Midweek Roundup 3.8.23
Midweek Roundup 3.8.23
Previewing Ohio State, a deeper look at Michigan’s dominant top line, and a brief word on Mel Pearson’s continued unwelcome presence at Yost
Saturday night, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team will take on the Ohio State Buckeyes for the fifth time this season. Ohio State has claimed three of the four previous meetings—one in a rout, one in a shootout, and one outside at Cleveland’s FirstEnergy Stadium.
It can be difficult to raise the stakes in a rivalry match-up; no Wolverine has ever needed extra motivation to compete against a Buckeye. Nonetheless, at stake this weekend won’t just be rivalry bragging rights but also a spot in the Big Ten title game.
Throughout the season, youth has been the term readiest to hand for explaining the Wolverines’ exploits. Whether applied to high penalty totals, up and down performances in or across games, or projecting tournament prospects, “youth” is always there as a determinant.
This isn’t without justification; Michigan is the youngest team in the country. Still, at a certain point, youth can’t be a cure-all explanation for a team with serious title aspirations. For Brandon Naurato, urgency is a more pertinent term for understanding his team’s fortunes.
“How we play when we’re comfortable versus how we play when we’re desperate or have some urgency to our game,” Naurato said after Monday’s practice. “We can help create uncomfortablity if that’s a word. That’s what we need. When we get up or we’re rolling and just take our foot off the gas, then you just give teams a chance, and it happens quick, especially in the Big Ten and the NCAA Tournament, so just playing with that urgency and not looking at the score.”
To beat the Buckeyes for the second time, Michigan will need to bring that urgency this weekend at Yost.
On the women’s side, Michigan is fresh off a weekend of relaxation before next week’s trip to Massachusetts for ACHA Nationals. We’ll save a full Nationals preview for next week, but, in the interim, we owe a congratulations to the three Wolverines who earned All-CCHWA honors for their work this season. Goaltender Sandrine Ponnath and defender Katie German each earned first-team All-CCHWA status, while forward Julia Lindahl collected second-team honors while also being named to the CCHWA’s All-Rookie team.
The Buckeyes Return
As Michigan looks to avenge regular season disappointment in the B1G semifinals (a feat it pulled off with aplomb a year ago against Notre Dame), the good news is that four regular season meetings paint a clear picture of the Buckeyes’ approach.
“They’re just hard. They’re structured, and they have guys that can score, so they go the net,” explained Naurato. “They’re similar to Wisconsin and Penn State: They high flip a bunch of pucks, they get into foot races in the neutral zone, they have a plan on faceoffs, their PK is really good, I think it’s number one in the country. Obviously, our power play’s struggled against them, so we’re looking at a lot now. We know what they do, but we’re really being detailed with the guys on what to expect without overloading them with information.”
Steve Rohlik’s team depends on a matrix of intensity, efficient special teams, and pragmatism for success. Rohlik himself noted after the Faceoff on the Lake that a certain degree of deference is necessary when combatting a team of Michigan’s skill:
“When you go up against a team that has that much talent, that much speed, they want time and space, so for us, we work a lot on our neutral zone. We just tried to have numbers, try to clog it up, and hope at the end of the day to force them to dump some more pucks than they want to, otherwise you’re holding on for dear life.”
Still, these Buckeyes haven’t just gritted and ground their way to three wins from four against Michigan. Across those four contests, special teams have been a glaring differentiator.
The Ohio State power play has scored on 26.1% of its chances against Michigan (six-for-twenty-three); Michigan has converted at just 10.5% against OSU on the power play (two-for-nineteen). Those numbers look even worse when you consider that the Buckeyes scored a short-handed goal in their January rout at Yost and another in their win in Cleveland, which is to say the Ohio State penalty kill has the same number of goals on Michigan power plays as the Wolverines do this season.
Michigan’s lone win against Ohio State this year came in the one matchup in which the Wolverine power play outperformed that of the Buckeyes (one-for-two versus zero-for-five).
Special teams will of course be crucial, but, beyond that, Naurato sees intensity as a decisive factor for the Wolverines:
“We believe in our group that when we play a certain way we can have success against anybody. We just keep talking about playing winning hockey, being disciplined, and that doesn’t mean penalty discipline, but are you gonna lay it in or are you gonna turn it over? Are you gonna win the race or are they gonna win the race? All that cliché hockey stuff.”
As such, Naurato believes simplicity and competitiveness will be vital for his team in the coming weekend, nothing that avoiding an information overload is his “big thing this week.” “They need to worry about competing and playing their game. They don’t need to worry about what Ohio State’s doing on a D-zone faceoff play at the end of a period. Their job needs to be simple, one or two things.”
Top Line Takeover: Influence, Decisiveness, and Tone-Setting for McGroarty-Fantilli-Brindley
You could quibble with Mihcigan’s slow start last Friday or the way it appeared to take its collective foot off the gas Saturday, but one aspect of the Wolverines’ sweep over Wisconsin was unimpeachable: The utter dominance of the top line.
Over the course of the weekend series, Rutger McGroarty, Adam Fantilli, and Gavin Brindley combined for thirty shots, forty-six shot attempts, and seven goals—spearheading Michigan’s attack with authority.
After Saturday’s game, Naurato described the way his top line had worked on “reaping the rewards” of their hard work in the offensive zone. This sentiment teases at the distinction between influential and decisive play, a particularly relevant idea in exploring the impact of elite players.
Influence is driving play to the offensive zone—generating a gaudy volume of shots and attempts while suppressing them at the other end (as Michigan’s top unit did over the weekend). We can measure this influence with advanced stats like Corsi, Fenwick, or Expected Goals, which in different ways use shot attempt data as a proxy for possession and control of play.
Decisiveness is the ability to score—for example, beating a goalie with an unscreened shot from distance. It might come from nowhere, but it counts on the scoreboard. We can measure deciveness with traditional, boxcar stats—goals and assists.
In the lead-up to the NHL Trade Deadline, Jack Han of The Hockey Tactics Newsletter assessed the disconnect between Patrick Kane’s impressive production (as measured by goals and assists) with his lackluster analytic profile (possession stats, expected-goals-for percentage).
Han pointed out that Kane’s poor advanced stats reflect his ability to score (i.e. be decisive) by relying on quality over quantity with respect to chance creation:
“By and large NHL hockey is a volume game. Favorable volumes of shots and chances typically lead to favorable volumes of future goals. But Kane doesn’t operate that way. He’d rather work the OZ and score on the sequence’s first shot rather than attempt to shoot-and-retrieve against bigger, stronger opponents. Not everybody can make that ultra-selective approach work. Still, Kane’s a reminder that needing more attempts to get the puck into the net is not actually a good thing.”
Still, even though top-end players can get by on decisiveness more than influence, the obvious conclusion is that combining the two is optimal. A player or line that struggles to generate a significant volume of offense is easier to eliminate from a game; by taking away the quality chances they thrive on off the rush, a team has effectively neutralized them.
Naurato watched something along those lines play out in last year’s National Semifinal loss to eventual-champion Denver:
“Beniers, Brisson, and Johnson are elite players, but they can’t do it by themselves. They didn’t put enough pucks behind Denver, and now it’s going the other way, so now our elite players, who are not elite checkers—they’re not bad, are playing in the defensive zone, so you’ve completely eliminated them from the game.”
The Fantilli goal pictured above, which completed his Saturday night hat trick, helps to illustrate he and his line’s collective process of layering influence on top of decisiveness. At first blush, the goal presents an obvious example of Fantilli’s elite scoring touch—ripping a puck past Jared Moe from long range; there can be no doubt that Adam Fantilli is a naturally decisive player. However, closer examination also reveals the way the McGroarty-Fantilli-Brindley trio’s impressive work rate has helped increase their volume of opportunities.
As Naurato explained it, “Obviously those guys can create off the rush, and they’re gonna make their plays with time and space. If you watch Adam’s [third] goal [Saturday], from an area that shouldn’t go in. It was a great shot, but it shouldn’t go in; there’s no one at the net. I think Brindley, Adam, and Rutger won five races and battles leading into that goal.”
Fantilli’s second goal Saturday offers a clearer picture of he and his linemates’ influence. It is a goal born more of determination than elite skill. In Naurato’s telling:
“Adam’s second goal, Holtz throws it at the net, but there’s opportunities before that, where guys are at the net, and then there’s three guys at the net when he chucks it to the net, and it’s to a T our o-zone and the movement, but it was kind of off a broken play, so even off a broken play, that’s where you create chaos. Holtz shot along the ice from the boards, which isn’t a high-danger shot, but we have three people around that area. Their player gets the puck, but because we’re so tight, then Adam lifts the stick, and scores right away—that’s chaos, that’s the right time to shoot. Versus Holtzy throwing it to the net from that area with no one at the net, they’re gonna break it out right away.”
To Naurato, that top trio’s talent is nothing new, but their newfound intensity has been a major factor in their uptick in play. “I don’t think all three of them the entire season have been bought into what they’re doing, and now they’re all doing it, and they’re really good players, and it’s really clicking, but they’re earning that,” the first-year head coach noted.
In Naurato’s view, McGroarty, Fantilli, and Brindley have bolstered their own confidence through effort. Via their intensity in races and puck battles, they have made their own luck, creating a higher volume of offense in a positive feedback loop in which their work rate generates more puck touches in premium areas, which feeds goal scoring chances and further confidence.
“When you’re a player—and you feel this on the bench—when you’re playing in the offensive zone, you have your confidence, you're getting your touches, you feel good,” Naurato points out. “When you’re constantly defending or you haven’t touched the puck in a long time, you start to force it, so now you get the puck touch, and you wanna go, because you’re sick of not touching it, and you don’t make the right play at the right time. That’s game management or maturity, so I think they just said ‘screw it, we’re gonna go get the puck by winning a race or a battle, now we have it, now we’re keeping it, now we’re getting chances, now I feel good,’ now we have more adrenaline, we have more energy, we have more confidence, and then their talent just comes out.”
As the Wolverines approach the postseason, this approach from the top line sets a lofty standard. For Naurato, team success requires this kind of effort from a team’s top players, who must play with the intensity of fourth liners while still deploying the elite skill that brings them to the top of the lineup.
“[Lightning head coach] Jon Cooper just benched [his top line of] Stamkos, Kucherov, and Point [last Saturday against the Sabres] in the third period,” Naurato observed. “Those teams start winning, Ovechkin starts winning, when he’s playing like that fourth line grinder, but he also has that elite talent. So for these guys, it’s eighteen-year-old kids to drive that, if they’re doing it, why can’t everyone else? If your top guys are doing it, why can’t everyone else do it?”
Mel Pearson’s Unwelcome Presence
Before closing this week, we feel an obligation to comment at the unwelcome presence of Mel Pearson on the BTN+ broadcast of last Saturday’s game against Wisconsin.
You can listen to the full segment, barely a minute long, via this link from Gopher Puck Live.
Pearson offers a cursory analysis of the ongoing game and crowd at Yost, before giving a brief assessment of the trade that sent Erik Portillo’s NHL rights from Buffalo to Los Angeles.
It appears that Pearson’s cameo happened spontaneously, with the broadcast offering him the opportunity to speak upon bumping into him outside their booth on Yost’s club level. The bigger issue, though, is not how Pearson found his way into the booth but rather that he was able to at all.
To restate the essential context, Pearson was fired last summer for his role in the creation of a hostile and toxic environment within Michigan’s program. He isn’t out of work because he didn’t win enough hockey games, and it is remarkably disrespectful to the players and staff members who were subjected to his abuses to allow Pearson continual passage into Yost.
If, for some reason, you still see no problem with Pearson’s presence at Yost, I would highly recommend reading over the full report from WilmerHale’s investigation, provided here by the folks at M-Live.
Friend of the newsletter Drew VanDrese offers a perfect summation of the problem: Allowing Pearson access to Yost at all enables a fantasy in which he did not create a toxic atmosphere within the program that was harmful to the people involved and embarrassing for the university the team represents.
I’ve heard some people argue that Pearson is within his right to buy a ticket and attend a game. To this, I would offer a hypothetical: If I snuck beer cans into Yost, drank them, then threw them on the ice during play, I would be banned from the arena. The school has the power to control who is allowed in the building, regardless of whether an individual is a paying customer. If it does not act, the University invites further embarrassment and places further strain on those who suffered under Pearson’s regime.
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.