Midweek Roundup Playoff Edition: March 2, 2022
Michigan begins its postseason journey with a best-of-three against Michigan State
This weekend, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team will begin its postseason journey, facing off against in-state rivals Michigan State in a best-of-three Big Ten quarterfinal series.
Had Michigan secured the regular season B1G crown over the weekend, it would be out of action this weekend, earning a bye into the semi-finals. Instead, it has at least two more dates with its closest rival with the option for a third at Yost Ice Arena. As consolation prizes go, it’s hard to complain.
Of course, as we transition from regular- to post-season hockey, we are obligated to point out that the margin for error for the Wolverines is now close to zero, though not entirely. In fact, this weekend’s series with MSU will represent the final opportunity to lose a game without being knocked out of a competition.
While this weekend’s series is best-of-three (effectively affording the team a one-game cushion), the Big Ten semis and final, along with the NCAA tournament, will all be single elimination.
Though the Wolverines would presumably have preferred to be out of action this weekend, a best-of-three with the Spartans offers an opportunity for a team in some flux to re-establish its style and identity with all of its stars in the lineup.
The Matchup
To be blunt and tempt the fates with the hubris that always accompanies this rivalry, Michigan State should not be competitive in this series. The Spartans have 1 (one) win in 2022. The two teams have played four times this season, and Michigan has won all four, with only one of those contests decided by fewer than four goals (a 3-2 win in East Lansing back in November).
Michigan is a traditional power operating at or near the peak of its potential. Michigan State is also a traditional power but mired in a prolonged spell of mediocrity. For the time being, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that the two teams hardly play the same sport.
With that said, if the Spartans do have a hope at victory, it likely hangs on the shoulders of their two best players, both of them seniors: goaltender Drew DeRidder and forward Mitchell Lewandowski.
Even on a woeful team, DeRidder has posted a commendable .924 save percentage. For any longshot hockey team desperate for a postseason result the regular season suggests it doesn’t deserve, the obvious path forward is goaltending. If DeRidder can stand on his head and steal one of the series’ first two games, he will have played the Spartans into a do-or-die game three.
For a team that has won just once in the calendar year, that’s about as good of a proposition as you might hope for, and then DeRidder would be one more stellar performance away from the kind of win Spartan fans would never forget.
Lewandowski meanwhile has yet to appear in any of the four Michigan-Michigan State games this season, having missed two major chunks of the season to injury. That Lewandowski’s return last weekend overlapped with the first Spartan victory since the calendar turned is hardly a coincidence.
Lewandowski is a point-per-game player who brings a degree of offensive dynamism to the MSU lineup that is otherwise absent. Sure, the four preceding matchups between these two teams were hardly competitive, but that was without Lewandowski. If the Spartans hope to achieve a shocking victory, perhaps he can guide them there.
So, about that whole “one win in 2022” situation. Last Saturday, State snapped a thirteen-game losing streak with a 2-1 win over Penn State. DeRidder made thirty-eight saves (a number that sounds about right if the Spartans want to steal a game this weekend), and Adam Goodsir and Josh Nodler provided the goals.
The Spartans had to ward off a nerve-wracking five-minute major midway through the third period of that game, but did so. Again, if we’re trying to make the case for State to remain competitive (and trying to do so without saying something to the effect of “rivalry voodoo”), it must be said that this is the hottest MSU has been all year.
In three of the four games this year (again, the 3-2 win in East Lansing is the exception here), Michigan has been able to cruise past the Spartans while playing a rather cavalier brand of aggressive, transition-dependent hockey.
In the November series, Michigan’s Olympic Four posed State enough problems Friday that it felt the series was over after about a period. In the February series, Luke Hughes was so good that nothing else seemed to matter.
This time around, Michigan finds itself in an unusual place. On the one hand, the program is coming off its best regular season of the Big Ten era with an incomparably good crop of young talent leading the charge. On the other, this team was just swept by Notre Dame for the second time, fanning fatalistic flames about this team’s postseason potential that never seem to dissipate for long in Ann Arbor.
Arrogant though it may sound, Michigan should emerge from this series without too much trouble. With that said, coasting to more victories of the 6-2 or 7-3 variety likely isn’t what Mel Pearson wants. Instead, a more cohesive and defensively sound performance might be more welcome, even if it is by a lesser margin than we have come to expect.
Entering last weekend’s series with Notre Dame, Michigan was red hot and returning its four most talented players. After one-hundred-twenty minutes of offensive floundering in South Bend, those good feelings have vanished.
For Michigan, the task is simple: take care of business against a bitter rival and restore that positivity. Big weekends from the Olympic Four, quiet by their lofty standard against the Irish, would go a long way toward meeting that objective and recalibrating the team emotionally as it prepares for a postseason run that will only grow more difficult from here.
Historical Review
Friend of the newsletter Drew Van Drese offered the following succinct summary of the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry’s postseason history:
In short, it started grim and has since soared over the course of the modern era. It’s perhaps worth noting that all but two of those matchups predate the founding of the Big Ten as a hockey league.
The Big Ten tournament only dates back to the 2013-14 season. Michigan has won it once, in 2015-16 when it knocked off Minnesota in the final.
Michigan has met the Spartans twice in Big Ten postseason play, winning both contests. In 2014-15, the Wolverines knocked off the Spartans in the semifinal by a score of 4-1. In 2019-20, Michigan swept the Spartans in the quarterfinal, before the tournament was called off due to the onset of a pandemic.
In brief, Michigan has never lost to the Spartans in Big Ten postseason play.
Two Big Questions:
Is it time to toss the line combinations in the blender?
For Mel Pearson’s team, variation in line arrangement has been comparatively minimal. While he is not adverse to trying out new combinations on the fly in games, the basic shell of Michigan’s lineup has been consistent for much of the season.
The biggest point of variation has been whether the three Olympic forwards have played together or been split up. Last weekend against Notre Dame, Pearson opted for a loaded top line of Beniers between Johnson and Brisson. At five-on-five, the trio was held off the scoreboard.
When the season began, Pearson appeared to prefer pairing Johnson and Beniers on one line (with a rotating third member) and Bordeleau and Brisson on the second line (again with a variable third wheel).
For this weekend, it feels as though the time is right to return to that former approach (of splitting Brisson from Johnson and Beniers). Throughout 2022, Bordeleau has driven quality opportunities, but with Mackie Samoskevich as a fixture on Johnny Beecher’s line and with all due respect to Mike Pastujov, he hasn’t had much of a scoring threat as a running mate.
Bumping Brisson down to Bordeleau’s line would amplify the menace opposing teams experience when attempting to slow down Michigan’s star-studded top six.
One bad series against Notre Dame (okay, two bad series against Notre Dame if we want to factor in the whole season) is not cause to totally reshuffle the deck for Michigan. However, adding a more direct scoring threat to the Bordeleau line should make the team more dangerous.
Meanwhile, Kent Johnson and Matty Beniers should still have no trouble creating offense themselves, and either Pastujov or Mark Estapa (the two wingers lined up around Bordeleau last weekend) could fit the billing for the third link in that chain.
Alternatively, a more ambitious consideration might be to elevate Jimmy Lambert (a healthy scratch last Saturday night in South Bend) to Beniers’ wing, where he could provide his quintessentially Saskatchewan blend of skill and ruggedness to that role.
Michigan shouldn’t need to tinker too much with its lineup to beat Michigan State. In fact, it shouldn’t have to tinker at all. However, the series could offer Pearson an opportunity to experiment with some new looks (whether at even strength or on the power play) as the team prepares for what it hopes will be a lengthy postseason run.
Isn’t this the perfect moment for Michigan State to Michigan State this?
What does this tautology mean?
Like so many local rivalries, Michigan and Michigan State’s vendetta is defined by social class. Michigan is the affluent older brother, insistent on regaling anyone who will listen with stories of its glorious past. It revels in every opportunity it gets to cast aspersions on the less ballyhooed Spartans.
Michigan’s ability to command national headlines, regardless of on-field, ice, or court performance, infuriates Spartan sensibilities. Michigan State defines itself on grit and determination.
If you doubt this construction, go back and watch the highlights of FOX’s broadcast of this fall’s football game. Play-by-play man Gus Johnson hammers home the Spartans’ overmatched and underdog mindset at every opportunity. Regrettably, Michigan provided ample opportunity to laud those traits in the Spartans.
So what does this have to do with hockey?
Well, in a sense, not much, but since 2010 or so, this is the story of these two teams. The Spartans love nothing more than seizing upon Wolverine hubris.
In one of the best profiles of a player written in recent years, The Ringer’s Musa Okwonga wrote of Bayern Munich and Germany forward Thomas Muller “If there is ever any hint of hubris in football, any suggestion that a team has made plans that are far too grand, then the German forward will leap upon them. He is there, perching at the edge of every elite player’s bed as they thrash about in delusional sleep, desperate to nudge them awake. Yes, Müller has been handing out reality checks since the day he first stepped onto the game’s biggest stages.”
Michigan State channels this same energy for every clash with the Wolverines, desperate to be able to insist about the delusion of Maize and Blue aspirations. Entering this series, Michigan is doubtlessly confident, and, given the season’s results, there is no reason not to be.
However, because this is Michigan-Michigan State, it is impossible not to feel as though such confidence is a fatal error, the kind of thing that might leave one staring into the void of a gray October Saturday wondering why anyone would possibly invest their emotional well-being in a pastime as fickle as amateur athletics. Hypothetically…
Here, the Spartans couldn’t exactly ruin Michigan’s season. The Wolverines will play in the NCAA Tournament almost regardless of their results this weekend. However, winning this series would provide the Spartans with trash talking ammunition for decades.
It’s not an argument as to why Michigan State could steal the series, but it’s a reality that somehow necessitates mention, so there it is.