Midweek Roundup: B1G Semifinal Preview Edition (3.9.22)
Michigan looks to snap its skid against Notre Dame
On Saturday night, the University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team will vie with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish for a place in the Big Ten Tournament Final.
The game will be played before a sold-out crowd at Yost Ice Arena on South State Street in Ann Arbor. Whether a win or a loss, it may prove the final home game of the season for the Wolverines.
The Irish will arrive in Ann Arbor as the only team to sweep this vaunted edition of the Wolverines, a feat they managed twice—first in Ann Arbor in November, then in South Bend in late February.
So, while Michigan enters the weekend as the higher-ranked team, it is difficult not to feel as though the Irish are favorites. Notre Dame are not favorites in any conventional sense. The Irish enter the game with a lesser roster, worse regular season record, and having been forced to scratch and claw their way past a lowly Wisconsin side.
So why do the Irish feel like favorites? Because on Saturday in Ann Arbor, Michigan won’t just play Notre Dame, it will challenge the orthodoxy of postseason hockey.
Notre Dame has won eight of its last ten against Michigan. Head coach Jeff Jackson’s fingerprints are evident in all of those victories. His team is a clear reflection of his vision, and the style it adopts meshes perfectly with the conventional formula for success in playoff hockey at any level.
For the Irish, success comes from discipline. It is not as though the Irish lack skill; rather, that they choose not to emphasize it.
In breaking down the Irish’s most recent sweep of Michigan, we likened the Irish structure to a slingshot. The further back you pull it, the more pressure gets applied. You might be able to break the puck out of your own end, but, by the time you reach the red line, you will be hounded and eventually cough it up. The moment you do, the Irish snap into attack mode, moving straight down the ice to force odd-man rushes and create offense.
It is a simple formula, but one that plays perfectly into the natural conservatism of playoff hockey. You defend, you obstruct, and you counter, and the hockey gods reward you.
But Mel Pearson would be making a grave error if he denied his team the opportunity to (with all due respect to Michigan State) take on the Big Ten and then NCAA’s best while deferring to that wisdom.
As we discussed following Michigan’s third sweep of the Spartans on the season a weekend ago, the path forward for Michigan is paved with expansive and attacking hockey.
To borrow a phrase from Matthew, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.”
To play anything less than that beautifully offensive hockey would be to put Michigan’s offensive lights under a bowl.
This match-up with Notre Dame will offer us an outstanding preview of the obstacles to come in a potential B1G title game or definite NCAA tournament appearance. Should Michigan meet it by backing away from what it knows best, it will surely crumble.
However, if Pearson allows his offensive lights to shine as only they can, Michigan may not win the NCAA Tournament, but it will at very least allow us to remember this special team in the way it merits.
For Michigan, that means empowering dangerous transition players like Matty Beniers, Thomas Bordeleau, and Kent Johnson to go out and play the attacking game that suits them best. It means horizontal passing and puck carriers attacking open space.
It means three lines that can score and a fourth that never seems to have to play in its own end. It means a lethal power play and so much scoring talent that even its penalty kill is dangerous.
Sure, the Irish have recent history on their side, but Michigan has firepower no team in America can match. Now is not the time to put a governor on all that talent. Now is the time to unleash it.
Conference Tournament History
Michigan and Notre Dame have met ten times in conference tournament play across their various conference associations, splitting the matchups straight down the middle. The first matchup came in the first round of the 1975-76 WCHA playoffs, which at the time was determined by a Champions League-style two-legged tie, where the team with most aggregate goals advanced. Michigan won that series by an aggregate score of eighteen to twelve. The most recent matchup pitted the schools against one another in the 2012-13 CCHA Title Game, and the Irish triumphed. This will be the teams’ first conference tournament get-together of the Big Ten era.
Three Key Wolverines
Nick Blankenburg
Last weekend, Blankenburg posted a goal and five assists against State. Michigan will doubtlessly count on its captain for another productive weekend. We mention him here though more for his style of play than his point production.
No player encapsulates the unique joy of the 21-22 Michigan Wolverines quite like their captain, Nick Blankenburg. According to the depth chart, Blankenburg plays defense, but you’d be forgiven for confusing him for a forward given his proclivity for extended stays below the dots in the offensive zone.
Our editorial stance is clear here: for Michigan to have a chance on Saturday night (and beyond), it must play the kind of attacking hockey that allowed it to boat race the Spartans twice more last weekend. There will be no clearer sign of that than seeing Blankenburg on one of his trademark scampers below the opposing goal line in the early stages. If you spot it, be warned: the Wolverines are coming.
Brendan Brisson
Though we’d love to believe the Wolverines will be able to race past the Irish this weekend in a triumph of offensive hockey, it feels more likely that Notre Dame—like any Jeff Jackson team—will find a way to make it a game of few chances and thin margins.
Michigan will have to count on its purest sniper in Brisson to propel them over the top. Brisson was held pointless last weekend against State for his longest scoring drought of the season. That didn’t matter against the Spartans, but if that streak extends, the Wolverines will be in trouble.
Whether at five-on-five or on the man-advantage, Brendan Brisson needs to find a way to beat Irish goaltender Matt Galajda at least once this weekend. I wouldn’t bet against him.
Erik Portillo
This last selection is the most obvious one. No hockey team achieves postseason success without strong goaltending, and Michigan will be no exception. Portillo has been a rock in net, while often facing a more difficult workload than the raw shot numbers against him would suggest. At the opposite end of the rink, Notre Dame has one of the nation’s best in Galajda. Portillo will need to be at the top of his game this weekend, and, if the entire season to this point is any indicator, he will.
An Overdue Update: Carl Hagelin’s Frightening Injury
Here, we must close on a somber note. This is a story we regret not covering sooner, but, given the excitement of last weekend’s on-ice performance and the fact that it broke just after last week’s midweek roundup, it was lost in the shuffle.
Michigan hockey emeritus and Washington Capitals forward Carl Hagelin sustained a scary eye injury that has him out of action indefinitely following surgery.
Per Caps’ GM Brian MacLellan, the initial diagnosis was a positive sign, but that doesn’t mean there are any obvious next steps, nor sense of when a return might be possible.
For the time being, there’s not much to say beyond sending all of our best wishes to Carl, who was among the players who first caught our attention in discovering Michigan hockey.
Here is the Hobey Baker hype tape Michigan put together for him back in 2011 to send us into the weekend on something brighter: