Midweek Roundup 3.22.23: “The Infinitesimally Small Elements By Which the Masses Are Moved”
The nature of single elimination knockouts, an Allentown preview, the end of the line for the Michigan women’s team, and more!
Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human mind. Laws of motion of any kind only become comprehensible to man when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.
There is a well-known so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast as the tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one-tenth of that distance ahead of him; when Achilles has covered that tenth, the tortoise has covered another one-hundredth, and so on forever. This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous…
In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing happens.
The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable human wills, is continuous.
To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all those human wills, man’s mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others, though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event always flows uninterruptedly from another. The second method is to consider the actions of some one man—a king or a commander—as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills; whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity of a single historic personage.
Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But however small the units it takes, we feel that to take any unit disconnected from others or to assume a beginning of any phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.
It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation—as criticism has every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must always be arbitrarily selected.
Only by taking an infinitesimally small unit for observation (the differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men) and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.
-War and Peace, Book Three, Part Three, Chapter 1, by Leo Tolstoy, Oxford World’s Classics Edition, Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude
I don’t have any evidence to suggest that Tolstoy composed these words in reference to the NCAA Men’s Hockey Tournament, or any postseason tournament for that matter, yet I can’t help but find them instructive as to the beautiful cruelty of single elimination sporting events.
What Tolstoy’s narrator describes is the human desire for clarity. When we look at historical events, we want definitive answers—causes and effects, holistic interpretations, heroes and villains.
According to our narrator here, we accomplish this in one of two ways. We cut an arbitrary sample out of a much larger tapestry, one that affords more malleability with respect to our narrative desires. Alternately, we fixated on a single great man, someone whose successes or failures we allow to stand in for the whole they ostensibly lead.
It is not difficult to map either of these frameworks onto sports. Sports do most of the first method for us: the long arcs of teams, schools, clubs, and leagues are arranged into neat seasons. At least within American sports, we then share a collective understanding that the postseason will deliver our ultimate clarity. It will provide us with a true champion. Unlike most aspects of our lives, sports provide that clarity—winners and losers, decisive end points, an established timeline toward the opportunity for redemption. The arbitrary sample is carved out for us.
The second method requires more effort on our part, but it appears to be work we are more than willing to do. We love to affix the fortunes of a team onto an individual—be it a head coach or a star player. In so doing, we erase what Tolstoy refers to as “infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved.” It can be difficult to take stock of an entire team or postseason or game; it’s much easier to heap praise or blame onto a single totemic figure.
Though these means of making sense of a team or season map onto sports naturally, they don’t do so without creating two significant problems.
First, as much as sports provide us with clarity of outcome, that alone leaves us cold. There’s a reason we watch, read about, and altogether obsess over these games rather than just skip straight to the box score.
This is not to say that winning is irrelevant. Going that far would border on disrespectful toward the work the participating athletes put into each game. Still though, to look only at the outcomes of these games and defer entirely to sports’ version of clarity is to make the mistake of Achilles and the tortoise—to misunderstand a contest by fixating on an isolated point rather than sprawling and continuous movement.
This brings us to the second problem. Despite the best efforts of myriad pundits, hockey does not lend itself to great man theory. Even the game’s biggest stars play somewhere between a half and a third of each contest at the most. The sport’s elite have the puck on their sticks for mere minutes, even in their best performances.
Hockey presents a game in which the vast majority of shifts do not produce goals. Does that mean all that work—forechecking, backchecking, battling along the boards—is for nothing? I hope not. I hope there is a way to recognize the work that goes into the 97% of a hockey game that doesn’t produce goals.
To put these two problems together, how does a player, coach, or even fan confront and make sense of a tournament in which a season’s work rests on a single elimination knockout game while maintaining any semblance of sanity?
For Michigan, the answer lies once again in self-belief and a shared vision of the road toward success.
“It’s definitely tough,” said sophomore forward Mackie Samoskevich of staring a knockout tournament in the face. “It’s insane because anything can happen, but I think if we focus on what we’re doing, and if we’re playing our game, it definitely will fall our way. We just beat the number one team in the country by playing our way.”
Head coach Brandon Naurato offered a similar sentiment: “I’m not overloading them with tactics. It’s my job to know what Colgate or Tech or Penn State are gonna do. So we’re talking about what we’re going to do throughout every drill that we do all week, and then inside of that is now the mentality. If I go coach Ferris State tomorrow and say ‘get to the net,’ they’re just gonna have four guys around the net with a shooter. When I say get to the net to our guys, they know what that means. And they know the spots where they’re supposed to be. If you watch those goals [against Minnesota], they’re predictable. And we scored four O-zone goals, and in a game like that, that’s how you have to beat those teams. That’s how we have to be. Colgate is gonna have four guys back, they play a 1-1-3 in the neutral zone, they’re gonna have guys above, so you have to get pucks behind…Just making sure the guys feel prepared, feel good about themselves. They shouldn’t go into games thinking about what they’re doing. They just need to go play, and they need to be super hard, so it’s just all mentality.”
Those of a pessimistic persuasion could doubt these Wolverines for their youth and their attacking style. Ancient wisdom dictates that tight-checking and commitment to defense wins in postseason hockey.
But when Samoskevich and Naurato turn to familiar lines about playing their way and mentality, they aren’t talking about defense. Michigan’s success boils down to its ability to leverage elite talent and veteran role players into a greater collective.
Consider this message, which Naurato read aloud to his team before the final game of the season’s first half:
“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.”
We’ve written all season about a system of possession-based attack, predictability, and creating chaos, but what does it all amount to?
A chance come tournament time to create a path through the chaos of the four game journey to a potential national title. A collective understanding of what success will look like. The ability to buy into a structure that is positive and about creation rather than emphasizing the suppression an opponent.
We don’t know what the NCAA Tournament will bring, but we know that Michigan—from its coach to its young stars to its veterans—share a vision. As Tolstoy might put it, the Wolverines have aligned their individual wills, integrating their many desires into one through that vision. For the rest of the field, that’s a scary starting point.
Odds & Ends
The Assembled in Allentown
Via last Sunday’s selection show, the Wolverines learned they would be the number one seed in the Allentown, PA regional and the NCAA Tournament’s number three overall seed.
In Allentown, Colgate will await the Wolverines in the first round, and hosts Penn State will take on Michigan Tech in the opposite regional semifinal.
Colgate secured its passage to the NCAA Tournament by winning the ECAC’s Whitelaw Cup last weekend in Lake Placid. To earn that title, the Raiders beat Quinnipiac (number two in the Pairwise) 2-1 in double overtime last Friday, then outlasted Harvard (number seven in the Pairwise) 3-2 the following evening to secure the program’s second ever ECAC crown and first since 1990.
For head coach Don Vaughan, it was a poignant moment. Vaughan took over the head job after the sudden passing of his predecessor Terry Slater (who had guided the Raiders to the NCAA Final in that 1990 ECAC championship season) midway through the 1991-1992 season. Though he made three NCAA Tournaments since, Vaughan never won the ECAC until now.
Goaltender Carter Gylander was named the Most Outstanding Player of the ECAC Tournament and has been a key cog for the Raiders all season with a .918 save percentage and 2.31 goals against average in thirty-eight games played.
Brandon Naurato compared the Raiders’ style to Notre Dame’s—citing the difficulty presented by their commitment to team defense. He added that Michigan will have to get pucks behind Colgate, because of their ability to defend the blue line.
Michigan Tech earned an at-large bid in this year’s field with a 24-10-4 record. Résumé highlights include an October sweep over Alaska, beating Boston University in January at the Desert Hockey Classic, a 3-2 overtime win over Michigan State at the Great Lakes Invitational, and a 2-1-1 record against Minnesota State.
Like the Raiders, Tech relies on sound defense and goaltending for success. Senior netminder Blake Pietila has posted a .929 SV % and 1.99 GAA in thirty-six games played.
Meanwhile, Penn State is by now a familiar opponent. Their high volume approach to offense (i.e. throwing every possible puck at the net) stands in direct contrast to the Wolverines’ possession-based style of attack, but it along with a collective intensity help the Nittany Lions succeed without star power. Guy Gadowsky’s team finished the season 21-15-1 (though just 10-13-1 in B1G play) to earn an at-large bid. Penn State has been out of action since falling to Ohio State in three games in an early March Big Ten quarterfinal series.
WoHo Wednesday
The University of Michigan women’s hockey team completed its season last week at ACHA Nationals in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The Wolverines fell 4-2 to Adrian College Thursday after a surplus of time short-handed (including two 5-on-3s) allowed the Bulldogs to erase a 2-1 deficit and win the day.
A day later, the Wolverines were eliminated via a 2-1 loss to McKendree University in overtime. Erin Proctor scored the lone goal for Michigan in the defeat. We will review Nationals in more detail next week, including an interview with head coach Jenna Trubiano.
For now, a bit of good news: Trubiano earned the CCWHA’s Coach of the Year award for her performance this season.
The award is well-deserved not only for guiding her team back to Nationals for the first time since she was a student but also for her work off the ice to help build her program in the most literal sense.
In the wider world of Michigan women’s hockey, last weekend also saw Plymouth’s Kirsten Simms score the lone goal in Wisconsin’s 1-0 win over Ohio State in last Sunday’s National Championship.
Among Simms’ Badger teammates was Jesse Compher, whose older brother JT is a Michigan alum and Stanley Cup champion with the Avalanche. Compher gave the assist on the overtime winner of Friday’s semifinal against Minnesota for a 2-1 Badger win. Compher was indefatigable in a back-and-forth overtime period, seeming to play every other shift and still lead rush after rush for Wisconsin before eventually setting up the winner.
Portal Update
The start of the men’s tournament is not the only big date on the NCAA hockey calendar this week. On Monday, the transfer portal reopened. Several notable names entered, including Miami forward and Red Wings draft pick Red Savage and Northeastern forward Sam Colangelo.
“We want to make Michigan the best team that we can be,” said Naurato when asked about the portal. “I don’t know [yet] who’s signing or staying, so basically since our season’s still going dominoes need to fall before I can take a look at a player [in the portal] and say, here’s the opportunity or here’s the scholarship.”
He went on to add that the portal’s offerings and a team’s roster needs vary year by year, but that it could never replace traditional recruiting: “Every year is different. We’ll probably use it more next year than we would in the future, but I think it’s year-by-year depending on who’s coming in or what your depth chart looks like…I think the transfer portal is for plugging holes. It’s not for building a team.”
Junior goaltender Noah West was among those entering the portal, but Naurato noted that his presence in the portal is exploratory rather than a guarantee he will not wear maize and blue next year.
“Noah and I had a conversation before he did, and the one thing I’m not gonna do with players here is—I think it’s important for them to field all their options—I’m not got to pigeonhole them,” Naurato said. “So he let me know that he’s going to do that, and he’s not leaving Michigan, he’s seeing what his options are, and then we’ll have options and he’ll have other ones. If he stays, awesome, and if he goes, he’ll always be a part of Michigan, and he’s a great kid and a great goalie.
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