Midweek Roundup 2.15.23
Midweek Roundup 2.15.23
A word of support for the Michigan State Community, the Michigan women keep winning, in-season development and a layered attack on the men’s side, and a brief outdoor preview
There’s only one topic with which I can open this week: The extension of our most sincere empathy to everyone in East Lansing and the entire Michigan State community. To state the blindingly obvious, no community should ever have to deal with this kind of tragedy. I don’t want to ramble and center myself in this moment of horror, but I can’t speak for anybody else, and it feels too enormous and awful to leave unaddressed.
As a rule, I loathe the idea of using rivalry as a prism through which to understand tragedy. There should be no need to clarify that you still feel sorrow and pain and empathy for the Michigan State community, even though you root against the school’s athletic programs; we should be able to take such a basic bit of humanity for granted.
Still, with last weekend’s series against the Spartans still so fresh, it feels impossible not to make that connection—having just driven up to Munn, just spoken with writers on the MSU beat, just heard from Adam Nightingale in person for the first time. Some forty-eight hours—more than a few of which were spent in a state of active antipathy for what felt then a hated rival—after Saturday night’s Duel in the D, even the faintest association between Michigan State and rivalry felt ridiculous.
I do have one connection to Michigan State beyond sports. At a previous job, I had the pleasure of working with several proud graduates of MSU’s School of Education. Without wishing to generalize, they are four of the most conscientious and most demanding teachers I have ever met. In their own ways, they make certain that the young people they work with are seen and loved, while also leaving no ambiguity about their lofty demands based on the potential they see in every student.
I watched them round up students on a Saturday morning to drive them to their high school placement tests, making sure they arrived on time, with sharpened pencils and snacks to eat during their breaks. I watched them set aside a mountain of their own work to support a colleague who needed their help in the classroom. I watched their warmth leave every child they encountered certain that they were valued and cared for at school. I watched their tireless attention and expectation push students to unimaginable heights. In short, they are some of the most incredible educators you could ever have the good fortune of encountering.
I say all this to say that I know for a fact that the people of Michigan State will find the strongest imaginable shoulders to lean upon when they lean on one another. Even so, despite what I know of that unique Spartan strength, I wanted to open this week by offering whatever support I possibly can to all of Michigan State University and to make clear that while we can never understand just how much this hurts for them, they are not experiencing this grief alone.
There’s no easy transition out of this subject, and I still do want to spend a little time on another week of hockey at the University of Michigan. But first, I’m thinking of Arielle Anderson, Alexandria Verner, Brian Fraser, Guadalupe Huapilla-Perez, and their families. I’m thinking of everyone in East Lansing or with any semblance of a connection to the Michigan State community. I’m thinking of the kids who lived through Sandy Hook or Oxford only to re-experience those horrors as college students. I’m thinking of the people who will provide invaluable support to members of the community as they process their grief. I’m thinking of the leaders who watch this happen again and again but still sit in action.
WoHo Wednesday
The University of Michigan women’s hockey team continued its strong 2023 form with a 5-1 romp over Concordia University last Sunday at Yost. With the victory, the Wolverines now boast eight wins from nine games in the new year.
Concordia took the lead with a late first-period goal, only for the Maize and Blue to storm back with five unanswered. In the second, Kelsey Swanson, Ava Gargiulo, and Emily Maliszewski propelled the Wolverines to a 3-1 lead, then Julia Lindahl and Erin Proctor put the game to bed.
Special teams were a major difference maker for Michigan, who stymied all three Concordia power plays, while Gargiulo, Maliszewski, and Lindahl’s goals each came with a Cardinal in the box. Meanwhile, Sandrine Ponnath stopped twenty-eight of twenty-nine Cardinal shots, delivering another of her customary dominant performances.
As scheduled, Michigan will conclude its regular season this weekend with a home date against Michigan State, but, given the events of the last week, it’s not yet clear whether that game will proceed.
Square Pegs in Square Holes, Freshman Filling Roles, and In-Season Development Create a Layered Attack
Entering the ‘22-23, Michigan was tasked with the unenviable job of replacing a fleet of talent from its Frozen Four team from the year prior. With its elite top-end players (Owen Power, Matty Beniers, Thomas Bordeleau, Kent Johnson, and Brendan Brisson) and veteran depth (Johnny Beecher, Garrett Van Wyhe, and Jimmy Lambert) out the door, the knock-on effect of the mass exodus was an immediate need for freshman to occupy featured spots in the Wolverine lineup from day one.
Where current sophomores Mackie Samoskevich and Dylan Duke had to wait for vacancy in the Michigan top six as freshmen, the likes of Adam Fantilli, Gavin Brindley, and T.J. Hughes arrived on campus to a lineup that needed their services from the jump.
In Fantilli’s case, this comes as no surprise. The Nobleton, Ontario-born freshman has been identified as one of the two or three best prospects for the 2023 NHL Draft for years. His seventy-four points in fifty-four games in his final season of junior with Chicago Steel made clear that he would slot into a prominent role in whatever collegiate lineup he chose.
For Brindley and Hughes though, that story is a little different. Brindley is a fast-rising 2023 prospect but more along the lines of an exciting mid-to-late first rounder, not on the Fantilli order of franchise-altering top two pick. Meanwhile Hughes will have the opportunity to explore undrafted free agency when he eventually does leave Ann Arbor.
The pair were cast straight into prized spots in the lineup, with Brindley emerging as Brandon Naurato’s first option for the three-man penalty kill and Hughes having spent most of his freshman season playing on the top power play.
To Naurato, this choice wasn’t just about filling vacant spots in the lineup with available bodies but rather aimed at setting up young players to succeed.
“In the beginning of the year with freshmen, you’re trying to put them in positions [where they can thrive],” the first-time head coach explains. “Obviously TJ Hughes, he’s a point guy. Brinds has played in all situations, but you’re putting them in situations and letting them fail through it or have success, so you know who to trust.”
“If they didn’t get the job done, do you have other people that you can go to, or are we just gonna get scored on or not score?,” Naurato asks. “So TJ putting up some points or Brindley doing what he’s doing, they’re continuing to go out because they’ve done the job.”
Naurato envisions a world down the line where there is “healthy competition” for each roster spot: “When you have injuries or suspensions or whatever, you don’t have as many options, and then they have to execute in general. That was my comment of being even deeper down the road: Filling holes for—can you find the best partial scholarship player that’s great at blocking shots on the penalty kill and then great at winning faceoffs. Finding guys that should perform in these roles, but not just one guy, you have three and then you let them kind of fight that out.”
This year, though, the Wolverines are riding a seven-game win streak, in line for a second straight one seed at the NCAA tournament, and poised to claim the second seed in the Big Ten’s postseason. No small part of that success has been the in-season growth of Hughes and Brindley.
The latter’s progress is especially striking. At the beginning of the season, the Floridian freshman’s skating and puck-handling popped whenever you saw him on the ice, but his flash didn’t manifest on the scoresheet. In 2022, he posted just ten points in twenty games. In 2023, Brindley has seven goals and eight assists for fifteen points in ten games.
When asked for a turning point in Brindley’s season, Naurato pointed to the late November series against Harvard.
The interim head coach credits Brindley’s intelligence and coachability for his uptick in scoring.
“I remember [Zach] Werenski or Kyle Connor, I’d have a conversation with them, and it’s in their game [immediately], because they’re just that smart. I got that from Gav,’” Naurato noted after Monday’s practice. “He’s extended possession because his puck protection while he’s skating has gotten way better, like pulling up or driving or whatever it may be. He’s awesome. For me, that’s hockey IQ, when you can tell someone and it’s in their game, because there’s other guys who you’ve said something fifteen times, and they still haven’t changed.”
Progress like Brindley’s is a unique manifestation of development. Often, we associate major leaps for a player with offseason work (e.g. a player spends their summer honing their backhand and returns for a new season with a new weapon in their arsenal). However, Naurato points out that summer work is often restricted to the technical level, whereas tactical and transferable growth can be easier to in-season with the help of game reps.
“If I do technical skating with you all summer, is your technical skating gonna be better? Yes, but you need to know when to use each skill,” Naurato points out. “That’s where he reads that pressure, so if he’s thinking about it in practice, and then in the games, that’s where it comes out. And when it works, you know why, when it doesn’t, you know why. Where in the summer, even if it’s in the front of mind, it’s still technical, unless you can replicate those decision making sequences, and you can, but there’s not as much physicality in the summer.”
The distinction between technical development and this sort of practical growth can be reduced to a matter of choosing the moment to deploy a given skill. As Naurato often says, skills are just options, and thus the challenge for a player who has those options is to pick the right one for the moment.
“You can have a bomb of a shot, but if you can’t shoot through screens, or you don’t do it with your head up, your bomb is going into shin pads instead of the net,” says Naurato. “It’s taking the physical skills and then adding that into decision making and situational awareness.”
Within the context of Michigan’s lineup for the season’s home stretch, Brindley and Hughes’ ascension, Fantilli’s sustained dominance, and the return to action of Frank Nazar III leave the Wolverines with a depth of credible attacking lines that they lacked during their slow start to the Big Ten season.
“Say Frankie came to me, and he’s like I want to play with Duke and Samoskevich,” says Naurato, emphasizing that he is offering a hypothetical rather than relaying an actual conversation. “If T.J. Hughes wasn’t doing the job, you’d look for somebody that could, but he is, that line’s doing very well. So now I’ve got a first rounder on the third line, or a Beecher, Samoskevich, and Duke like last year on the third line, what a luxury.”
Naurato extends the hypothetical further: “As an example, say I loved Mark [Estapa] with Brindley and Adam [where he played, to great success, Friday night], and their line was great. Well now you’ve got that, plus the Hughes line, plus Rutger, Hallum, and Nazar. Which is your first line? That’s depth.”
The interim head coach stresses that the point is not to ascribe ranks to players based on the order in which their lines appear on a lineup card. Instead, the idea is to make life difficult on an opponent by creating a team whose depth poses matchup problems through a multi-layered attack: “It’s guys taking their role through that chemistry.” “If Mark can [fit in well with Fantilli and Brindley], and you get the same bang, and you move Rutger [McGroarty] onto a different line, how are they going to match up? If one of those three lines isn’t going, there’s still two or three more that can go.”
In the end, Naurato can hardly contain his excitement at his freshmen’s progress and return to health as he assesses what is now almost a full season’s body of work: “Nobody’s perfect, but guys have stepped up big time, which is awesome.”
Outside! (& a Quick Programming Note)
This weekend, the Michigan men will play their ninth outdoor game in the one hundred year history of the program, against Ohio State at Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium.
The Wolverines’ outdoor history began on October 6, 2001 playing The Cold War against Michigan State at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. The game, which featured future NHLers on both sides like Mike Cammalleri, Mike Komisrek, Duncan Keith, and Ryan Miller, would conclude in a 3-3 draw.
Since that day, Michigan hockey has appeared in Wisconsin’s Camp Randall Stadium, the Big House, Progressive Field (home of the Cleveland Guardians), Detroit’s Comerica Park, Soldier Field in Chicago, and Notre Dame Stadium. Across eight previous outdoor games, Michigan has four wins, three losses (one in overtime), and the one draw.
As of this writing, the forecast calls for a partly sunny afternoon in Cleveland with a high around forty-five degrees and winds between fifteen and twenty-five miles-per-hour.
Before the Wolverines’ make it over to Cleveland, they will first take on Ohio State in Columbus Thursday night. Because of the unusual schedule for the weekend, we will be changing up our own production schedule. Instead of our traditional Sunday close reading covering both games, we will run a reaction blog with takeaways from Thursday’s contest to devote our full weekend’s attention to the outdoor contest.
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