Midweek Roundup 12.7.22
We preview Sparty weekend, talk to Seamus Casey about Team USA and competing in practice, review a three-win weekend on the women’s side, then close by chatting with Phil Lapointe
After a weekend in which Wisconsin found success scoring from distance, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team took to the ice for practice Monday intent on honing their skills as shot blockers.
With tennis balls replacing pucks to spare injury, the Wolverines engaged in a series of shooting and shot-blocking competitions.
“Obviously we let three or four goals in from the point [against Wisconsin],” explained head coach Brandon Naurato. “So just a fun way to do shot blocking—probably more mentality than technique—and then create a little game out of it. Just a fun Monday.”
According to senior forward Nick Granowicz, the drill was “different but a lot of fun.” Shot blocking is “definitely not the most fun thing [when it’s a puck instead of a tennis ball], but doing it is awesome because you know the boys on the bench will be hollering. You know you’re doing it for your teammates. It’s gotta be unselfish, even though it might hurt and suck, but you just gotta do it if you want to win.”
Beyond shot blocking, another point of emphasis following the Wisconsin series is connectivity. Along with hunting pucks and controlling the net front, being connected is one of the three central tenets for Naurato’s team this season. In Madison, challenges with remaining connected caused the Wolverines problems.
“It would probably just start with your breakouts,” said Naurato after Tuesday’s practice. “We’re just not as connected as consistently as we had been, and there’s reasons coming back into your zone that can get you disconnected or connected, so a simple example: when you backcheck, you would come back through the middle. When you come back through the middle…, then everyone’s connected for five-foot little passes, but say the two wingers come outside and then there’s three guys in the middle, it’s just disorganized. That’s why we did a lot of breakout stuff today. It’s just to get the reps and the muscle memory and guys in good spots.”
While following that basic script would seem simple enough, it becomes more complicated in the chaotic context of a hockey game. “There’s so many variables,” Naurato points out. “It’s changing d-pairs or forward lines—because we’ve had to with the illness and then a guy going doing or ten-minute misconducts. Does it break chemistry? It shouldn’t if we’re constantly playing the way that we want to play. Duke, Samo, and Fantilli have been playing together; they can close their eyes and should know where each other are. But there’s a million variables—guys can be tired, guys can be out for too long on their shift, that’s why you’re not connected.
“If everyone’s fresh all the time and playing their best hockey, it looks beautiful, but there’s just so many variables that go into it. The penalties ruin the flow of the game. Especially with the way our team is built right now versus last year, where you have power play guys and PK guys and maybe a little in between. If there’s thirteen power plays in a game, Adam Fantilli and Luke Hughes…aren’t playing as much five-on-five as they should.”
Scouting the Spartans
Last season, the Michigan State Spartans marked the ten-year anniversary of their last NCAA Tournament berth. Under the stewardship of Tom Anastos and then Danton Cole, the Spartans slipped from a lock to make the tournament and a threat once they got there to an afterthought at the bottom of the Big Ten’s depths. Last season, Michigan swept Cole’s Spartans in a November home-and-home, beat them at Yost then Little Caesars Arena on consecutive nights in February, then bludgeoned them 4-1 and 8-0 in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament. State ended the season with a 12-23-1 record, and Cole was out of work.
In the offseason, Michigan State tapped Adam Nightingale to begin the heavy lifting of a rebuild, after about a decade of mediocrity at a school and program with a much prouder history. Nightingale had played for the Spartans from 2003-2005, and his experience as head coach of the USNTDP between 2020 and 2022 figured to give him some valuable connections on the recruiting trail.
Between his playing days in East Lansing and coaching the NTDP in Plymouth, Nightingale made stops as a bantam and midget AA coach at Shattuck St. Mary’s in Minnesota and as a video and then assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings.
In an introductory press release, MSU Athletic Director Alan Haller said “Adam has a passion for the school and the program, and his combination of skill development, player development and recruiting ties promises to make the next era of Spartan hockey a successful chapter in the storied history of a proud program."
There was ample reason for optimism that Nightingale could restore Sparty to the station of the sport it occupied in the aughts and nineties, but, given the state of the program at the time of the hire, there also seemed to be a certain recognition that a rebuild would be a years’ long process rather than an overnight resurgence. Nightingale got straight to work on the recruiting trail as summer ticked over into fall, but those commitments still wouldn’t bear fruit until those players actually arrived on campus.
However, eighteen games into his first season back in East Lansing, Nightingale’s Spartans are doing their best to dispel the notion that this rebuild would require time. MSU sits at ninth in the Pairwise and twelfth in the latest USCHO poll.
Naurato and Nightingale know one another from their overlapping tenures with the Red Wings, and the former is excited by the possibility of Nightingale reinvigorating the Spartan program. “I think it’s good for [the state of] Michigan,” Naurato said. “I think it’s good for the rivalry. Michigan kids should go to Michigan or Michigan State. They should obviously go to Michigan, but if they don’t they should go to Michigan State.”
Despite suffering a setback in the form of a home sweep at the hands of Minnesota last weekend, Michigan State is not far removed from a 7-1 month of November—featuring sweeps of Ohio State, Wisconsin, and Miami along with a split against Penn State.
Freshmen forwards Daniel Russell and Karsen Dorwart are setting the pace up front for Nightingale: the former with six goals and twelve assists for a neat 1.0 points-per-game average and the latter not far behind with seven goals and ten assists in eighteen games.
In net, the Spartans spun the roulette wheel of the transfer portal with Drew DeRidder electing to spend his fifth year of eligibility with North Dakota, while Dylan St. Cyr arrived in East Lansing after four seasons with Notre Dame and one with Quinnipiac.
Though DeRidder was hardly the weak link for Cole’s teams, St. Cyr has been exemplary in filling the void DeRidder left behind between the pipes. In seventeen appearances, the twice-super senior has a sterling .924 save percentage and 2.53 GAA.
After Monday’s practice, Macomb, Michigan-native Nick Granowicz first expressed his enthusiasm for the rivalry with understatement. “We don’t really care for those guys over there in green,” said Granowicz. “Definitely one team you never want to lose to when you play for Michigan.”
When asked for his favorite memory playing against the Spartans, Granowicz couldn’t help but grin: “It was fun when we smoked them in playoffs [last spring]. Beating them at Little Caesars Arena is always a blast. Any time you beat them, it’s great.”
There will be six crucial Big Ten standings points on the line over the course of the home-and-home. If Michigan wants to take all six, it will have to work a bit harder than it did in beating the Spartans six times a year ago.
Checking in with Seamus Casey on Team USA, Playing with Ethan Edwards, and Practice Competitions
It was a big week for young Americans on the Wolverine roster with five players making the cut for Team USA’s World Juniors training camp next week in Plymouth, where they will vie for spots on the roster that travels to Halifax and Moncton over the holidays. Among that number are Luke Hughes, Rutger McGroarty, Dylan Duke, Gavin Brindley, and Seamus Casey. We caught up with Casey after Tuesday’s practice to discuss the news and settling into his freshman season.
Casey expressed his enthusiasm at the honor of wearing the Team USA uniform and the possibility of reuniting with former NTDP teammates. He added that even if playing in the World Junior over the holidays would eat into his one break from the grind of his freshman season, it would be more than worth the added physical toll:
“I think the way you gotta look at it is we’re super excited for this opportunity. You only really get two years of eligibility for this, and so, to get chosen, even if you were thinking ‘oh man, a break would’ve been nice’ this is such a unique opportunity that I won’t even really feel any physical stress.”
Like the other chosen four, Casey learned of the news via a phone call from USA Hockey’s John Vanbiesbrouck a day before the announcement. The individual phone calls meant that Casey couldn’t be certain which of his teammates had heard the same good news, so he was initially reluctant to broach the subject, especially with childhood best friend Gavin Brindley.
In describing that dynamic, Casey first joked that he and Brindley “can’t get rid of each other” before going on to describe the timeline in more detail. “The day we found we didn’t just go ask each other. You know the guys who are eligible, and we assumed we were gonna make it just because we thought we were playing well, but when I found out Gavin made it I was pumped because I didn’t want to go ask him, and he didn’t want to go ask me. I think I heard him talking to Rut, and then I knew right away, but I want to say for about thirty minutes when we got to the rink, we weren’t sure…if they had gotten a call or whatever.”
Before he heads off for potential international duty, Casey will get one more go round this weekend with his regular partner Ethan Edwards. Both of them New Jersey Devils draft picks, the pair seem to have settled in as a fixture in Naurato’s lineup, much to Casey’s delight.
“I love playing with Eddy. I think we share a lot of the same ideas and opinions on how we like to play—on the blue line and in our own end, so it’s worked out well. We get along great off the ice, which is the most important thing. We trust each other and hopefully I’ll keep playing with him.”
For Casey, that mutual thought process has helped spur an immediate on-ice rapport: “When we have the puck, I know what he wants to do, he knows what I want to do, and it’s not set plays, it’s just habits. You can work off that and what we try to do as a team, and I can support him that way and vice versa.”
Casey and Edwards first got to know one another last spring, when the former was spending lots of time on campus in anticipation of his forthcoming freshman season. That relationship then proved useful when Casey became the third current Wolverine defenseman drafted by the Devils last June. When he was whisked off to Devils development camp weeks later, it made the introduction to the organization easier to find a familiar face there in Edwards.
“I was spending a lot of time [in Ann Arbor] in the spring, way before the draft, so I had met him plenty of times, and then after I got picked it was exciting, because of Luke [Hughes] and Eddy, so when I went to camp it was nice to have someone.”
When asked whether other Devils prospects ever question the preponderance of Michigan defensemen amongst their ranks, Casey laughs: “I’ve seen a couple things like oh it’s funny, it’s unique, but I love it. It’s nice to have especially playing with my D partner like that. I haven’t heard too much.”
In discussing the tennis ball drill from Monday’s practice, Casey noted that the correlation between being a great shooter with a puck and a tennis ball was not always neat: “This is funny, I think Mackie [Samoskevich] probably has one of the best shots in college hockey. I think it’s pretty obvious. But he couldn’t shoot the ball. I don’t think he got one shot off the entire drill, so that made no sense.”
Casey explained that the drills ended with a game in which players got a point for getting a shot through, a point for blocking a shot, and five points for scoring. That the drill was organized around competition is no surprise at a Naurato-run practice.
According to Casey, Naurato tries to “make everything like game situations and competitive because that’s when you’re forced to think about things like you’re in a game and then go problem solve. Even if we’re doing a drill, we try to make it a game, so I like that a lot.” He adds that the team keeps track of everyone’s records in “small area games” on video screens in the team facility at Yost.
Casey shares that his record was 14-11 when last he checked the standings. Upon learning from Topher Scott, passing through the interview, that his partner Ethan Edwards is currently atop the scoreboard, Casey perks up: “If it’s Eddy, I gotta be close because we’re always together.” When asked for his current ranking, he adds “I think top eight, I’m on the first screen, so…”
Having consulted his computer for the updated standings, Scott confirms that Edwards is atop the list and reveals that Casey currently ranks seventh. “Top eight and not eight,” says Casey with faux bravado.
WoHo Wednesday
Last weekend, the University of Michigan women’s hockey team built on the momentum it established at the Beehive Showcase in Salt Lake City by picking up three consecutive victories.
On Friday evening, the Wolverines earned an overtime victory over UM-Dearborn on a goal from freshman forward Julia Lindahl, before dominating the second leg of the home-and-home at Yost the following afternoon for a 5-1 victory. Lindahl added to her team-leading goal total by netting her seventh and eighth goals of the season Saturday, with Katie German, Cara Kolwich, and Miki Rubin also scoring. Across the sweep, Jenna Trubiano’s team left no doubt as to who the top Maize-and-Blue-clad, winged-helmet-sporting Wolverines in the CCWHA are.
As if the sweep weren’t enough for one weekend, the Wolverines proceeded to score another overtime victory Sunday, this time knocking off Concordia University at Chelsea’s Arctic Coliseum on a goal from German. Across the three victories, Sandrine Ponnath stopped ninety-three of the ninety-eight shots she faced.
With three more wins under its collective belt, Trubiano’s team now can claim the fourth-best record in the twenty-nine team ACHA by points percentage. It will close out the 2022 calendar year this Friday, when it hosts the University of Rhode Island.
Phil Lapointe on Synthetic Ice on the Diag and Free Dinners from Owen Power
Thanks in part to junior forward Philippe Lapointe, Yost wasn’t the only spot to get a skate in on the University of Michigan’s campus this week. The Novi native helped organize a skating rink on the Diag Monday night as part of a class project:
“My group came up with the idea to do that in our entrepreneurship class…We were just trying to create an event where people could de-stress with finals week and try to get out and have some time with their friends.”
Lapointe’s PSYCH 223 course is built around organizing “a product, service, or event, so we came up with the idea of trying to put an ice skating rink on the Diag. We ran with it, partnered up with CSG [Central Student Government], and found an ice rental company, and we were the middlemen in all of that.”
Two of Lapointe’s teammates, freshmen Luca Fantilli and Rutger McGroarty, ensured that they wouldn’t risk injury by arriving at the temporary and crowded rink in full gear: “I told them I think it would be funny if they came out in full gear, so they’re good sports about it. They looked funky out there in full gear, but a good time.”
Though a pleasant evening for all involved, Lapointe laments that the ice surface and crowd did limit his ability to scout potential walk-on talent: “The ice wasn’t the best ice. It’s fake, like synthetic ice, and it was pretty small, so it’s kind of hard to actually stride. I saw more people walking with skates than actually skating, but it was just the feel of the winter wonderland effect.”
Last week, Lapointe and his house-mates Eric Ciccolini, Jacob Truscott, and Steven Holtz drove into Detroit to see Owen Power and the visiting Buffalo Sabres.
The group had a chance to eat dinner with Power, who also stopped by Ann Arbor to see his former teammates. With Power now on an NHL contract, albeit an entry level one, the reunion also meant a free meal for Lapointe and company.
“We went out to dinner, and he offered to pay, so that was nice of him. He came the day before and came to Ann Arbor, stopped by the house and stopped by practice. We went out to dinner with him that night and made sure to get every appetizer,” Lapointe says with a smile. “It was pretty much already established that he was paying, so we’re just joking around with him about that like ‘hey you’re making the big bucks now.”
When asked with less levity about what it’s like to see former teammates thriving in the NHL, Lapointe notes that it’s funny to reconcile their professional success with recent memories of those teammates as stereotypical college students:
“It’s crazy to see the success that they’re having, but they’re still the same people that were here. They’re still the Owen Power that didn’t know how to make steak or the Matty Beniers that was always running late to class. It’s just who they are and just because they’re at that next stage, they’re still our good friends. Just because they’re making money or having success doesn’t mean they’re not the best guys ever. We’ve been in contact with them, and they’re going to try and come down for spring term and hang out and see the guys, so really excited for that.”
Thank you for reading Gulo Gulo Hockey! Thanks to @umichhockey on Twitter for this preview image. You can support our work further by subscribing or by giving us a tip for our troubles at https://ko-fi.com/gulogulohockey.