Midweek Roundup 4.5.23: “All I Can Think About is Tampa”
Fantilli’s Hobey case, the interim tag comes off (finally), how a reconstitution of the forward group helped propel Michigan to this stage, and an extra member of the team confirms his trip to Tampa
At the risk of alienating our readership, we open this week with an argument that, frankly, strikes me as a waste of time.
It is the official editorial stance of Gulo Gulo Hockey that awards are silly and pointless. The main reason for this is award-voters, who are, by and large ill-equipped and under-informed to take on the task for which they have been tapped. The function of their work is to create what, with the passage of time, becomes a false canon of excellence—an imperfect record of who some random assembly of voters decided was the best, via their own misbegotten conceptions of what that means. We all recognize the limitations and biases of these voters when a winner is announced, but, for some reason, we are expected to take the outcome as gospel once a decade or two has passed.
Today, our particular subject is the Hobey Baker, awarded first in 1981 to Minnesota’s Neal Broten and each year since to the men’s college hockey player who best "exhibits strength of character both on and off the ice" and "contributes to the integrity of the team and displays outstanding skills in all phases of the game.”
Why is this particular award silly? Mostly for the familiar reasons. Who could possibly consume enough college hockey to stake a legitimate claim to observing the sport in its entirety when almost every game starts at the same time Friday and Saturday? How could anyone profess to be familiar with the off-ice strength of character of a single candidate, much less all of them? Do the phrases contributions to the integrity of the team and outstanding skills in all phases of the game mean anything at all?
I’ll keep my responses to myself, but to butcher a phrase from Caius Martius in Act I of Coriolanus, he that depends upon the fickle favor of awards and award-voters swims with fins of lead.
With all that in mind, we open this week with a discussion of the Hobey field not because awards are important but because a candidate of such obvious and overwhelming quality walks amongst us, so that it would be foolish not to.
I’ve just said I’ll be writing about the Hobey field, and this is true, but I’ll also only be writing about one person: Adam Fantilli, a favorite so prohibitive that there is no need to consider alternatives.
As an eighteen-year-old freshman, Adam Fantilli has scored twenty-nine goals and given thirty-five assists for a total of sixty-four points in thirty-five games so far. He is the nation’s leading scorer, seven points clear of his closest challenger Logan Cooley, who has played two more games. By points-per-game, Fantilli is about a third of a point-per-game beyond second place, Harvard’s Sean Farrell.
In his thirty-five games, Fantilli has two or more points nineteen times, one point thirteen times, and no points just three times. He has yet to go consecutive games without a point. His longest streak of the season without a goal is three games, during which he registered three assists; after the first game of that streak, Fantilli won a gold medal at the World Juniors with Team Canada, as its sole NCAA representative.
Goal-scoring and point production aren’t everything, but they are, if nothing else, an essential starting point for the conversation.
Fantilli’s (no-longer-interim) head coach Brandon Naurato referred to the freshman as a “no brainer” for the Hobey, adding “What he’s done as an eighteen-year-old, should-be-senior-in-high-school, compared to the [Jack] Eichels, the [Johnny] Gaudreaus, the Kyle Connors of the last twenty years, it’s super impressive.”
Fantilli’s 1.83 points-per-game sandwich him between Eichel’s Hobey-winning 1.78 and Connor’s 1.87 (a total which wasn’t enough for the 2016 iteration of the award, when Harvard’s Jimmy Vesey, at 1.57 points-per-game, captured it in a neat illustration of the trophy’s futility). Johnny Gaudreau managed eighty points in forty games for Boston College during his Hobey season, but he was a junior at the time.
“Do you know how many points Matt Beniers had last year?,” Naurato asked rhetorically in response to a request to make the case for Fantilli. “He’s an NHL All-Star. He had twenty goals and like forty-two points [it was forty-three]. Kent Johnson had eight goals last year and two of them were empty-netters. Adam’s got twenty-nine goals.”
He continued, “I think the goals is the most impressive thing, and then, in all situations, the timing of them. I’m just brain-dumping, but all the stats that [SID] Kristy [McNeil]’s put out on social media, even me reading those I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, that’s super, super impressive.’ Obviously we’re biased, but he dominates games. He’s the best player in college hockey for sure.”
“He’s doing this stuff against twenty-two, three-, four-year-old players, and then with our strength of schedule and the amount of points he’s had against ranked opponents,” Naurato points out. “It’s not like he’s putting up six points against bottom teams. He’s done it across the board and in big games. It’s extremely impressive.” To wit, Fantilli has forty points in his twenty-five games against teams currently placed in the top twenty-five of the Pairwise (1.6 points-per-game).
Fantilli’s first goal of the season came in his second game—against a Lindenwood team that was over-matched enough at even-strength and yielded the soon-to-be Hobey’s first collegiate goal down 5-on-3—forecasted what was to come.
The freshman gained the zone down the left flank, before switching play to Mackie Samoskevich on the opposite wing. As Samoskevich left the puck for Rutger McGroarty, Fantilli circled below the net and emerged out the other side to take a pass from McGroarty. He looped through high ice back to the left wing, saw an open lane to the net upon making his way to the slot, and buried a shot.
Fantilli’s first career Big Ten goal came in overtime against Penn State in State College. As fearsome as he is in the offensive zone, there is something even more terrifying about the way he re-groups in neutral ice—leaning into an arc just beyond the blue line, as he looks back over his shoulder to survey his options. The fear—for opponents or observers—sets in with the knowledge of the momentum Fantilli is building and the certainty that he will strike his mark once he selects it.
In OT against the Nittany Lions, Fantilli saw a path to the net along the right wing. There were a pair of PSU defenders to contend with, but Fantilli knew he could shake both—sending Kevin Wall the wrong way with a deft head fake, then luring in Jimmy Dowd. Dowd succeeded in knocking the puck free, but it found an open Samoskevich. As the rest of the building watched Samoskevich fire a shot, Fantilli drove to the net, found the rebound, and buried it for an overtime victory.
It was a play that showed not just the Nobleton, Ontario-born freshman’s skill—seeking out and eliminating targets with equal parts precision and ferocity—but also his inevitability. Even when Dowd made a solid defensive play, it wasn’t enough.
Then there was the snipe against Michigan State. The Wolverines were on the power play once again, and this time, Fantilli was the last of his teammates to arrive in the offensive zone. His teammates—dispersed throughout the zone—posed credible offensive threats, but the moment he arrived, all four Spartan penalty killers fixed their attention on him alone. It wasn’t enough. Gavin Brindley found him with a pass the moment he crossed the blue line, and Fantilli did what he always does with an open look from the slot, wiring it past the normally imperious Dylan St. Cyr, who had been, if only temporarily, rendered helpless by the might of Fantilli’s wrister.
The one knock to Fantilli’s case has been character, his 67 PIMs an apparent proxy for ill-repute. Once again, the idea that voters have any ability to parse candidates’ character is facile. Drawing some dubious link between penalty minutes and temperament is ludicrous, and that’s to say nothing of the simple fact that the brawl at Michigan State that brought about allegations of Fantilli’s disreputable character was in fact one of the most exciting moments of the season.
To Naurato, those allegations against Fantilli do not merit any consideration: “It’s just people talking that are irrelevant. That’s just irrelevant. Hockey is a contact, physical sport, and it’s not about penalty minutes. He’s a phenomenal kid. Academically, he’s also a freshman in college a year early. It’s hard. He’s at the University of Michigan. It’s difficult.”
I want to be cautious about dignifying the character arguments against Fantilli with further comment, but, in my own encounters with the talismanic freshman, I have found him to be nothing but amiable and mature. Based both on demeanor and appearance, you could never convince me he was eighteen if I didn’t know it to be true.
Beyond the gaudy production though, what stands out most about Fantilli is the way his brand of hockey feeds team success.
In his most recent outing, another overtime victory against Penn State (the only difference being that this game secured a trip to the Frozen Four, rather than salvaging two points from a November visit to State College), Fantilli set the tone by picking Paul DeNaples’ pocket below the goal line, then dishing a feed to McGroarty in the slot on the game’s first shift.
He went on to score the Wolverines’ first goal, tying the score as the clock ticked below eight minutes to play in regulation. It was nothing spectacular—he had set up another Samoskevich chance in the slot, then buried the rebound, but it showed perhaps his greatest attribute among what he’s proven to be an absurd arsenal: his net drive.
Finding goals by going to the net is the ultimate hockey cliché, but, throughout Fantilli’s freshman season in Ann Arbor, his insatiable desire and undeniable ability to do just that has made him, beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt, the country’s best player. Alongside Brindley and McGroarty, Fantilli leads one of the nation’s best lines that doesn’t just score but establishes a standard. Fantilli’s work rate and intensity atop Michigan’s lineup demands the same from each of his teammates.
The production puts Adam Fantilli into historic company, not just as a freshman but for any NCAA player. These aren’t hollow statistics though, and his dominance only gets clearer as you contextualize them.
Fantilli made his NCAA debut at seventeen. His job was to be the number one center for a team replacing eight departures to pro hockey. He met that occasion by leading the nation in scoring and setting the pace for a Big Ten champion, now in the Frozen Four and intent on finishing the job.
His teammates and coach will be keen to support him at Friday’s presentation of the award, but Naurato takes pleasure in the fact that his star’s mind is elsewhere: “The best thing about Adam is he’s worried about Thursday, not Friday. With that said, after Thursday, hopefully we do what we plan to do, and he can just enjoy that day, then refocus for Saturday.”
At their best, these awards mark the apex of the era or season they purport to represent. If that is to be the case here, the Hobey will be Adam Fantilli’s, who has done us all a favor by turning the competition into a one-horse race thanks to his scintillating performances.
The Tag Comes Off: Brandon Naurato, Head Coach, University of Michigan Men’s Hockey
I wasn’t in a hurry to get this particular post up because it wasn’t news. In the literal and breaking sense, sure. But if you’d paid any attention to the University of Michigan men’s hockey team over the last month, you knew it was coming. Now it is done.
In brief: Brandon Naurato has agreed in principle to become Michigan’s head coach on a five-year contract, interim no longer.
I made the case for Naurato’s appointment in a full-time capacity back in December, based on his acumen as a recruiter, program-builder, and teacher.
At the time, I argued that emphasizing short-term results was missing the forest for the trees with respect to the coach’s long-term fitness for the role. Naurato was embarking on a journey of transforming the Wolverines from a program defined by elite talent that seemed to run out of answers in the postseason when power plays and transition offense ran dry to one with a sustainable offensive system that would allow them to score in bunches and control games.
Since that time, Naurato has steered Michigan out of the Big Ten’s basement and to a conference tournament title and second straight Frozen Four berth, but still, I would contend that the best of the Naurato era is yet to come. Michigan fans should be salivating not just at this weekend’s Frozen Four but at what will follow.
That’s not to say Michigan is assured of future Frozen Fours or national titles. Those achievements will have to be earned on the ice. What Michigan has done, though, is secure the services of a rising star in his industry, someone who will put the Wolverines in the best possible position to claim those accolades (as he has this year) for years to come.
As for the timeline, Naurato explained Monday after practice that he found out a few days before the news went public via a meeting with athletic director Warde Manuel. Naurato admits it was “tough to keep it down for a couple days, before he talked to the guys, but I thought it was an awesome idea by him to share [the announcement] with the players first.”
More significant than any on-ice impact he may have made though is the way Naurato has transformed the culture around his program. He took over amidst a scandal with Mel Pearson ousted for the toxic environment he created in and around Yost. It can be difficult to turn discussions of culture into something tangible, but friend of the newsletter Jashvina Shah did just that in her recent feature on Steven Holtz’ battle back from adenovirus for College Hockey News.
At the conclusion of that piece, Shah quotes Holtz as saying “He's more than a coach. He's a good person. When you can have a person who knows hockey as well as Brandon Naurato and be such a down to earth person and genuinely care about every single one of his players and how they're doing medically, physically, how they're performing in the classroom, I think it goes a long way when when you can have someone that knows that much about hockey and also be that that great of a person away from hockey.”
It’s easy to talk about culture in intangible ways—as slogans and motivational posters on the wall. For Holtz, the culture Naurato has established—of “genuine care” for players beyond the rink—was, at least in part, the literal difference between life and death. Hopefully Naurato will never deal with something half as severe as Holtz’ illness for all the time he remains at Michigan, but his grace in that moment offers reassurance that he could if he must.
It’s not that Warde Manuel needed to remove the interim label last week. Between a B1G title and Frozen Four appearance, there could be no doubt that Naurato earned the right to try his hand at the full-time position, so it’s not as if his lack of a long-term contract posed a meaningful distraction. Still, in confirming Naurato’s appointment, Manuel put one more infinitesimally small element by which the masses are moved in Michigan’s favor.
As Naurato said Monday, “Obviously, when people are texting and happy for you [because they find out about the promotion], that’s awesome to hear, and it sounds cliché, but all I can think about is Tampa.”
Forward Recomposition: How a January Lineup Tweak Helped Set U-M on a Path Toward the Frozen Four
In previewing the season’s second half back in January, I wrote about the way Michigan appeared to have settled on its first and fourth lines, with the middle six remaining in a state of flux. At the time, Fantilli played (and dominated) between Mackie Samoskevich and Dylan Duke, while Mark Estapa, Nick Granowicz, and Nolan Moyle were in the process of replicating the Jimmy Lambert-Garret Van Wyhe-Moyle trio that played a key role for the Wolverines’ last postseason. I wondered how Naurato would supplement those two established lines by settling on an alignment of the middle six.
Instead, entering a late January trip to Minnesota, Naurato opted to break up the vaunted DAM line. Now, Fantilli would be flanked by McGroarty and Brindley on the top line, while Duke and Samoskevich would stay together and play with T.J. Hughes.
Michigan split that weekend in Minneapolis, with both games requiring overtime, but the Saturday victory kickstarted what would become a seven-game win streak, thanks in no small part to the instant chemistry Naurato found with a new-look top six.
In Brindley, Fantilli would find a winger with boundless speed, energy, and creativity, capable of winning races and puck battles with equal aplomb. Meanwhile, McGroarty enjoyed a breakout second half on the top line, where he found his niche in the form of a scoring touch at the goalmouth. As Naurato pointed out Monday, McGroarty’s strong second half came from a simple formula: “He started going the net, he started making more inside plays. He was never soft, but just way harder [now] and getting to those areas instead of being in the soft area, he started driving the net, and it opened up everything for everybody else.” The new wingers meshed perfectly with Fantilli’s net drive, and suddenly, Michigan had a top line with elite skill but that played a rugged, grinding style more typical of a fourth line.
Meanwhile, Duke and Samoskevich brought their well-known chemistry and complementary skill sets to T.J. Hughes, helping to elevate the freshman’s game at even-strength. Hughes scored all season on the power play, but with Duke and Samoskevich’s help, he began to make a greater impact at five-on-five.
It’s not that the previous iteration of Michigan’s top six couldn’t work, but rather that the team needed a jolt and arrived at something even better. The swap went so well, it hasn’t required further tinkering.
Meanwhile, on the third line, Michigan received a massive boost in February, when Frank Nazar returned from injury, providing the Wolverines with another natural center (and freeing up the likes of Brindley, McGroarty, Samoskevich, Duke, and, even in a pinch against the NTDP, Seamus Casey to focus on their natural positions). Nazar netted his first goal in his second game (the Duel in the D against MSU), showing promise as a goalscorer and star. Now twelve games into his collegiate career, Nazar has two goals, five assists, and a +5 rating. Even without outsized point totals, Nazar’s return was an essential domino in everything coming together for the Wolverines in the second half. He might not match the top six in production (for now), but the intelligence of his game and sound defensive play has had a massive impact on the entire Wolverine lineup.
“All four of our lines, we want everyone to score, and then we want everyone to check,” noted Naurato Monday. “I think Frankie’s really finding his groove now that he’s been in it. He’s a freshman, he’s still trying to understand the systems, it’s all new, but he’s been great. He has such a high hockey IQ that he adapted way quicker than most.” He added “I think Frankie could have more points—he’s getting chances…that line’s going.”
“That line” is Nazar between senior Eric Ciccolini and fellow freshman Jackson Hallum. Hallum’s game has benefited from having a running mate of Nazar’s speed alongside him and also, per Naurato, from a tweak to his equipment.
“Jackson and Seamus Casey have both switched from 77 [flex] to 70, and I think it’s changed their game,” Naurato explained. [Flex refers to the number of pounds of pressure required to bend a stick one inch; thus, a smaller number corresponds to a stick that bends more easily.] “Now they know how to flex their stick properly. I was watching video with Jackson earlier, and he did a skating movement through the neutral zone. With a flimsier stick, you learn to shoot properly, so your hands come off your body. [Gestures to demonstrate increased freedom of movement.] Now with his upper body movement along with his lower body skating, he’s placing pucks and tapping pucks in transition where before [his movement was too restricted to do so].
“I used to joke with kids I’d work with—kids would have the wrong tools in their toolbox, so I’d give them a new stick with the right flex, and I’d joke with them after they rip a couple pucks that I just saved them $3,000 in private lessons.” He adds that whippier, lower flex sticks make it easier to get off shots in traffic, citing Hallum’s goal against Ohio State and Casey’s against Minnesota as examples.
Naurato points out that young players often don’t know what they’re looking for in equipment and thus make choices that inadvertently hamper their game. “Every guy I’ve worked with from bantam to NHL, that’s the first thing I look at,” said Naurato, referring to stick specifications. “I’m not a skating guru, but if you tie your laces long behind your skates or you tuck the back sock into the back of your skate, you don’t have as much ankle flexion. If you do that at seven years old, your ankle never has the proper flexion, which means you don’t have knee bend, which means you don’t have the right skating posture, so I think all that stuff matters.”
“What’s funny is when I met with the skating coaches in Detroit, and I’m listening to all the things they say of what to do or not do, I did everything the wrong way, and I feel like that’s why my skating was what it was,” smiles Naurato, seemingly with rueful thoughts of an NHL career that never was.
Through the midseason tinkering, the one line that remained united was Estapa, Granowicz, and Moyle, a triumvirate whose game has only benefited from more time together. That veteran unit has been the most obvious manifestation of the Wolverines’ identity throughout the postseason—dictating games by forcing play to the offensive zone and sowing chaos through movement and puck possession once they get there.
Breaking up Fantilli, Duke, and Samoskevich was a risk. The trio had spent the whole season together and been a force every night. However, it was through this reconstitution of the forward group, that Michigan’s path back to the B1G Tournament crown and Frozen Four began to take shape.
An Extra Traveler to Tampa
Via a video posted to the team’s social media feeds Saturday, Michigan announced that it would have an extra traveler joining them in Tampa, Team Impact’s Kellen O.
Team Impact works to connect children with disabilities to collegiate sports teams, and Kellen’s relationship with the Michigan hockey team began a year ago.
“Nick Blankenburg was a big part of Team Impact last year,” said Brandon Naurato. “Jay Keranen has taken that on, and he has a great relationship with Kellen, and I think it’s just the respect of all the guys on the our team to see the older guys and how they’re treating Kellen and the other kids from Team Impact that it’s just what we do. So then they feel comfortable doing it, and build relationships. It’s awesome.”
The short clip posted by @umichhockey made plain both Kellen and the team’s enthusiasm at the news. One more infinitesimally small element in the Wolverines’ favor come Thursday night.
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