Monday’s practice, the Fantilli brothers—still in full gear from the afternoon’s session—find seats on leather couches outside their coaches’ offices, hidden away on Yost’s second floor. Their equipment—between its presence and odor—provides a reminder of the exertion of the day’s practice.
Adam arrives first, before Luca pokes his head in and joins. Our conversation begins with the recent revelation on Everything College Hockey’s “Pucks In Deep” Podcast that he underwent a trip to the hospital as part of the illness that held him and several teammates out of the Minnesota series.
“Everything’s good now,” Adam assures the assembled press. “I just took the week to recover. I was out of the hospital pretty quick, just got into a hotel with my parents to stay away from my brother in the dorms. They helped me a lot. They made me food and helped me get my appetite back. Everything’s good now—lungs feel great.”
He adds that while it took some time to rediscover his wind in his first days back on the ice, that was out of the way by puck drop last Friday against Harvard: “Monday, Tuesday practice back felt a little bit tight in my chest, but after skating and getting back on the ice and feeling the cold air, I got used to it pretty fast. I really didn’t have any adjustment period against Harvard.”
With the serious topic out of the way, we drift toward speculation about June’s NHL Draft. Despite building momentum around the possibility that he will supplant Connor Bedard as the first overall pick, Adam insists that no good can come to him from reading that kind of punditry.
“I don’t look at any [draft prognostications],” he explains. “I have a big thing about being where my feet are, and my feet are in front of you guys right now, so I [want to] talk to you guys and be here. I don’t really look at that stuff. I try to pay as little attention to it as possible. Look at Sidney Crosby—the guy’s got no Instagram, no Twitter, nothing like that. Nate MacKinnon has like two posts on Instagram. These guys stay away from that stuff and look how they’re doing.”
When asked if he ever sneaks a glance at Bedard’s stats with the WHL’s Regina Pats, the younger Fantilli doubles down: “I have no clue what number he’s at—probably really high.”
With the World Juniors nearing on the horizon, we ask whether he is looking forward to representing his nation. In answering, he shows the same humility that precludes him from reading about his soaring draft stock: “It sounds like we’re gonna have a really good squad. I hope I can crack it and contribute to the country as much as I can.” At the risk of presumption, it feels fair to write Adam’s name in pen into the Canadian lineup come Halifax and Moncton this holiday season.
The discussion of national pride triggers a pivot to a discussion of the brothers’ Italian heritage and mutual affinity for Italian soccer.
“When [Italy] won the Euros two summers ago, where I’m from [Nobleton, Ontario] is a really heavily populated Italian community and being there was insane,” Adam tells us. “I mean the streets were flooded, people are going nuts. Half my family is from Italy. We went to go visit the ones that still live there this summer, so whenever we can, we support the country.” He adds that Italy’s failure to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar—sealed by a humbling 1-0 defeat to North Macedonia last March—was “heartbreaking.”
Nobleton’s Italian population grew out from nearby Woodbridge, a Toronto-suburb of a bit more than 100,000 and the home of Lightning center Anthony Cirelli, which had the highest concentration of Italians in Canada until Nobleton (with a population of just 6,500) supplanted it in the most recent census.
“When I went to school, I’d say like half my class, or three-quarters of the class was all Italian kids,” Adam observes. “Everybody has a lot of pride for Italy from there, so everybody tries to express as much as possible.”
For both brothers, last summer’s trip back to their ancestral home was a unique experience.
“There’s a certain feeling when you actually go there,” Adam says. “And meet all the people and be like ‘these guys are my family, this is where my family lived before they came over to Canada.’ And it’s fun having to translate with them because I’m not too good at Italian and they’re not too good at English. There’s a certain level of pride, a certain level of connection when you go over there or have everybody here.”
The Fantilli clan traces its roots back to Bagnoli del Trigno, a town of not quite a thousand in the Molise region, not far from Rome. The brothers are just two generations removed from their families arrival in North America—their grandparents having been the ones to brave the trans-Atlantic journey from Bagnoli to southern Ontario.
Nowadays, the Fantillis look forward to visits to their grandmother and the associated meals.
At an official weight of 183 pounds, the elder Fantilli is lighter than every Wolverine who suited up against Harvard last Saturday, save Dylan Duke, Nick Granowicz, and Gavin Brindley. As such, dinners cooked by his grandmother provide a chance to tack on mass, quipping “That’s how I kind of try to put on my pounds when I go over there and visit her.“
Luca goes on to set the scene of a typical Sunday dinner, as prepared by Nonna Fantilli: “The table is completely full. There’s a bunch of appetizers, like meats and stuff. There’s salami. There’s any type of Italian meat you can think of. She normally makes a rigatoni or a gnocchi or a spaghetti. Some type of pasta, which is the most insane thing. I think I eat like four bowls every time I go over there. Then she makes her famous cheesecake: cherry pie cheesecake, and then I add on probably another five pounds just eating that stuff. You’re definitely taking a nap after you eat there.”
As Canadians, the Fantillis did not return home last week to celebrate Thanksgiving, but that didn’t preclude them from enjoying the festivities.
“I know a bunch of the guys [who couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving] went out for dinner,” Luca says. “But there were a lot of people’s families who live in the Plymouth area that opened up their homes. Johnny Druskins—he’s one of my really close friends here—his family was kind enough to invite me over to the Lions game, so we went to the Lions game and then his grandma made us a nice Thanksgiving dinner, so it was awesome to bond with him and his family.” Evidently, living in Michigan is still new enough to Luca for Lions football to seem like a benefit on Thanksgiving.
For Luca, playing on a pair with his closest (non-sibling) friend on the team in Druskinis last weekend was a treat, and he believe their proximity away from the rink helped them click straight away when they got the chance:
“I don’t think there’s ever a moment besides when we’re sleeping that we’re not together. Me and Johnny are really close. We just kind of bonded right off the bat. I love how we got to play together this weekend, I think we showed that our off-ice chemistry definitely related to the ice. We were just knowing where each other were, we were communicating and just felt like we were chatting outside the rink, and it was just all kind of connected.”
Before closing, Luca, by now accustomed to the unique position of living in the shadow of his younger brother, recounts his first experience on a team with his brother: “Me and Adam, [playing lacrosse] was the first time we’ve ever been on a team together. We played together one year, and he was obviously a bigger kid, so he would just kind of run guys over, and then I just kind of picked up the ball behind. It always worked out in my favor.”
The story is Luca encapsulated: proud and good-natured with respect to his brother’s success, endlessly self-deprecating with respect to his own, all while never seeming to utter a word unaccompanied by a smile.
“So What Exactly Would You Say the Director of Hockey Operations Does Here?”: Checking in with Topher Scott
After Monday’s practice, we caught up with first-year director of hockey operations, Topher Scott. We begin the conversation by asking for a description of an average day in his new role.
“I think I’m still learning that every day,” Scott says with a smile. “I do just a lot of logistical things that make the whole thing kinda go in terms of just getting things ready for the players so they can have the success that they need—doing a lot of travel, doing a lot of just basically what anybody needs to get done for the program. So it’s been a learning curve, but it’s been fun.”
When I began covering practices, I was surprised to see that Scott is on the ice every day, a responsibility I had not previously associated with a “director of hockey operations.” Scott explains that he is not on the ice to coach, but rather support the players and coaching staff to help ensure a smooth operation: “[on the ice,] it’s a lot more of a managerial role, so it’s basically putting things in certain places for drills and stuff like that. I have a coaching background, so it’s a little different.”
Scott joined Brandon Naurato’s staff last summer amidst a turbulent offseason, but the combination of Naurato’s hockey mind and the opportunity represented by joining the Michigan program proved irresistible: “I’ve known Brandon for a long time, and he’s one of the smartest hockey guys I know. Obviously it was kind of a crazy summer with a lot of uncertainty with everything that was going on, but when he was named the interim coach, we had different conversations, and Michigan is my dream school. Getting to work with him and Mucks [Bill Muckalt] and Rassey came on board. It was something that was really, really exciting.”
Before arriving in Ann Arbor this summer, Scott had spent four years working at the company he founded, The Hockey Think Tank. The group’s website describes its mission as “Educating and inspiring all hockey players, parents, and coaches. Together, we are improving the game of hockey.”
“The objectives were literally just to make the game better, and doing that at a macro level, but also doing that at a micro level as well,” explains Scott. “There’s three pretty big stakeholders in all of youth sports: there’s the players, there’s the parents, and there’s the coaches, and if you can educate all three of those on, you know, I don’t want to say the right way to do things, but a certain way of doing things that we feel will help the kids develop into better players and better people, that’s what we were trying to do. Just trying to make the game better one parent, one player, one coach at a time.”
He goes on to explain that, while hockey does earn its perception as terminally committed to the way things have always been done in some respects, his experience reminded him of the number of people working in and around the sport to change that.
“I think hockey definitely has a bit of a reputation for being stuck in the mud sometimes, and sometimes, that’s a fair assessment, but at the end of the day, there’s a lot of really good people trying to effect change, a lot of really good people trying to do new things to make the game better,” says Scott. “Sometimes you just don’t see it, it’s more on a micro level where people are doing it with a certain family or a certain organization or things like that.”
With The Hockey Think Tank, Scott found himself focused on the development process for young hockey players. Inevitably, this work meant that Scott’s meticulous research and analysis collided with the financial interests of certain power brokers within the world of youth sports and with the whims of hockey parents.
“It’s an epidemic in youth development is sports specialization,” Scott explains. “And until we can get some reins on it, and again, the research keeps coming out and coming out that it’s not good to specialize.”
At the risk of reductionism, a key piece of the puzzle here is that the tactics or coaching philosophy engineered to get the best results for a 12U hockey team are not the tactics or philosophy that will produce the best sixteen-, seventeen-, or eighteen-year-old hockey players.
Scott wanted to help educate the youth hockey community on how to adopt a longer-term approach, one that would be in the best interests of young players. The pressure to specialize, one that can arrive before a young athlete reaches ten-years-old, is an obvious example of the financial incentives of those working in the world of youth sports not meshing with the research on successful outcomes for young athletes.
“At the end of the day, youth sports as a whole has become a business,” Scott says. “And so by having kids play the same sport, year round, that’s good for business for those people who are running those sports…I think there’s so many different areas of research that shows that specializing in different sports—from a burnout perspective, just from learning things in one sport that can translate to other sports—just all the research points to not specializing in one sport.”
Scott points out that while each individual case will come with its own extenuating circumstances, the broader picture remains the same: “[The choice to specialize or not] depends on physical maturation, mental maturation, emotional maturation when you want to really kind of zone in on one, and I think that’s kind of different for everybody, but I would definitely say not until you’re certainly a teenager. Mid-teens is when you should at least look at starting to specialize, before that definitely play multiple sports.”
To Scott, perhaps the greatest peril of specialization is the way that it invites burnout. There is no reason for hockey to feel like work to a ten-year-old, yet the strictures of the world of high-level youth hockey preclude kids from having the kind of unstructured experience that draws so many—Scott among them—into the game:
“I think you have to have fun playing hockey too, right? I think I love hockey because I played in my basement with my dad a lot and played it on the driveway with friends. It doesn’t have to be so structured all the time. You talk to people in Canada or some of the northern states and their fondest memories are playing on the pond or playing in their grandma and grandpa’s backyard. And now there’s a lot to be said about that on—growing that passion for it.”
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