Midweek Roundup: 2.22.22
Previewing the Notre Dame Series, re-introducing the Olympic Four, and another brief word on Carl Hagelin and empty nets
Following a rollicking sweep of Ohio State, the University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team will travel to South Bend for the regular season’s final series, against Notre Dame. The Wolverines will enter the two-game set winners of twelve of their last thirteen (with the lone exception an overtime loss in Minneapolis to Minnesota).
Of course, for the last six of those games, Michigan has had to do without Owen Power and Kent Johnson as they travelled to and played in the Beijing Olympics, while Matty Beniers and Brendan Brisson have missed the last four for the same reason.
The Olympic Four are expected back this weekend, and the Wolverines literally could not have asked for better results in those six games: six B1G wins, leaving the team in the driver’s seat for the conference’s regular season crown.
As we head into the Big Ten’s final weekend of the regular season, only two horses remain in the running: Michigan and Minnesota. Michigan has a two-point edge entering the weekend, meaning a Michigan win on Friday and anything other than a Gopher regulation victory would be enough to seal the title before puck drop Saturday.
While the Wolverines will have their hands full traveling to visit a top-ten opponent, Minnesota will have an easier path: hosting Wisconsin. Though the Badgers and Irish are separated by just one place in the B1G standings, Notre Dame’s .621 points percentage in conference play compared to Wisconsin’s .303 speak to the differential in quality of opponents as well as the stark contrast between “haves” and “have-nots” that tends to feature prominently in the conference.
With just seven member schools for the sport, the Big Ten is not a friendly place to be a struggling hockey team, given the presence of three perennial national title contenders at the top of the league’s table.
The stakes for the weekend are obvious: take care of business and win a B1G Championship. Stumble even a little bit against a team ranked ninth in the latest USCHO poll, and those certainties vanish.
What’s new with the Irish?
Like the Wolverines, Notre Dame will enter this weekend on an excellent run of form, having won five of its last six. Over the weekend, the Irish swept Michigan State in East Lansing, by scores of 2-1 and then 4-2.
Offensively, forwards Max Ellis and Ryder Rolston carry the bulk of the weight for the Irish. The former has sixteen goals and a dozen assists in thirty-one games played, while the latter has ten goals and fifteen assists for twenty-five points in thirty games.
Though the Irish don’t have a single point-per-game scorer (for context, Michigan has six), the team’s sound defensive structure ensures their viability in a conference where top-end teams don’t tend to suffer from a lack of elite offensive firepower.
To that end, Jeff Jackson’s Irish have two reliable goaltenders to fall back upon, a battery with eerily similar statistics.
Jackson’s starter is Matthew Galajda, a senior transfer from Cornell. Galajda has posted a .927 save percentage and 2.02 GAA along with two shutouts in 18 games. Galajda
(What’s that you ask? Who was the first star? Well, that would be the same man who won it last week? Who else but Luke Hughes?)
Galajda’s backup is junior Ryan Bischel, but “backup” is a bit misleading here, as Bischel has played in sixteen games this year (just two fewer than Galajda). In those games, Bischel has a .924 save percentage and 2.08 GAA.
Galajda has started each of the last four, and I would fully expect to him in net this weekend, but it won’t be as though Jackson is without a fallback plan should he prove ineffective.
When last we met Notre Dame…
Notre Dame remains the only team to sweep Michigan on the season, winning a pair of overtime games at Yost in mid-November.
It was a loss that exposed a vulnerability in Michigan’s apparent infallibility and doubled the number in the loss column at that point in the season.
Ryder Rolston’s antics triggered us here at Gulo Gulo, but the Wolverines’ stars weren’t entirely without joy on the weekend.
Hopefully, there will be plenty more of that Beniers attacking menace and Brisson finishing this time around, with fewer Rolston celebrations.
Follow the link below for a full breakdown of that weekend’s action.
Re-Integrating the Olympic Four
As noted above, Gulo Gulo expects the Olympic Four back in action this weekend, which would presumably mean three forwards and one defenseman pulled out of action.
Let’s start up front. We’ve discussed previously the possibility of giving Mark Estapa a night or two off to recalibrate following his recent run of penalty concession. In advocating for this swap, we should clarify that this is not an indictment of Estapa’s talent or his long-term prospects with Michigan. Instead, the Olympic Four’s return might offer a convenient opportunity to allow Estapa to reset.
As we see it, that leaves three potential options for two more forward scratch spots up front: Nick Granowicz, Philippe LaPointe, and Nolan Moyle.
Let’s work backwards here. We think Moyle is the least likely of these three names to end up on the outside looking in, but the extent to which his skillset overlaps with Garrett Van Whye’s suggests to us a possibility of leaving him out in the name of a more diverse forward group.
LaPointe scored the opener Saturday night, and we have lauded his intelligent movement in attack as making him an effective player with just about any line mates. However, though we’re fans of the winger’s game, it would be a bit rich to suggest that his game has been so strong that his place in the lineup is unassailable.
Granowicz is, to our eye, the likeliest Wolverine to be off the ice this Friday in South Bend. It’s not that Granowicz has been bad or ineffective in his return to the lineup, and, again, this is a player whose skill set fits Michigan’s game well. However, Granowicz has been a bit anonymous in recent games, and, for a team operating at as high a level as the Wolverines are at present, it’s hard to imagine his continuation for the time being.
On the back end, with just one player returning to the lineup, things are a bit simpler. The combination of Jay Keranen and Jake Gingell (who have alternately served as Michigan’s extra skater with the Olympic Four out) will head to the stands to make room for Power’s return.
This leaves the question of who the new extra skater would be and whether it is likelier a forward or a defenseman.
If we were writing this weekend’s lines, we would be inclined to scratch Estapa, Granowicz, and Jack Summers (the last left-handed defenseman on the depth chart with Power away), while leaving LaPointe as the extra skater.
The downside to that alignment would be a potential lack of depth on the back end, particularly if Power shows any signs of rust following his time away from the team. However, it would afford a balanced and talented lineup, and, based on everything we saw from Power pre-Beijing, we wouldn’t feel too worried about tossing him back in to major minutes.
My suspicion is that it will not be a gradual reintroduction for the Olympic Four; instead, I would wager that all four will return to their full-time roles at the top of the lineup and on specialty teams.
With that said, it is possible Mel Pearson determines the prudent decision to be easing his big four back into the lineup. However, given the stakes of the weekend’s games, I would be rather surprised if that ends up proving to be Pearson’s strategy.
Of course, regardless of which players Pearson selects, we will see some shake ups to the lines that seemed so effective last weekend against Ohio State. I would be surprised to see the Samoskevich-Beecher-Duke trio broken up, given how effective they were at generating even-strength offense, but, beyond that, it feels likely that this upcoming weekend’s line up will show us some new looks.
Hagelin and ENGs Continued
Lastly, one additional note on Michigan’s own Carl Hagelin and the empty net goal (which we covered at length in last weekend’s column).
Here is an interview from Hagelin at the 2011 Frozen Four, following a 2-0 semifinal victory over North Dakota. A circumspect and good-humored Hagelin discusses his own trepidation at firing at an empty net, instead passing to linemate Louie Capurosso, who in turn fed Scooter Vaughan to deposit the clincher. The Swedish winger’s self-doubt at scoring empty net goals might help explain the extreme deliberation he displayed in icing the 2017 Stanley Cup Final.
To see the goal, skip to 3:55 of the below video.