Midweek Roundup 1.4.23: a Midseason Review
Midweek Roundup 1.4.23: a Midseason Review
We revisit our preseason roster preview questions to take stock of the first half for each position group
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Before the University of Michigan men’s hockey team’s last game before its holiday break, interim head coach Brandon Naurato read aloud a message. It was less a pump-up speech and more a creed, a manifesto, or as Naurato called it a summation of his “core beliefs.” The message?
“The nature of the game is inherent chaos, two opposing teams trying to achieve the same objective all while preventing each other from completing that objective. Tactics help make this chaos more manageable and predictable. This means that for a team to successfully achieve the game objective, they must create some order within that chaos with the use of tactics.
“When we create tactics, we are creating an order that we are accustomed to. Our tactics are known to us, therefore are familiar and predictable to us. That’s why we want to impose our identity on the chaos, and it’s important that it’s our identity.
“When things are predictable you don’t have to expend as much energy. Hockey’s an extremely expensive activity in terms of energy. However, we can use our brains’ predictability hack to make it more energy efficient. A chaotic game is extremely unpredictable, but when we impose our order through effective tactics, we make the game more predictable for our players, which means it’s more energy efficient. And when our players are functioning more energy efficiently, they expend less energy making sense of the game than the opponent, thus giving us an advantage, increasing the probability of achieving the game objective.
“When tactics are properly trained and applied to a game, the game becomes more predictable for players making the players function more energy efficiently, which is a massive advantage in an energy expensive task like hockey.”
As Michigan embarks on the second half of its season, Naurato and his staff will look to continue putting that philosophy into practice and perfecting a structure that Elite Prospects’ Mitch L. Brown referred to as possibly “the best outside the NHL.”
The Wolverines are coming off a strong first half, ranked 7th in the latest USCHO poll and 8th in the almighty Pairwise, but a start with some warts. The team achieved mostly strong results against excellent competition, but a 4-6 mark in Big Ten play leaves something to be desired.
The Michigan staff took advantage of the holiday break to conduct a thorough review of the team’s first half performance—at both a team-wide and individual level.
When assessing the team as a whole, Naurato noted that he was impressed with his group’s productivity from within the offensive zone but saw room for improvement on the forecheck:
“The biggest surprise [at a team-wide level from the staff’s first half review] is how many O-zone goals we had, where Michigan has been predominantly a rush and power play team for thirty years. And it’s not like our rushes are poor; it’s more what if we weren’t scoring ozone goals?…I think the only thing I’ll tweak the second half, and it’s not like structure stuff, just maybe doing a better job at teaching it to the guys, it’s forecheck, so then we lay more pucks in now instead of always trying to attack off the rush.”
To Naurato, that observation is a reflection of the team’s growth arc over the course of the year. As the campaign began, his staff focused on other aspects of the game, and now that the team is approaching mastery in those areas, it’s ready to expand its repertoire.
“You are what you eat, and you are where you spend your time or put value in,” Naurato explained after Tuesday’s practice. “I have put a ton of value in breakouts, transition, O-zone play for sure, and then all the defending stuff we’ll put more value into the forecheck to feed our ozone. I think they’ve got a lot of the other stuff, and now we can just build on it.”
Happy New Year from your friends at Gulo Gulo Hockey, and welcome to the first Midweek Roundup of 2023. Our format for this week is simple: we’ll revisit one question from our preseason roster preview for each position group. We’re going to skip a pre-scout for Friday’s exhibition contest with the NTDP, since it is just that, an exhibition, and instead devote our time to a review of the first half.
Forwards: First and Fourth Set, so What’s in the Middle?
Michigan entered the season with major questions concerning its forward group thanks to the departure of star talent like Matty Beniers, Kent Johnson, Thomas Bordeleau, and Brendan Brisson as well as highly functional veterans like Garrett Van Wyhe, Jimmy Lambert, and Johnny Beecher, while breaking in a talented and robust but of course inexperienced freshmen class.
Specifically, I wondered whether those freshmen would be ready to carry the serious offensive freight Beniers and company had hauled last season, how sophomores Dylan Duke and Mackie Samoskevich would respond to more featured roles, and what the plan would be to rebuild Van Wyhe, Lambert, and Nolan Moyle’s exemplary fourth line with the former two out of the picture.
I’ll start with the second question, because it’s the quickest to answer and can help settle us into the first. In brief, Duke and Samoskevich have been spectacular in their joint ascendance to the top line and power play after playing in supporting third line roles the season prior. The former has ten goals and eight assists in twenty games, having established himself as a force around the goal mouth, a relentless puck hound, and responsible defensive forward. The latter has twelve goals and nine assists in twenty games, devastating defenses along the wing with his dual threat skill as a shooter and playmaker.
Both Duke and Samoskevich deserve tremendous credit for their uptick in production as sophomores, but of course, there must also be a mention of the outstanding freshman center whom they now flank. Freshman center Adam Fantilli, who didn’t turn eighteen until the season was two games old, has arguably been the best player in college hockey.
In sixteen games, Fantilli has eleven goals and fifteen assists (1.73 points-per-game). He has been so dominant that it’s difficult to identify the qualities that distinguish him. Normally, calling someone a “complete player” or something to that effect suggests that the player doesn’t have any singularly exceptional skills. In Fantilli’s case, it’s the opposite; his skillset is so well rounded and sharpened that it’s hard to find any one ability to point to as the vital one.
The Nobleton, Ontario native shows remarkable hands as a puck carrier, outstanding vision as a passer, and a devastating shot whether as a one-timer or at the end of a rush of his own.
Though he plays a different position, Fantilli shares Owen Power’s ability to appear in utter control of everything that happens when he is on the ice. Between Duke and Samoskevich’s steps forward and Fantilli’s instant domination, Brandon Naurato has assembled one of the best lines in NCAA hockey.
As for a revamped fourth line, Naurato appears to have settled on the combination of Nick Granowicz, Mark Estapa, and Moyle. Though not always listed fourth on the line chart, the trio function as a fourth line in practice: it is a unit that won’t score much but will spend the majority of shifts playing deep in the opponent’s end of the rink, while affording that opposition hardly any offensive looks of its own. Granowicz provides speed and defensive responsibility. Estapa brings snarl and skill, while dominating puck battles all over the rink. Moyle is the ultimate possession player, relishing the process of laying a puck into the corner and throwing in a shoulder into a defender or two to keep the play alive.
It’s entirely possible that Naurato elects to tinker with either of these lines in the second half (though this is probably more likely to unfold with the fourth line than the imperious first), but, as it stands, the questions for Michigan’s forward group as the season progresses is about how to organize the middle six.
While the Wolverines haven’t arrived at a clear solution here, the good news is that the team has no shortage of credible options.
In T.J. Hughes, Rutger McGroarty, Gavin Brindley, and Jackson Hallum, Naurato has a quartet of talented freshmen who have all flashed serious and diverse ability in the season’s first half.
Hughes has been the season’s breakout star after arriving as an unheralded and undrafted recruit from the AJHL’s Brooks Bandits. He has been a valuable power play contributor and is tied with McGroarty as the team’s highest scorer beyond the top line (each with nineteen points).
The Hamilton, Ontario-born freshman has shown a goal scorer’s instincts around the net all season, including on a dazzling goal against Lake Superior State in which he sent the Laker netminder sprawling from point blank range before a tidy forehand finish.
It was perhaps the closest I’ve seen a hockey player come to rounding the keeper in the inimitable style of the Brazilian Ronaldo.
McGroarty, often with Brindley as a running mate, has shown versatility, physicality, and intelligence all outpacing his youth. The Nebraskan freshman has brought a lethal wrist shot, proven he can play around the net or on the perimeter on the power play, and kept the play moving in the right direction on every line he’s been a part of.
If there is one question for McGroarty to answer in the second half, it’s what exactly is his role/specialty? He’s been a strong scorer, but his versatility means there is much more to his game. For lack of a better term, McGroarty—while he has been among the Wolverines best skaters—doesn’t seem to have a thing yet. This isn’t a slight to him and in fact a testament to the diverse nature of his contributions, but I believe one of the challenges for Naurato moving forward will be to define a slightly clearer role for a player who appears on the road to stardom.
As for Brindley, a frequent McGroarty linemate, that thing appears to be a unique blend of dynamic skating with or without the puck and defensive responsibility. With one goal and nine assists through twenty games, the Floridian hasn’t lit up the scoreboard quite like Hughes or McGroarty, but it’s impossible to watch a Michigan game without noticing number four.
Brindley has bounced from center to the wing and back throughout the season and also played with a number of different running mates. This process has been useful as an exercise in experimentation to explore different possibilities, but Michigan will likely want to settle on his place in the lineup to maximize his second half contributions.
Jackson Hallum has distinguished himself through his exceptional skating as a freshman. Whether it’s top-end speed or refined edges you fancy, the Eagan, Minnesota native’s acumen as a skater is apparent on every shift.
That ability has made him a major headache for opposing power plays and allowed him to fit in with just about any two other forwards on the team.
To close out the freshmen contingent of middle six candidates, In Kienan Draper, Naurato has a player who perhaps lacks the top-end offensive ceiling of some of his fellow freshmen forwards, but Draper’s skill set looks perfect for him to develop into a Van Wyhe/Lambert/Moyle-style four-year contributor as his career progresses.
As for veteran middle six candidates, Naurato has three main options: Philippe Lapointe, Jay Keranen, and Eric Ciccolini.
Lapointe has been effective across a variety of roles this season to date, not necessarily providing a ton of scoring, but making his teammates look better through sound positioning, quality decision making, and enough offensive upside to capitalize on opportunities. He has shown that he can fit in at the top or bottom of the lineup thanks in large part to his intelligence and selfless play.
Keranen is a more curious case, since he can play up front or along the blue line, though the former is his more natural role, but he can provide a steady defensive presence on the Wolverines’ third line.
Meanwhile, Ciccolini has again seen his season at least partially derailed by injury (this time the product of an ugly hit by Minnesota’s Logan Cooley that sent him headlong in the boards). Fortunately, the senior was a full participant in practice this week, so this weekend’s exhibition will afford an opportunity to get back up to game speed and kick start a strong second half.
With all of those options in the middle six, Michigan’s path forward seems to hinge on its ability to maximize the varied and quality skill sets at its disposal in the middle six.
Beyond the options listed here, there is of course one more wild card that could shape the second half: the potential debut of freshman Frank Nazar.
Nazar, a first round selection of the Chicago Blackhawks last summer, has yet to appear after undergoing surgery for a lower body injury as the season began. His potential return would be a major coup for Naurato’s team, not least because it would provide one more natural center on a team in which those are in short supply. The Mount Clemens native was a first rounder primarily because of his dynamism in transition. If Naurato could add that weapon behind Fantilli, the Wolverines would immediately be able to make a case at having the nation’s scariest forward group.
When asked whether the timeline for a potential Nazar return has cleared up at all, Naurato said “there’s a goal of him maybe in a couple weeks jumping on the ice, but I have no clue if he’s gonna be back or not. If it is, it’s a huge bonus. If Frankie does come back, he’ll be at 100%. For me, it’s the same reason you get the surgery, you think about their body, and he’s got fifteen-twenty years of hockey, so just thinking about the kid.”
In summary, the TLDR here is that Michigan has an elite top line, a highly functional fourth line, and numerous quality options in the middle six. Up front, the primary challenge for Naurato and his staff in the second half of the season will be finding the right arrangement for that middle six to ensure a stable supply of secondary scoring.
Here, it’s worth noting that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a group so dependent on its youth didn’t always look as though its sum total was as strong as its component parts. However, with those young players fast earning greater experience, it feels reasonable to expect that the group will only improve its consistency as the season pushes onward.
The Blue Line: Luke and Beyond
When the season began, my biggest question about the Wolverine blue line concerned Luke Hughes: could he build on a remarkable freshman campaign and win the Hobey Baker as the top player in college hockey? The logic went that Hughes—who scored seventeen goals and gave twenty-two assists over his first season in Ann Arbor—would be poised for a run at that trophy.
Through half a season, Hughes isn’t a Hobey front runner, primarily because his gaudy goal figures from his freshman season haven’t returned as a sophomore. In terms of points, Hughes is producing at about the same rate as he did a year ago (0.95 points-per-game in ‘21-22, 0.90 in ‘22-23), but just three of his eighteen points this season are goals.
The moments of individual brilliance are still alive in Hughes’ game, whether it’s in his graceful rambles through the neutral zone or in humbling forwards who dare apply pressure on him at his post along the point.
Whenever a player’s scoring experiences a dip, the natural place to turn is shooting percentage. Hughes scored on 17.5% of his shots a year ago, compared to just 4.7% so far this season.
Last year may have been an outlier, and it is probably unreasonable to expect a player to shoot at a 17.5% clip across a whole career, but Hughes is definitely a better scorer than this year’s 4.7% figure suggests. Of course, it’s not as simple as automatically aggressing back toward last year’s number, but such a dramatic dip indicates that sophomore is more than a little snakebitten.
Naurato said Tuesday that his review of Hughes’ first half affirmed the theory that the biggest difference between Hughes’ season this year versus last isn’t process but rather outcome:
“Without getting into crazy data, I’ve looked at everything from where his shot location is—is it off the rush, is it in zone, is there traffic at the net? He has almost identical data to last year—it’s the shooting percentage, and it’s not because he’s taking bad shots or a higher volume from bad areas. They’re just not going in.”
The best news for Michigan is that the team’s defense corps has emerged as an obvious strength, even on a team laden with talent at every level.
Hughes’ partner on the Wolverines top pair has been junior Jacob Truscott. As a sophomore, Truscott showed the makings of a strong modern defensive defenseman: positionally sound, decisive and quick in clearing his zone, more than skilled enough as a passer and skater to fit in with the Wolverines’ high-flying style. This season, Truscott has added more offensive dynamism to his defensive acumen, scoring at a 0.58 points-per-game pace compared to 0.43 a year ago. He has earned power play minutes as a junior, and his consistency makes him a perfect partner to afford Hughes the space and freedom to maximize his talents.
Meanwhile, on the second pair, the duo of sophomore Ethan Edwards and freshman Seamus Casey have shown instant chemistry since joining forces. To Naurato, their success is at least in part due to their styles overlapping and their abilities complementing one another. Both are excellent skaters who love to leverage their skating and puck-handling abilities into controlling play, but within that framework there are distinctions.
“Ethan’s super hard, kills a lot of plays, a freak athlete—I think he can do a backflip standing still,” says Naurato. “He’s an elite skater but way more powerful.
“Where Seamus is puck on a string—not that he’s finesse or soft—he’s hard in his own right, but he doesn’t need to go up with a guy my size and go shoulder-to-shoulder. He’s going to outthink you and use his feet and his brain to kill plays and his stick detail, so I think they complement each other well.”
As for the third pair, Naurato has a bevy of strong options. Freshmen Johnny Druskinis and Luca Fantilli have shown excellent chemistry together—the former bringing physicality and decisiveness in his own end, the latter an outstanding puck mover.
Senior Keaton Pehrson has quietly provided a steady defensive presence while also proving himself a more than capable playmaker from the back end. Meanwhile, Keranen brings technical proficiency, versatility, and positional solidity as another option for the third pairing.
Then, of course, there is Steven Holtz, a strong-skating and intelligent presence on the blue line, who hasn’t appeared since the team’s trip to State College in early November, having been hit hardest by the illness that ripped through the team later that month. The junior is back to skating in a light-blue non-contact jersey at practice, but there is no definitive time table for his return.
As Naurato explains, Holtz’s absence is unique and thus requires an exceptional degree of care and thought: “He’s got a lot going on. He’s got to make up some school stuff, but he’s doing good. He’s getting back into it. I just think there’s a lot of logistical stuff to just make sure his long-term health will be good.”
To play with the offensive flair Naurato would like from his team makes serious demands of a defense corps. Naurato’s blue liners need to be comfortable making skilled breakout plays under pressure rather than deferring to lobbed pucks into the neutral zone. They bear the responsibility of setting up opportunities for the team’s skilled forward group. They need to be comfortable in isolation when an opponent pounces for a transition opportunity.
This unit excels in all those areas, and, to me, even with forwards oozing skill and two strong goaltenders, the combination of depth and elite skill makes it the clear strength of this team. Simply put, Michigan has too many quality defensemen for them all to play at once.
Goaltending: Portillo’s Progress
Entering the season, junior goaltender Erik Portillo—coming off a sophomore campagign in which he played all but forty-three minutes in the Wolverine crease and posted a .925 save percentage as a first-time starter—appeared such a certainty that the only question was what the back-up plan might look like.
Portillo remains the clear number one option in the crease, though it was not as smooth a first half as his 2021-22 numbers might have indicated.
The good news is that the first half did afford Noah West the chance to emerge as a more than capable second option. West’s first opportunity of the season came in the trip to Penn State, with Portillo out sick. The Wolverines split the weekend series, but the Friday evening defeat left nothing to be desired from West, who stopped seventy-eight of the eighty-three shots he saw over the weekend.
Thanks to the strong performance, West also earned a start against Harvard later in the month, stopping twenty-six of thirty Crimson shots on net. It was perhaps not quite as convincing as his performance in State College but impressive nonetheless. A season save percentage of .920, having played twice against the offense tied for seventh in the nation in scoring and once against the offense tied for fourth in that category, suggests Michigan has a strong second option between the pipes in West.
Before the season, we suggested that freshman Tyler Shea—a Los Angeles County native who spent his last season of junior hockey with the BCHL’s Wenatchee Wild—would likely only appear in the event of emergency. That prediction has borne out so far, though not in the way we expected. Shea’s lone appearance this season came dressed as a winger in the illness-riddled Minnesota series, where he played his part by serving a too many men minor then retreating to the bench. If Shea is going to see game action between the pipes this year, Friday’s exhibition game with the NTDP is the likeliest occasion.
As for Portillo, I decided to break down his performance by month over the course of his season and a half as Michigan starter to get a clearer picture of his overall body of work.
Looking at these numbers, I have three main takeaways, which I’ll offer in ascending order of optimism inspired for the rest of the season.
First, Portillo’s start to the ‘22-23 season is beneath last year’s standard. His .909 save percentage is sixteen points below last year’s figure, and while we could perhaps handwave some of that away to the higher scoring, less structured nature of early season hockey, Portillo registered back-to-back .920 months in October and November a year ago. Even with a .905 in December ‘21, he stopped pucks at a higher rate through the same portion of last season. There are some extenuating circumstances to consider here, most notably that he gave up five goals in both of the Minnesota games that Michigan played with a severely undermanned skater group. However, the overall picture of the numbers is pretty clear: Portillo has not quite lived up to his sophomore standard.
Second, and this is where we pivot into the reasons for optimism, Portillo’s save percentage has improved with each passing month this season. It probably doesn’t feel that way, because Portillo conceded two goals he would have wanted back in the penultimate game of the first half against Michigan State at Munn, and it’s easy to see why it might feel as though the goaltender’s struggles were intensifying late into December. However, the junior netminder was actually trending in the opposite direction (.905 in October, .911 in November, .915 in December).
Third, and while this is in some ways the most speculative, it is also the most encouraging: Portillo returned from the holiday break a year ago in imperious form.
In the three full months remaining in the season, he went .948, .927, .925. In other words, in the second half the towering Swede was near impenetrable. If he experiences another second half bump this year, any doubts about his early season form will be forgotten.
After the final game of the first half (a strong thirty-nine-of-forty save performance from Portillo), Brandon Naurato joked that his goaltender would benefit from some home cooking back in Sweden over the holiday break.
Portillo did have a chance to go back home to Gothenburg for about two weeks, the highlight of which was food prepared by his mother and grandmother. The junior said that “it’s more about the quality [of the food] and having mom and grandma cook something really good for me” than any one meal but that the combination of Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, and lingonberries is difficult to top.
He added that the trip home allowed for a bit of a break from hockey, explaining “we worked really hard up until the break, and then when I got home, still kept the body going with some conditioning to make sure you’re physically there, but I think it’s good for the body to get a short break from the constant repetition of hockey.”
However, Portillo ended up agreeing to come out to his younger cousin’s hockey practice upon request. “He plays in my team I played for growing up from when I was I think five until I was fourteen,” he explains. “It’s called Partille, and it’s really close to where I grew up. They wanted me to come out, I think it was the U11 and U12s. They wanted us to hold a practice and talk a little bit to the players, and of course, when I do that, give back a little bit and have a fun practice and got a lot of positive feedback from them, so that was really fun.”
In reflecting on his first half performance, Portillo noted that he felt like he found the top of his game at times but believed he could improve in bringing that top level every night: “I’m really happy about my tops being there. I feel like I’ve had a couple games where I’ve really been on point, but the consistency hasn’t really been there.”
In this regard, the junior Swede believes his first half mirrors that of his team: “I feel like we have a really young team, we had almost half the team replaced [from last year], and the first half, that’s how we kind of thought it would be. It’s hard to get everything and click it right away, and I think we have shown that we have the talent. We have everything we need to win it all.”
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