"We Have Something Truly, Truly Special Here”: Friday Notebook 3.29.24

On a momentous week of and for hockey at the University of Michigan

The tone was set for a momentous week of and for hockey in the state of Michigan last Saturday night at Munn Ice Arena in East Lansing.  Before a sold out and crowd, the Michigan State Spartans beat the University of Michigan men’s hockey team for the fourth time this season—clinching the Big Ten Tournament title to go along with the regular season title they’d secured already.  It was a night that shifted the state’s collegiate hockey hierarchy, but within twenty-four hours of Patrick Geary’s point shot—one he revealed after the game he only took because he heard third-string goaltender Jon Mor tell him to from his perch on the bench—pinging off the post and past Jake Barczewski to clinch a 5-4 victory, its stakes were re-calibrated.

Saturday night, State had reaffirmed its regular season supremacy over the Wolverines, denying its in-state rival the chance at a victory that might have numbed the sting of the Spartans winning the season series and Duel in the D.  However, Sunday night’s selection show brought three Michigan schools together with North Dakota in a rivalry rich, blue-blood laden regional to be played at the Centene Community Ice Center, where earlier this month the U of M women’s team competed at ACHA Nationals. State would take on Western Michigan in the first round, while U of M would play North Dakota, with the specter of a sixth meeting between the Spartans and Wolverines (this one, the highest stakes of all) haunting the first round.

And on the subject of Michigan’s women’s team, Thursday morning brought news that once again made what had seemed tremendous stakes a few days prior feel just a bit trivial.  At a meeting of the university’s board of regents, Denise Ilitch—elected as a regent in 2008, then re-elected in 2016—shared what she described as “some remarks I’d like to make and make sure they’re in the record.”  Ilitch went on to declare her support for the school to transform its women’s hockey program from a club one to varsity status.  “It's time for the University of Michigan to have a varsity team for its women's hockey program,” she said.

When you put it all together, it’s been a seismic week for college hockey in Michigan, and to begin parsing it all, we’ll start with the latest news.

“We have such a special opportunity, whether it’s for our current athletes or future athletes.  We have something truly, truly special here.”

“Right now the people of Michigan are not being served,” said Ilitch, laying out a simple problem for which there is a clear solution.  “There is a demand for varsity women’s hockey at the University of Michigan by the people of Michigan.”  She asked coach Jenna Trubiano to stand and be recognized before adding, “I want to thank Jenna for her generous commitment to her players, to women’s hockey, and to Michigan [state and University of work equally well here], and to the team, who works hard, sacrifices a financial burden, and makes the Block M proud.”

Ilitch called attention to the fact that “there is currently a broken cycle of elite women’s hockey players leaving our state to play at Wisconsin, Ohio State, or other NCAA DI programs on the East Coast.  They establish lives and don’t return to Michigan for their careers or to raise families.  The elite female hockey players from the state of Michigan are forced out of the state to compete at top level programs elsewhere.”

She cited Wisconsin Badger forwards Kirsten Simms, born in Plymouth, and Cassie Hall, born in South Lyon—both of them products of Little Caesars’ AAA girls program—as examples of this phenomenon.  As a freshman last year, Simms scored the national-title winning goal for the Badgers; this season, she was the nation’s leading scorer on a team that fell in the title game to Ohio State.  Hall was a freshman on this year’s team.

Other regents voiced their support for Ilitch’s declaration of intention, and university president Santa Ono said that he’d requested a feasibility study from athletic director Warde Manuel.  It will take more than a snap of the fingers to move from today’s excitement to the actual formation of a varsity team.  A second varsity team will require a second sheet of ice with Yost unable to house two varsity programs simultaneously, but the university has the land and means to solve that problem with relative ease.  Now that Michigan has the will for it as well, it has become a question of when and not if.

I see two essential components to Ilitch’s framing.  First, there is the idea that varsity Division I hockey meets an existing demand.  The state of Michigan has elite hockey players; those players deserve the chance to pursue their sporting ambitions within their home state at the collegiate level; the project Ilitch proposes is an investment in talent the state is already developing, not an act of charity.  Second, Ilitch emphasized the fact that Michigan does currently have a women’s hockey program, and that the task at hand is promoting that program (which as Ilitch pointed out is approaching its 30th birthday) from club to varsity.  Ilitch doesn’t want a program to be made from scratch; instead, she acknowledged the effort that’s been made to build one since long before the university supported it, and she wants that effort rewarded.

“It’s really incredible,” said Trubiano over the phone Thursday morning.  “I feel like every moment has led up to this, whether it’s the work I’ve put in or members of our current program or alumni or former coaches.  Whatever it’s been or whoever it’s been, it’s all led to this moment, which is exciting and really energizing as well.”

Trubiano first got in touch with Ilitch about a year ago, connected via a friend who coaches with that Little Caesars AAA girls program.  She helped inform Ilitch of the current women’s hockey landscape in Michigan.  “My role in this was educating her on our current program and just where we’re at in the state of Michigan,” Trubiano explained.  “I see the demand in our program, as well as just talking with potential students and prospective athletes.  

Ilitch’s comments framed the issue of adding varsity women’s hockey at U-M around the idea that there presently exists demand for exactly such a program in the state.  To Trubiano, that’s old news, but she knows that those less familiar with the world of women’s hockey might not quite recognize that.

“I live in a women’s hockey bubble, so I know [demand] is there, but how do you tell people that this demand exists if they’re not in it,” she says.  “So for me, education and awareness has always been number one, even just if I’m talking with a 17-year-old prospective athlete or one of the members of the board of regents.  There is a huge discrepancy in the state of Michigan, and we can be one of those institutions that strives to change for the better.”

Of course, there will be some who respond to Thursday’s news with understandable frustration that Michigan could and should have solved this issue years ago.  To those people, Trubiano says, “we can’t dwell on what’s happened in the past.  We can learn from mistakes that we’ve made.  However, right now, it just seems as if everything’s lining up, and we have this momentum and just take baby steps forward, so that’s really the goal every day.”

“I didn’t realize I was gonna stand up and be recognized and that was a little intimidating for me because these people at this institution, they’re well known and I never thought I’d be standing in a room with them and they’d be talking about me and saying really positive things about me and our program,” she added of the day’s meeting.  “It does mean a lot.  It means a lot to me and a lot to our program that we’re being seen, we’re being heard.”

There are still studies to be done and checks to be cut to realize the vision presented at today’s meeting and the timeline forward from here looks uncertain, but one thing is clear: it’s a moment to celebrate for women’s hockey in Michigan, thanks to the effort of program leaders like Trubiano, or before her, Sue McDowell.

“I’m trying to put my thoughts into words or complete sentences, because this all happened so fast,” Trubiano says.  “It really happened in a matter of days that I knew something was going to happen, which is great.  It shows that we can move swiftly and adapt and be flexible.  The energy in that room when the regents and President Ono were talking about women’s ice hockey—I could feel how passionate they were about it, and that’s something that really resonated with me.  I think we’ve put ourselves in a really great position for this next step in what I believe is the process for a varsity women’s ice hockey program, so I’m just trying to soak it all in now.  ”  

Team 28 just wrapped up its season at Nationals, and, regardless of which iteration of the Wolverines women’s hockey team will be the first to take the ice with varsity status, U of M women’s hockey is a program worth celebrating—for the work they’ve done to get here and for the heights they’ve not yet had a chance to reach.  As Trubiano summed it up, “We have such a special opportunity, whether it’s for our current athletes or future athletes.  We have something truly, truly special here.”

Make no mistake, today’s meeting wasn’t a wish granted.  Instead, Trubiano and her predecessors worked to get the program to this position when far fewer people paid attention to that effort.  For the time being, that effort leaves Trubiano focused on Team 29.  

This week, she’s run Team 28 exit meetings, ahead of a prospects skate Saturday, all while keeping an eye on admissions decisions, which are set to be announced imminently and will help her finalize next season’s roster.  But all that work got a little bit easier Thursday, even if the full payoff hasn’t yet arrived.

“You've seen what we're able to do with minimal support, imagine if we had incremental support in any way,” Trubiano said at the end of last season, in reference to realities like paying for use of university facilities or to self-fund the trip to Nationals.  Well, now, Michigan’s women’s hockey program has public support from the board of regents, and the most ambitious of those imaginings—varsity status—took a massive step toward reality,

“If you want to be a national champion, you’ve got to beat the best teams”

Despite the disappointment of last weekend’s outcome, Michigan has an opportunity to play for a national championship that was far from guaranteed as recently as the middle of February.  For long (and not so distant) stretches of the season, these Wolverines did not look like national champions, yet they head into the weekend playing their best hockey of the season and standing just four successive victories away from achieving that status.

According to coach Brandon Naurato, Michigan took a day to dwell on Saturday night’s loss in East Lansing before projecting its collective focus forward. “Probably think about it a lot on Sunday and understand where we were good and where we could’ve been better,” he said Tuesday afternoon, when asked about the path to letting go of the Big Ten title game.  “It was a sold-out barn and a one-shot game in overtime against a good team.”

In analyzing Saturday night’s performance, Naurato believes his team suffered from a lack of connectivity that placed the Wolverines at a territorial disadvantage.  “We weren’t as connected coming back for pucks on the breakout, which didn’t make us as connected on the forecheck, which didn’t put us in our biggest strength, which is playing in the offensive zone,” Naurato reflected.  “We looked at it, and it’s just little stuff.  I think what they did a good job of where we were really good the week prior is just field position.  When we dumped pucks, you can’t feed the forecheck if you’re dumping pucks and changing.  It just comes right back at ya, so we just need to get it in there [to the offensive zone] earlier and get it out [of the defensive zone] as quickly as possible, so you have energy early in your shift to play in the offensive zone.”

There weren’t many of the extended sequences in the enemy third of the rink that have defined Naurato’s Wolverines, and Michigan had to ice the puck entirely too often to find temporary relief from its own end, which only yielded more time in the defensive zone.  

Naurato makes a worthwhile point about the relative value of dump-ins as well.  We often emphasize the binary between dumping the puck into the zone and carrying it in, but it’s worth considering the nature of an effective dump-in.  As Naurato points out, the essential variable is having the bodies (i.e. even or advantageous numbers) and legs (i.e. the energy to hunt the puck, then begin attacking) to recover the puck if and when you dump it.  Michigan didn’t have those factors on its side against State, and it led to a significant territorial disadvantage, precluding the Wolverines from expressing the best of their game in the offensive zone.

“It obviously sucks,” reflected sophomore defenseman Luca Fantilli of the loss.  “You don’t want to lose games like that, especially to a team like that, but we’re going to use it as a learning lesson and put that fire under you and just get fired up for what’s to come.  It’s never easy sitting there watching the other team celebrate.  Definitely gives us some extra motivation, and the coaches did an awesome job of creating a plan for us this week and moving on and looking forward to the next objective there.”

Though the Wolverines played their way into the opportunity over the final month of the season to pursue a national championship, the road to even escape the tournament’s first weekend will be a difficult one.  As Naurato described it, the field in suburban St. Louis is “tough in a good way”: “If you want to be a national champion, you’ve got to beat the best teams.”  

In assessing the Fighting Hawks team (NCHC regular season champs) awaiting Michigan in the first round, Naurato says “They’re really good off the rush, really good in transition.  Similar to Michigan State…Jackson Blake’s a really good player, good defensively….Maybe a similar to us where…a couple teams have taken it to ‘em, and they go to Denver and sweep, but I think everyone should be at their best at the tournament.”

“In the back of everyone’s mind, there’s a chance we could play [MSU] again, but our whole focus right now and this week is North Dakota, and we’re gonna do everything we can to prep for them and be ready to go,” added sophomore defenseman Tyler Duke.  Sophomore forward T.J. Hughes described himself as “super fired up” about Michigan’s draw—”To have a chance to play a powerhouse team and a historic team like North Dakota, we’re gonna be ready for them, up our game, super confident.”  

Hughes is known as Michigan’s “mobility man” for his commitment to taking care of his body off the ice, and at this stage of the season, it’s a pivotal time for staying vigilant with that regiment, which he reports as follows: “Bunch of us like to get in the gym after practice and just do some active recovery, whether it’s the big or stretching, doing a little bit of weights.  Like to go in the cold tub in the mornings right before practice, and then a bunch of us will go in the sauna after practice, get a little sweat in and just talk in there, hang out.  Those three things—gym, sauna, cold tub—are the biggest ones for me.”

“I feel like we can beat every team in the tournament and every team could beat us, so it’s just on us to make sure that we do what we’re good at,” said Naurato.  With the time in the gym, sauna, and cold tub Michigan has laid the foundation for its vision; now it will take connectivity on the ice Friday night against North Dakota and beyond to execute it.

“He never has bad games”

Not quite to the end of his junior season, Dylan Duke has played three in three Big Ten championships during his collegiate career.  In the first, as a freshman, he scored a goal in Michigan’s victory over Minnesota at Mariucci.  In the second, he scored the game-winning goal, breaking a third period tie to give the Wolverines a second successive B1G title at Mariucci.  In the third, last Saturday, Duke scored a goal and gave an assist.

He’s supremely reliable in big moments, but to call Duke clutch would be to undersell him.  Instead, Dylan Duke is a champion of consistency.  “I just think that’s who he is, that’s what makes him a big-time player,” said Naurato of the Ohioan winger.  “He never has bad games.  It may not go his way or a bounce or two here or there, but he just brings it every game.  He’s competitive, and he’s predictable and reliable.”

“When it comes to Dylan—you talk about a clutch player,” says Luca Fantilli.  “There’s not a game where he’s not going 110%.  He’s always pushing the pace on the ice, and off the ice, he’s a great leader as well…You can always count on him to get to the front of the net and get a greasy one for us and get the boys fired up.  We know he’ll do that for us this weekend.  [I’m] excited to see it.”

While he is a valuable puck carrier, underrated playmaker, as well as willing and reliable defensively or on the forecheck, Duke’s signature is his ability to finish around the net-front.  He is Michigan’s second leading goalscorer (his 22 trailing only Gavin Brindley’s 24), and there is no mystery to the origin of his goals.  Nearly all of them come from within a stick length of the blue paint.

His brother Tyler has tried to defend Dylan around the net on backyard rinks, as collegiate opponents while Tyler played for Ohio State as a freshman, and now on a daily basis in practice.  “He just does a great job of spinning off guys and putting his stick in the right place at the right time and just taking a beating from defenders,” said Tyler of his brother.  “A lot of guys, once they get cross-checked a couple times, they’re not gonna want to go back to that area.  He always finds a way to get back there.”  Tyler believes Dylan effectively gives Michigan’s full defense corps lessons in defending the net every day at practice, saying “All of our d-men, whenever you get to go against him, it’s really good for you because you’re going against one of the top guys, trying to get under his stick.”

The heavy concentration of the elder Duke’s goals around the net evokes Zach Hyman, a Wolverine alum enjoying a career year with the Edmonton Oilers.  Hyman just cracked the 50-goal plateau for the first time in his career, and he did it with a scoring distribution reminiscent of Duke’s—nearly all from either in the crease or just beyond it.

“I think Hyman might be a little bit faster,” assesses Naurato, but he sees similarities between the two.  “I think Dylan has better stick skills from when Hyman was at Michigan.  I know Hyman was like a fourth-round pick [5th round, 123rd overall to the Florida Panthers in 2010] and didn’t really come on til his senior year.  He played with Larkin and took off, and he hasn’t stopped since.  Both of them just outstanding around the netfront.”

To Naurato’s point, Hyman totaled thirty-five points over his first three seasons in Ann Arbor.  As a senior, he had fifty-four.  The story of Hyman’s collegiate career was a steady but significant improvement to his skating over four years, and that’s a similar journey to the one Duke is on.

“His skating has improved a ton, and that’s full credit to him and the work he did in the summer and what he does before practice,” explains Naurato.  “I think that’s given him a chance.  Also, his conditioning.  He always competes, but to be able to compete after twenty-five, thirty seconds into a shift and win battles and races.  I think his minutes have gone up three, four, five minutes this year.  When that happens the game is different.”

I wrote this before the Big Ten title game, and I’ll write it again now: this weekend will bring chaos, but Dylan Duke scoring from barely beyond the crease is the outcome I can foresee with by far the most certainty.

“That place should be rocking”

By now, I doubt you need much convincing of the fact that the NCAA Tournament ought to have on-campus regionals.  I don’t want to waste much time making this case, which ought to be obvious to the esteemed readers of this humble newsletter, but the simplest way to say it is that I simply can’t imagine feeling any sort of fondness for college sports and not believing that as many games as possible should be played on campus to maximize one of their defining features—environments.  Naurato pointed to last weekend’s game at Munn as an example, saying “It’d be nice to have a game like that at Yost.  We have to earn it.”

This weekend, a regional that features four phenomenal fan bases, traditional powers, and the spice of in-state rivalries as well as inter-conference bragging rights will be played in a building with a capacity of approximately 2,500.  It’s a recipe for outlandish ticket prices, but as a silver lining, the tiny capacity will allow for the rare neutral site regional to enjoy some atmosphere. 

A healthy percentage of those 2,500 will be the friends and family of Michigan’s St. Louis-born goaltender, Jake Barczewksi.  Barczewski grew up 10 minutes from the rink and estimates he’ll have 30 people there to see him this weekend.  During his local youth career, he played alongside the Ottawa Senators Brady Tkachuk with Tkachuk’s 500-NHL-goal-scorer father Keith as his coach.  Barczewski affirms that Brady has been the agitator he is today, saying euphemistically, “He was always a little feisty on the ice.  He always had that grit to him.”   Barczewski says Keith the coach resembles Keith the player, saying “He’s a pretty tough coach…He wants the best for me, so he was tough growing up,”

Both Naurato and Barczewski see a throwback quality in this weekend’s environment.  “Might have a little bit more of like a junior hockey vibe in there, but it’s gonna be loud,” said the latter, while the former saw a parallel to his high school career, “I think about Catholic Central days.  I don’t know if it’s a good analogy, but there’s 1,500 people there but it feels like 10,000 because it’s jammed.  That place should be rocking.”

The good news for Michigan is that, unlike the women’s team during its trip to the facility earlier this month, the Wolverines won’t have to practice on a sunny and 75-degree day on Centene Community Ice Center’s outdoor sheet.  That did come to pass when Trubiano’s team was in town for Nationals, though freshman goaltender Emma Johns did manage to find levity in the situation by taking the ice for warm-up with sunglasses on.

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