Midweek Roundup: November 2
Previewing a home-and-home with the loathsome Spartans and taking stock of the season to date
So there was a football game Saturday. A mesmerizing, devastating, exhilarating, soul-crushing football game. We here at Gulo Gulo are neither ready nor willing to discuss it, though we feel obligated to touch on some pertinent context.
In what seems an agonizing fate this year, the Paul Bunyan Trophy won’t be on the line until next Fall, but nonetheless, an opportunity for a sliver of revenge will come this weekend.
The University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team will play a home-and-home with the accursed, loathsome, inevitable Michigan State Spartans.
Friday night, Yost Ice Arena will host the Spartans, before a Maized out crowd. Saturday, the Wolverines will travel back to East Lansing to take on MSU at Mann Ice Arena.
Before diving into the match up, I think we will all deserve some good vibes, courtesy of Michigan’s incomparable sorcerer Kent Johnson.
Scouting the Spartans
The Spartans sit at 4-3-1 on the young season, a record befitting a team with a bit of veteran talent and a few exciting prospects but without a clear identity for the time being.
Head coach Danton Cole is in his fifth season steering the Spartan ship, and, if we’re being honest, it’s not going great. Under Cole, the Spartans have finished 7th in the league thrice and sixth once. They have never won a round in the Big Ten conference tournament, and last season was the first time they won even a single game in that tournament.
College Hockey News picked the Spartans to finish 6th this year in the Big Ten, citing a pair of valuable transfer additions (Griffin Loughron from Northern Michigan and Chris Berger from Brown) and a host of returning production as potential reasons for optimism.
The issue for the Spartans, as the fine folks at CHN point out in their preview, is that, though lots of last year’s production returns, the productive output from last year left quite a bit to be desired. A year ago, Michigan State managed just 40 goals in their 27 games for a paltry 1.48 goals-per-game average.
Mitchell Lewandowski, a fifth-year senior from Clarkston, Michigan, is the heart and soul of the Spartan team. He has played 135 games and racked up 101 points in those contests.
Unfortunately for the Spartans, he has not played since an October 22nd match-up with UMass-Lowell. It remains to be seen whether Lewandoski will suit up this weekend.
On the goal scoring front, State has managed three or more goals in just two of their eight games. On the flip side, they have been held to one goal or fewer in three of those eight. Simply put, goal scoring, as anticipated, is an issue in East Lansing.
Perhaps that means the formula for the Wolverines is to open the game up and dare the Spartans to keep up.
All that said, I, for one, wouldn’t even think of allowing a seemingly overmatched Spartan side to devastate me when it pulls out an incomprehensible victory.
Are there serious concerns about Michigan’s consistency?
Having lost games in consecutive weekends, I think it would be prudent to spend a moment dwelling on just how significant we feel these early season results actually are. Should Wolverine fans panic over the early season mishaps? Is there no need for concern this early in the year when the group’s overall talent is so obvious?
Unsurprisingly and frustratingly, the answer is somewhere in the middle, though I think it would be fair to say that it is closer to the “no need to worry” end of the spectrum.
As we discussed following the season’s first loss against Western Michigan, an undefeated campaign was always a pipe dream. This division is too competitive, and this sport is too chancey.
However, Michigan should also place a serious premium on winning the Big Ten’s regular season crown and with it home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. With this in mind, it would seem a bit naive to hand wave away two defeats in the team’s last four.
In touching on this topic during his weekly radio show, Inside Michigan Hockey live from the Pretzel Bell, Mel Pearson said “We are going to get every team’s best effort. That’s why you came to Michigan.” As a consequence, Michigan’s obligation, according to Pearson, is to arrive at each game ready to play from puck drop.
Pearson attributed results like Friday night's defeat against Wisconsin, a game he called “excruciating” and “frustrating,” to a failure of preparation.
As the hour-long show drew to a close, Pearson added “We have to have better starts. Part of that is being a young team, but I want to stop talking about that. We have to move on from that.”
He pointed out that Friday’s loss demonstrated the challenge of chasing games. It was not an altogether dreadful performance from Michigan, but, trailing almost the entire night, the Wolverines could never sustain a serious comeback bid.
I love the way Pearson rejected the “young team” excuse as well. Of course, Michigan IS a young team, and the kind of issues that have plagued the Wolverines are ones typically associated with the young (and talented).
Nonetheless, Michigan is a team with legitimate conference and national title ambitions. There are no age restrictions on those crowns, so there is no reason to evaluate this team’s results on a scale with expectations adjusted for youth.
Again, this is not to say that Michigan or its fans need panic about two losses. It is to say that the Big Ten regular season crown matters, and Michigan won’t secure it without playing consistently.
This week, Penn State joined the Wolverines, Notre Dame, and Minnesota in the national rankings, meaning that more than half the league now features in those polls.
With that in mind, here’s to hoping the Wolverines take two off Sparty this weekend. Well, for those reasons, and maybe a few others.
Fastest Skaters and Injury Updates
Elsewhere in his weekly radio show, Pearson received a question about who the Wolverines’ fastest skater is. Pearson used the question as an opportunity to note that Johnny Beecher will return to the lineup on Friday night against Sparty for his season debut. A 2019 first round selection of the Boston Bruins, Beecher has missed all of this season and a decent chunk of last recovering from a shoulder surgery last February.
Pearson cited Beecher as among the fastest of the Wolverine skaters and also described him as “hard to handle” due to his size. He emphasized that it will take time for Beecher to fully recover his name but spoke with excitement about his practice performances along the road to recovery. Pearson also said “we’ve missed that” in reference to the fast and physical game the New York-born forward brings to the lineup.
In that show, Pearson also described Ryan Blankenburg, who was knocked out of Friday’s loss against Wisconsin prematurely, as “probable.”
Finally, Pearson also mentioned Luke Morgan as another serious contender for Michigan’s fastest skater.
Cathartic Goal of the Week: Larkin in OT
Speaking of fast skaters, this week’s cathartic goal of the week. The Detroit Red Wings are the definitive pleasant surprise of the NHL season. If you want to read more about the state of their rebuild, I’d highly recommend this from ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski. In brief, the Wings have added two of the league’s most dynamic rookies in Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, and it appears the cellar dwelling days are near to a close.
In this week’s CGoW, which doubles as a Pro Blue update, the Red Wings are taking on the Capitals in a three-on-three overtime period. Dylan Larkin takes a feed Raymond, who has carried the puck all the way up ice, and makes no mistake, tucking a lethal wrister just out of reach of Vitek Vanacek and banked in off the far post.
Larkin’s simple fist pump celebration before joining his teammates for hugs belied the emotional weight of the goal. Larkin has spent his career with one of the NHL’s undisputed prestige franchises, but he has been mired on mostly mediocre or worse teams on which he was one of a few bright spots. In this moment, Larkin reminded us that as the Red Wings emerge from several years in the wilderness, he will be there to set the pace.