Midweek Roundup 1.18.23
A successful trip west on the women’s side, a pivotal matchup with Minnesota, and a glance around the B1G
“The bar’s high. It’s Michigan,” said University of Michigan men’s ice hockey coach Brandon Naurato after Tuesday’s practice. “We want to be the best team in the country. We’re not happy that we’re in the top ten, and you know, we’d be in the tournament right now. We’re not happy about that. We want to be the best so that’s our expectation.”
The interim coach offered this reflection after a weekend split with Ohio State that opened with his team’s worst performance of the season and concluded with one of its best.
The memory of Friday’s humbling 7-2 defeat remains fresh in everyone’s minds, but the coach emphasizes that while reflection is essential, wallowing is counterproductive, and that the Wolverines need to stick to their process with an eye toward season-long ambitions
“I would have never guessed after the week we had last week that we’d show up like that on Friday,” Naurato said, referring to the energy at practice following the team’s return from the holiday break.
“Stuff happens, and we deal with it,” Naurato added. “This group’s thinking about the right stuff, and we’ve had a really good last three or four days, where we’ve reflected and know where we’re at and not happy with it, and we know where we want to get.”
Though the Friday loss wasn’t cause for panic, it did spur some tinkering with the lineup card. At Tuesday’s practice, Michigan organized itself as follows:
Duke—A. Fantilli—Brindley
McGroarty—T.J. Hughes—Samoskevich
Hallum—Estapa—Draper
Lapointe—Granowicz—Moyle
Ciccolini
Pehrson—L. Hughes
Truscott—Casey
Edwards—Keranen
L. Fantilli—Druskinis
Miles
In that alignment, the one major shift in the forward group is the flip-flopping of Gavin Brindley and Mackie Samoskevich on the right side of the Wolverines’ top six. Naurato said the swap was “just to try and spark something.”
As he explicated the change, Naurato added that he doesn’t conceive of either the Fantilli or Hughes line as first and the other second, but rather that they combine to provide 1A and 1B options atop the forward group. He went on to describe the switch as providing “different looks” and to make it “tougher for [Minnesota] to match.”
On the back end, the Wolverines broke up all three of the pairs that took the ice against Ohio State. Michigan’s top four (Hughes with Truscott and Casey with Edwards) had more or less remained in place since Edwards made his season debut against Lake Superior State.
In characteristic fashion, Naurato stressed the importance of a sound process over any lineup tweaks or rah-rah speeches as it seeks out its first sweep of the B1G season against the conference leaders: “I feel like we have something to prove, but we’re just trying to go back to playing great, great hockey.”
WoHo Wednesday: Another Successful Road Trip
For the second time this season, the University of Michigan women's ice hockey team traveled to the Mountain Time Zone. In their first journey west, the Wolverines took two of three victories at the Beehive Showcase in Salt Lake City, trouncing Montana State, beating hosts Utah, and falling to UMass-Amherst. On this trip, this time to Arizona, Michigan once again took two of three wins, but upgraded its third result to a draw.
The trip began with a Friday clash with Grand Canyon University. On the strength of two Kelsey Swanson power play goals and an even-strength marker from Maria Di Cresce, the Wolverines raced to a 3-1 lead at the first intermission. Megan Mathews extended that margin to three in the second, before Michigan slammed the door with goals from Julia Lindahl, Erin Proctor, and a second from Mathews in the third. In sum, the result was a 7-1 rout of the Antelopes, who entered the weekend fifteenth-ranked in the ACHA.
On Saturday, Michigan traveled to Tempe, where it salvaged a draw against Arizona State thanks to a 6-on-4 power play goal with Sandrine Ponnath pulled to level the score at three with just three seconds remaining. Swanson again did the honors, with Lindahl providing the assist, before a scoreless overtime period.
In the weekend’s third act, the Wolverines outlasted the Sun Devils 2-1, thanks to first period goals from Lindahl and German and a thirty-six of thirty-seven performance from Ponnath in net. Lindahl’s goal was her team-leading eleventh on the season, and the freshman’s fifteen points also rank first on the team.
Following a successful journey to the Valley of the Sun, Michigan now sits fourth in the ACHA in points and third in points percentage. The Wolverines will be back in action at Yost this weekend for a two game set with Penn State, beginning Saturday evening and then culminating in a Sunday matinee. With the men’s team off in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, it is the perfect weekend for local readers to take in some live ACHA hockey.
Scouting the Gophers
When Michigan travels to the twin cities this weekend, it will find a formidable foe waiting for them. Bob Motzko’s Gophers sit atop the Pairwise and B1G standings.
For Naurato, it is a matchup that demands little extrinsic motivation: “If you’re looking for headlines, it’d be they swept us at home, we were undermanned, they’re the number one team in the country, they’re a top team in general. Minnesota is Minnesota, and they’re a good team, and they’re tough to play in their own rink, and we’re looking forward to playing them.”
In a blunt summation of the task at hand, Naurato added “We just need to win hockey games, so there’s some urgency and desperation, or there needs to be, for us this weekend.”
Minnesota is the rare opponent that can rival Michigan in elite talent, with the Gophers top line of Logan Cooley (twelve goals and sixteen assists) between Matthew Knies (thirteen goals and eleven assists) and Jimmy Snuggerud (twelve goals and seventeen assists) as good as any in the nation.
The Gophers can also boast one of the nation’s most effective crops of defensemen with a blend of veterans (senior Jackson Lacombe and junior Brock Faber) and youth (freshmen Luke Middlestadt and Ryan Chesley). As Naurato pointed out, that Middlestadt can play for Team USA at the World Juniors and then return to a seventh defenseman role with the Gophers is a testament to Minnesota’s depth on the blue line.
Behind all that talent plays senior netminder Justen Close and his unassailable 1.97 GAA and .925 save percentage.
At the Gophers’ home barn, 3M Arena at Mariucci, Michigan will have to contend with an outsized sheet of ice for the second series this season (the other being the December trip to Wisconsin).
Naurato explained that the wide sheet will demand shrewd decision making on the forecheck of the Wolverines:
“It’s tough on any Olympic sheet, and theirs is bigger than an Olympic sheet to really pressure, because if you get outside the dots and you’re overly aggressive, you can be vulnerable to middle ice. So we have to be smart with our angles…I would just say pressure versus containment reads, that’d be probably the biggest thing. Because it’s so wide, if you get out of position you’re lost, and they’re really good on that sheet.”
When the Gophers traveled to Ann Arbor in mid-November, they were greeted by a severely undermanned Michigan team, and while the hosts fought valiantly all weekend, they could not keep pace with their guests, losing 5-2 and 6-3 on consecutive evenings. The illness that ran through the Wolverine dressing room made hockey an afterthought during what should have been a week of preparation. Now close to full health, Michigan is keen to acquit itself better than it was able to at home in November.
Taking Stock of the B1G Landscape
After last weekend’s split with Ohio State, Michigan’s men’s team has reached the exact midpoint of its B1G season. As such, it felt like a good time to take another glance around the conference.
A seven-team league inevitably leads to scheduling irregularities, so Big Ten teams have played between twelve and sixteen games. In the table below, teams are listed in order of points percentage rather than raw points to account for their variable workloads. To add a bit more context, I’ve always included conference goal differential, overall goal differential, and Pairwise ranking for each of the seven B1G teams.
In looking at this table, the obvious takeaway is that the conference is damn good. If the season ended today, five of seven teams would be in the NCAA Tournament. According to the Pairwise, four of the top eight teams in the country play in the Big Ten, and the worst team in the conference (by a considerable distance) is just thirty-fifth in the country. Every team in the conference, albeit to varying degrees, has found life harder in the league than outside of it by goal difference.
In terms of the conference standings, a clear top and bottom has taken shape, but the middle is muddled. Minnesota is dominant atop the standings, while Wisconsin has been poor. In between, the heap of Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan, and Notre Dame is separated by fewer points than the gap from Minnesota down to number two in the standings or from Wisconsin up to number six.
For Michigan, this state of affairs suggests that winning the regular season crown for the first time in program history is unlikely. A slow start in league play characterized by inconsistent performances, along with a long list of teams to overtake, means that Michigan may have already played its way out of ending the regular season atop the B1G hill.
However, there is manageable but difficult work to be done for the Wolverines to maximize their chances of repeating as Big Ten playoff champions. In the Big Ten Tournament, the top seed earns a first round bye, with seeds two through four hosting five through seven in best-of-threes. As it stands, Michigan would travel to East Lansing for the first round as the best of the three lower teams.
However, catching one or two of the foes above it would clinch first-round home ice, and climbing all the way up to second (where the Wolverines finished last year) would guarantee Michigan playing from the comfort of Yost until at least the conference title game.
The first half of the B1G season did rise to the Wolverines’ lofty standards. However, with good health and a young team growing more battle tested by the day, there is no reason to doubt that Michigan can make a serious run in the second half of the conference calendar.
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