National Semifinal Gameday Notebook: Michigan-Quinnipiac
Notes from Wednesday practice at the Frozen Four
Having arrived in Tampa Tuesday, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team hosted an open practice Wednesday at Amalie Arena, home of the Tampa Bay Lightning. The practice consisted of the usual fare: work on transitions, line rushes, some offensive zone play, and a brief scrimmage. The formal practice concluded some fifteen minutes before their allotted time expired, and the Wolverines divided up into games of “rebound” at either net, as some passed or worked on faceoffs in the neutral zone.
After practice concluded, head coach Brandon Naurato, sophomore forward Dylan Duke, and freshman forward Gavin Brindley gave a press conference.
“Last year we definitely learned that it happens fast,” Duke said, when asked how last year’s trip to Boston would inform this weekend for the Wolverines. “You get here, there’s a lot of distractions, and then you play one game and it’s win or go home.”
Naurato touted Duke as “one of the best netfront power play and netfront guys ever to play at Michigan,” adding “He’s always been a leader, even growing up and at USA [the NTDP].”
Brindley, a native of Estero, Florida (a suburb of Ft. Meyers, two-and-a-half hours south of Tampa via I-75), expressed his enthusiasm at returning to his home state: “Coming here, breathing in this Florida air has been really nice. Beautiful rink and I’ve seen a ton of games here growing up, so it’s awesome to be back and we’re jacked up.”
He subsequently revealed that “politics” of the locker room saw him replaced by Mackie Samoskevich as team DJ, while Naurato expressed gratitude that Brendan Brisson—last year’s music czar—was no longer in control, saying “I like rap, but too much 90s rap. Way more genre this year.”
When asked about the news late last week that Naurato was an interim head coach no longer, Brindley was quick to note that the announcement didn’t catch him off-guard, saying “No, we weren’t surprised at all. He should be here for a long time. We knew it was coming…even when I was going through the recruitment process and he was hired as an assistant coach, he was one of the big reasons why I wanted to play at Michigan.”
The latter stages of the availability were dominated by a discussion of the team’s postseason haircuts. “When I was a freshman last year, we were going into the Big Ten playoffs, and the older guys were like, we’re going to get mullets,” explained Duke to open the conversation. “We’re just freshmen and we’re like ‘all right, let’s go do whatever.’ And then we all went to a barbershop together, made a whole day out of it. We were there for two hours just hanging out. Everyone got mullets, everyone’s laughing at each other’s different types of mullets…Captain Nolan Moyle would tell us to try and look as ridiculous as possible for playoffs.”
A question about the team’s sharpest looking mullet prompted the following exchange between Naurato and Brindley:
Naurato: I’d say Adam is struggling. I think Samo and Duker look the best.
Brindley: He’s got bald spots
Naurato: Well I’m not talking about that, c’mon. He got the lines cleaned up; you did too. A couple weeks ago it was questionable. It looks good now.
Brindley: Well, I can’t say my own looks good. I know mine looks good
Quinnipiac Awaits
This evening, Michigan will take on Quinnipiac in a rematch of last year’s Allentown Regional Final with a spot in the National Championship Game at stake.
When asked about Michigan’s soon-to-be Hobey-winner, Adam Fantilli, Rand Pecknold offered an insight into his team’s approach: “Just watching him, he's such a dominant athlete. He's an athlete. He's just a thoroughbred. He makes plays, he makes plays out of nothing. You think you have him shutdown and all of a sudden, bang, it's under the bar. For us, we've got to get up on him, on all their players and kind of deny time and space. He's a lot easier to defend when he doesn't have the puck than when he has the puck. And certainly have to defend him in waves because he's going to beat people. And it's going to happen. We know that. As long as we have waves there, and he beats one, we got another one. Beats two, we've got another one. And someone you have to go with a fourth guy. We have to make good reads off those plays too.”
Pecknold’s Quinnipiac is known for its defense and structure, and this year’s team is no exception, yielding just 1.5 goals-against-per-game this season. Fifth-year defenseman Zach Metsa contended that the Bobcats could compete with a team like Michigan without matching the Wolverines in projectable NHL talent through a shared commitment to defensive structure. “I think, to me, it's always come back to how close we are as a group,” Metsa said. “Every night we show up and we play together. We've supported each other. We're there if someone makes a mistake. We're there to bail them out. Like there's layers to how we play. And it's tough for guys to get by all four or five layers consistently throughout the game. So, yeah, we always hear, like, teams are more talented than us and whatnot. But I think as a cohesive unit I'd put us up there against any team in the country.”
For Michigan, overcoming the Bobcats won’t be about some specialty game plan cooked up with the extended layoff between Regionals and the Frozen Four but rather sticking to the style that got them to this point. “We don’t do our pre-scouts the day before,” Naurato said. “These guys know what Quinnipiac was going to do a week-and-a-half ago, and then we’re just working on what our identity is and how we can have success throughout the whole week, and that’s what we’re worried about.”
In other words, the same familiar formula. Attack, retrieve, release. Predictability and puck possession as tools to control play and create chaos. Making hard plays in all three zones. We’ve heard it, seen it, and written about it many times before.
Last time the Wolverines and Bobcats got together, Michigan propelled itself to the Frozen Four thanks to its veteran grind line of Nolan Moyle, Garrett Van Wyhe, and Jimmy Lambert, who accounted for four goals in a 7-4 victory.
Michigan will look to set a similar first-period tone this evening, but it can do so with its revamped top line of Rutger McGroarty, Adam Fantilli, and Gavin Brindley, who came together in late January and haven’t looked back.
“The motor of Adam and Gavin,” Naurato gushed when describing his top line. “They’re all ultra competitive, all can make plays, all can score. Their game really changed, and Gav’s gonna laugh at me, but they were making their plays, they were doing a lot of really good things, but when they started going to the net more, and it wasn’t that they were perimeter, but just finishing at the net as a unit and all three of them, not just one guy once in a while. They started putting up big numbers…They’ve been outstanding together.”
When Pecknold and Metsa describe the “layered” nature of the Bobcats’ defense, they are implicitly suggesting that one of Quinnipiac’s central goals will be to prevent the Wolverines from gaining the offensive zone by carrying the puck. Quinnipiac’s game hinges on forcing turnovers in neutral ice.
For Michigan, that means success will have to come by accepting that the skillful Wolverines will have to dump pucks in and get to work on the forecheck (much as they did against Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament), while showing the same patience and persistence that saw them past PSU in Allentown.
A key component of Michigan’s postseason success have been the steady performances along the blue line of veterans Keaton Pehrson and Jay Keranen. Neither will wow you with spectacular skill the way Luke Hughes, Seamus Casey, and Ethan Edwards might, but their dependable play is instructive as to what the Wolverines will need to best Quinnipiac: patience, discipline, and intelligence.
“All those guys have done an unbelievable job,” said Naurato of his veterans along the blue line. “I think it’s great for different guys throughout the year to have the opportunity to get in the lineup, to be on the power play, to be on the penalty kill, because you never know what’s going to happen later in the year, and when guys need to step up. There’s been games where Keaton Pehrson was a healthy scratch this year as an assistant captain, and he’s also played with Luke Hughes and played games where he’s played twenty-four minutes. I think that’s big time. That’s a credit to Keaton and Jay and all these guys and how hard they work to prove that they can add value to this team, and the value they add is on and off the ice.”
This being the postseason, special teams and goaltending will go a long way toward determining a winner this evening. The Bobcats’ quickest path to an upset will involve bagging a PPG or two and holding Michigan off the board with the man advantage.
Meanwhile, the funny thing about goaltending is that it’s as important as it is fickle. A goaltender can show their qualities over the course of the season, only to have an off-night at the wrong time and end the year with humiliation. Perhaps the best news to come out of the Big Ten Tournament and Allentown Regional for the Wolverines is that Erik Portillo appears to be peaking at the right time.
Entering the postseason, goaltending was perceived as something of a limiting factor for the Wolverines. Thanks to his size and athleticism, Erik Portillo remained a coveted NHL prospect, but he seemed to struggle with rebound control, puck tracking, and remaining in sound positions at times throughout his junior season.
However, the moment the season tipped over into “single elimination” mode, Portillo has been imperious. Across four do-or-die games (Ohio State and Minnesota in the Big Ten Tournament, then Colgate and Penn State in Allentown), Portillo has stopped 108 of the 116 shots to come his way for a dazzling .931 save percentage.
During that run, his one-on-one ability and aptitude at cutting out net-front plays with his lower body have been on full display, while the foibles that plagued him at times during the regular season appear to be a thing of the past.
Naurato sees parallels between this Michigan team and the one he played on in 2008, which fell short in a national semifinal contest with Notre Dame in Denver. However, the first-year head coach takes comfort in the fact that unlike the ‘08 team, the ‘23 bunch has the experience of the ‘22 Frozen Four in its back pocket:
“My sophomore year we were a really good team…I think we had eleven freshmen that year—Pacioretty, Caporusso, Palushaj, Carl Hagelin, guys like that. Very similar to this year. The difference would be we didn’t have the experience of being in it the year prior. I think with the sophomores through seniors, I think that’s a bigger deal to have been through it and have that experience and just know how to mentally prep and what to be prepared for.”
Motzko on NIL
We’ll save further discussion of BU and Minnesota for the time being, but I wanted to close this week with an interesting note from Bob Motzko’s Wednesday presser.
“Hockey is behind a little bit,” the Gophers head coach said when asked about NIL. “I think it will be a conversation more and more in hockey over the next couple of years. You’re hearing $1m deals for football. Our players get burritos. But I think times are changing.”
As it stands, NIL is even more niche in hockey than it is in football. We don’t yet have the collectives of collegiate football, which promise payment to every member of a team’s roster, and instead, there are precious few athletes collecting this form of endorsements.
However, much like with the transfer portal, NCAA hockey may trail football in the Wild West that is the world of NIL for the time being, and, without doubt, collegiate hockey players will never be as marketable as their football counterparts. Still, I believe Motzko is 100% correct that sooner rather than later, NIL will grow far more conspicuous in the world of college hockey.
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