Week 10: Won One in Columbus
Michigan concludes the first half of the season with a split at Ohio State; despite numerous frustrations, reason for optimism abounds in Ann Arbor
Nick Blankenburg wore a grin on his face for the duration of his on-ice interview with the Big Ten Network following Friday night’s win in Columbus. Even a chirp about the generosity inherent in listing his height at 5’9” on Michigan’s official roster induced laugh from Michigan’s captain. When asked to describe his game, Blankenburg offered that he wants to “work hard every night and have as much fun as [he] can doing it.” Not twenty-four hours later, he scored what in the moment appeared a pivotal goal on Saturday night and, charismatic enough to make friends even in a hostile environment, celebrated with a heroic local service pooch.
On Friday and Saturday nights, Blankenburg scored goals on the man advantage. On both plays, Michigan’s power play had established comfortable zone time, and Blankenburg occupied ice more befitting a forward than a defenseman. To Michigan fans, Blankenburg, as though a mischievous child, wandering deep into his opponent’s zone or lingering around their crease is a familiar sight. Suffice it to say the senior, as he has all season, played with joy throughout both games.
By the end of Saturday’s game (which rounded into a blowout by the end of a contentious third period), there was plenty of cause for frustration in the Michigan dressing room: a slushy mire of an ice sheet that caused multiple extended stoppages including a premature end to the first period, numerous failed power play opportunities, and a third period that began with promise and ended in ignominy.
However, with the first half of the season complete and the holiday break upon us, I’d urge Michigan fans to channel their inner Blankenburg and embrace the positive developments from the weekend’s contests.
Before we go any further, we ought to pause for a brief summary. On Friday and Saturday, Michigan once again exchanged blowout victories with a Big Ten foe. Unlike last weekend against Minnesota, Michigan took the first leg of the exchange, and neither game felt a blowout until its terminal stages.
Friday night’s bout ended in a 5-2 Michigan victory, with the Wolverines surging to three goals in the game’s final five minutes. Meanwhile, on Saturday, in a game with all the chippiness you’d expect between these rivals, it was Ohio State’s turn to run away with the game in the third period with a final score of 1-6 .
Michigan will now head into its holiday break with a 14-6-0 record and 7-5-0 mark in-conference. That record has the Wolverines atop the Big Ten, even if it isn’t as eye popping as Michigan’s unprecedented roster talent might lead you to expect. Nonetheless, Mel Pearson’s teams have a habit of improving over the course of the season, and there is no scenario in which sitting at the top of the conference (in both raw points and points percentage) merits a scoff or even follow-up question.
As for Saturday night’s defeat (the first and only road loss of the first half for the Wolverines), it would be extreme to write off the result altogether, though that would make more sense to me than agonizing over it. This Ohio State team is talented and dangerous, and a number of mitigating circumstances make the defeat easier to swallow.
First and foremost, Michigan went into the weekend without Owen Power, Kent Johnson, and Thomas Bordeleau. The former two have reported to Team Canada’s World Juniors camp, while the latter missed both games due to injury. Even with the absences, Michigan’s lineup abounds with talent, but “three leading offensive drivers out of action” is without doubt relevant context for both games.
In addition to those absences, the Wolverines needed to contend with an uncooperative ice sheet. Issues with the surface at Value City Arena emerged Friday and intensified Saturday night, when the Buckeyes and Wolverines met just a few hours after a home Ohio State basketball game in the same building. The first intermission arrived two-and-a-half minutes early on Saturday to allow for some ad hoc ice maintenance.
Lastly, Saturday’s contest in particular saw a collision of escalating tensions between rivals and officials seemingly unable to keep contain on the game. I’m not interested in complaining about or debating particular calls, but this was a game that slipped beyond the officials’ grasp. It’s not that they felt absent from the action, but instead that their presence manifested in an inane penalty standard set a parade to the penalty box into motion.
Of course, none of this should distract from Ohio State’s performance. Even in defeat on Friday night, the Buckeyes showed themselves to be a thorny opponent with a legitimate claim to a horse in the Big Ten race.
What impressed most about Ohio State this weekend was the poise and creativity sprinkled throughout their lineup. Defenseman Mason Lohrei, going so far as to attempt a “Michigan” on Friday, showed positional freedom and faith in his aptitude as a puck mover reminiscent of Blankenburg. Forwards Tate Singleton, Cam Thiesing, and Georgii Merkulov found space to operate in the Wolverine end of the ice and turned it into quality scoring chances for much of both games. Jakub Dobes looked stout in net and provided extra value with his slick puck handling.
After watching them match up with the Wolverines, I believe this Ohio State is not just a good story as an upstart but a legitimate conference title contender.
However, as impressive as the Buckeyes were in spurts throughout both games, Michigan also demonstrated an impressive gear to their game: executing a yeoman forechecking style for most of Friday’s game and Saturday’s second period. For much of the year, Michigan has relied on its defenseman to set its forward into offensive motion with their skill as puck movers. On Saturday, the Wolverines instead relied on a more aggressive turnover and counter approach that left the forward group with pucks in dangerous areas and confronting an unstructured defense.
This style of play, one perhaps necessitated by the high profile absences from the lineup, brought the most out of several Wolverine depth players, including Garrett Van Wyhe, Luke Morgan, and Mark Estapa. Those three forwards, while not at the top of the Wolverine heap in terms of skill, are all outstanding skaters who put their opponents into compromising positions thanks to their intensity on the puck.
It wasn’t the sweep Wolverines’ fans would have hoped for to close out the first half, but there is plenty to cause for optimism in Ann Arbor as we head to the decisive portion of the season.
Highlights of the Weekend
You’ll have to skip to the 2:03 mark for our intended first highlight, and, once you get there you might find yourself confused as to why our top (human) highlight from the weekend is an empty netter. The reason is because it highlights two of the weekend’s top performers: the aforementioned Van Wyhe and Luke Hughes. On a night without the safety cushioning of its laughable complete array of talent, Hughes stood out as the most creative and dangerous Wolverine on the puck. For most of the game, he couldn’t quite convert his dynamic skating and puck carrying into a decisive scoring chance, but it was his effort to command the puck in his own end that set the eventual ENG into motion, and we here at Gulo Gulo would like to commend that process.
In the spirit of celebrating Michigan’s role players, here is a subtle example of Luke Morgan’s commanding speed. On a rush that appeared innocuous, Morgan darted around Buckeye defender Grant Gabriele and opened up a lane to the net with a few hard strides. His centering attempt, somewhere between pass and shot, found its way to Mike Pastujov who redirected past Dobes to give the Wolverines a 3-2 lead in the dwindling moments of the third. Moments later, Brendan Brisson muscled in another for the Wolverines, and a tense game turned into a fait accompli in short order.
Of course, the real highlight of the weekend was Blankenburg’s celebration with a service dog featured above, but this goal offers a more obvious example of the captain’s adventurousness in the offensive zone. It should be said that Blankenburg seems to be deployed as a forward in this power play set up (a position he played through high school), but that doesn’t make it any less fun to see the diminutive defenseman scoring from the crease.
Odds and Ends
Portillo Watch: I’ve wanted to spend more time thinking about Erik Portillo’s performance through this first half for the Wolverines, but I am a self-acknowledged neophyte when it comes to goaltending analysis. To my eye, Portillo looks quicker and more comfortable in his crease than he did at the start of the season. At times in the early going of the year, I worried a bit about the way Portillo seemed to get caught in awkward positions in his net and rather slow in his recovery. Now, Portillo looks at ease in his butterfly crouch and moves with decision about his crease, never seeming out of touch with the threat mounting against him. In the aforementioned postgame BTN interview, Blankenburg described his goaltender as “an all-time competitor” and said it was an honor to block shots for him. Though Portillo ended up hooked and surrendered five on Saturday, there were plenty of strong saves again this weekend from the Sophomore Swede. That he looks so steady in the cage is perhaps the best outcome from the front side of this season.
Power Play Update: The Michigan power play concluded the weekend at two for eight, finding the back of the net in both games. However, Saturday’s one-for-six effort disappointed, especially given the number of chances the Wolverines had to pull level (or at least closer) before the full force of the Buckeyes’ late onslaught set in. With that said, given that three key power play pieces missed both games, it doesn’t seem worthwhile to draw too many conclusions from the weekend’s efforts.
Pearson’s 200: With the victory Friday, Mel Pearson can now claim 200 wins from behind the bench split between Michigan Tech and Michigan, and his Wolverines got him to that milestone with an effort that led their coach to say he was as proud as this effort as of any performance in forty years of coaching.