Week 12: An OT Split in Minny
Michigan splits a pair of OT decisions in Minneapolis, proving it can hang with the top-ranked Gophers Friday then beating them a night later
Spending the weekend apart at even strength for the first time all season, Jacob Truscott and Luke Hughes still knew where to find one another at the end of an eventful trip to the Twin Cities.
About forty seconds into a Saturday night overtime, the latter collected a pass from Gavin Brindley, who went to the bench for a change. Hughes had been on the ice as long as Brindley but sensed an opportunity. Gliding into the offensive zone, the sophomore spied his erstwhile partner streaking in to join him, fresh from the bench.
Truscott wasted neither time nor movement in beating Justen Close. As the red light flashed, Truscott leapt into Hughes’ arms. Elation emanated from both.
The goal, Truscott’s second of the game, lifted the University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team to a 5-4 victory. A night prior, the Wolverines had hung with Pairwise-topping, B1G-leading Minnesota, for extended stretches. On Saturday, Michigan—perhaps a bit more at home at 3M Arena on its second evening in town—proved it could knock out the nation’s top-ranked team and do it away from home.
On Friday night in Minneapolis, Michigan fell 4-3 in another game that required overtime to separate the two teams. Like its Saturday successor, it was a spectacular exhibition of two of college hockey’s best teams, characterized by a sense that both demanded the best of one another. It was an evening that provided ample reason for optimism about the state of the Wolverines, a valuable point in the Big Ten standings, and ultimately stinging defeat.
As Wolverines head coach Brandon Naurato told the Michigan Daily’s Noah Kingsley, “Guys worked hard, the guys did a lot of really good things: Blocking shots, getting pucks in, stuck to the game plan. It’s too bad; our guys deserve more.”
A tentative opening ten minutes played out, as the two sides exchanged body blows, getting a feel for one another and, in the visitors’ case, the expansive space available to them on 3M Arena’s generous playing surface.
The Gophers spent more time in the offensive zone than did their guests, but Michigan did excellent work to remain in control of the middle third of the rink, a clear point of emphasis for the Wolverines entering the evening.
Not long after the period’s midpoint, Michigan began to apply serious pressure for the first time, but all that momentum stalled with less than a minute to play when Mark Estapa—the B1G’s leader in PIMs—was stuck with five and a game for what looked a rather innocuous check to Gopher defenseman Mike Koster.
Twelve seconds into the ensuing penalty, Jimmy Snuggerud opened the scoring off a Matthew Knies net drive that commanded the attention of several Wolverines. The play offered a preview of the physical dominance Knies would flaunt for the game’s remaining forty-odd minutes. Michigan would return to the dressing room down a goal and facing another four minutes and change short-handed.
The Wolverines managed to ride out the remainder of the Estapa major without incident, before applying more pressure of their own. That push culminated in Eric
Ciccolini scoring his third goal of the season, depositing the rebound from an Ethan Edwards point shot past Gopher netminder Justen Close.
Unfortunately for the Wolverines, Knies’ next Herculean feat came just over four minutes later, beating Keaton Pehrson around the corner with the power of a bull and firing an overwhelming wrist shot past Erik Portillo after a subtle headfake.
Rather than yield to Knies’ brilliance though, the Wolverine top line countered within a minute and did so with a symmetry that bordered on the eerie.
For the first goal of the brief volley, Gavin Brindley stripped the puck off a Gopher defenseman below the goal line, waited for the right lane to open up for an incisive pass, then fed Adam Fantilli, whose one-time shot left Close hopeless.
Fifteen seconds of game time and forty-five seconds of real time later, Fantilli inverted that formula—winning a puck battle of his own below the net, and feeding Brindley, who whipped a shot past Close.
Unsurprisingly, Dylan Duke was within inches of the crease, screening Close on both goals. There was even a symmetry between the two celebrations, with each goalscorer offering a whirling fist pump and lifting a glove to his ear in response to the Gopher faithful’s temporary silence.
The fifteen second passage of play offered a definitive reminder: As dominant as Knies was, the Wolverines could claim top-line talent just as capable of taking a game over. As Naurato put it to Kingsley, “For that Brindley line to come back out. … It’s good to push back, and then you’re just fighting, fighting, fighting.”
Michigan would carry its 3-2 edge into the second intermission, but, in the third, the Wolverines’ passivity invited Gopher pressure and eventually a Jackson LaCombe equalizer with 4:20 to play. Minnesota’s 18-6 edge in shots on the period reflected its control of play.
In overtime, Brindley appeared to cap off an outstanding performance with a game winner that trickled through Close, only for the Gopher goaltender to be bailed out by the second premature whistle in thirty seconds from the officials.
It’s worth noting that the Gophers put the puck in the net after the refs mistakenly credited Portillo with a freeze earlier in the game, but the obvious difference was that the second example happened in sudden death overtime.
In the immediate aftermath, Jackson Hallum was punished for his hustle on the backcheck with a hooking minor. Michigan’s penalty kill had been admirable through a heavy workload all evening, but two minutes of 3-on-4 on 3M Arena’s wide ice sheet proved too much to bear. After enduring and persevering through a minute and a half of Hallum’s sentence, Michigan conceded with just eight seconds left in the extra session. It was Knies (who else?) again.
“They had six power plays on 15 minutes,” Naurato said to the Daily. “When you’re down a guy for 15, it’s extremely difficult and it takes a lot out of your body, physically mentally, emotionally.”
Twenty-four hours later, Michigan flew out of the gate. A Mackie Samoskevich shot rang off the crossbar in the game’s opening minute hinting at the Wolverines’ appetites on the evening.
1:36 into the opening period, Ethan Edwards rifled a shot past a helpless Close to give the guests a 1-0 advantage. The goal was the end-product of an artfully constructed Wolverine passing sequence, one that saw Michigan travel the full length of the rink, taking maximal advantage of its extra width.
Six minutes later, Fantilli pounced on a rebound to clean up a dazzling Brindley rush, and the guests had a two-goal lead.
Minnesota would pull a goal back before the horn sounded on the first, but that goal did little to stall the Wolverines’ momentum, with Michigan responding to the Gopher tally with another push of its own.
However, the second period opened on a different note. Before three-and-a-half minutes had been played, the Gophers could claim their first lead of the evening. First, Aaron Huglen scored with Ciccolini in the box for high-sticking, then a Brock Faber shot found its way through traffic and past Portillo.
Again needing to curb a second-period Gopher surge, Adam Fantilli made certain his team wouldn’t slip beyond striking distance. The freshman buried the rebound off a Hallum backhand, sprung via a twirling no-look entry pass from Luke Hughes.
The goal might not crack the top ten in a ranking of Fantilli’s best goals of the season, but it showed one of his rudimentary and productive habits: number nineteen in maize and blue is always barreling to the goal mouth, and the rest of college hockey appears powerless to intervene.
With 2:46 to play in the period, Truscott found his way onto the end of a T.J. Hughes centering pass to fault U-M into a 4-3 lead.
Just before the second intermission, Snuggerud earned five and a game for an illegal check to Truscott’s head.
Despite Michigan entering the third on an extended power play, Erik Portillo found himself busy from the start of the frame. He made three excellent saves with the Wolverines up a man.
The Wolverines did a better job of continuing to apply pressure while protecting a third-period lead than they had the night prior, but still that lead slipped through their fingers. Logan Cooley fed Bryce Brodzinski to tie the game with 2:42 to play in regulation.
This time, though, Michigan pulled itself off the mat once more, and Truscott provided the game winner to end an overtime period in which the Gophers hardly touched the puck.
Unlike the weekend prior against the Buckeyes, there was little difference between the Friday and Saturday Michigan performance, but the swing in emotion produced by each night’s conclusion felt nearly as vast.
The split with Minnesota carries with it two bitter pills for Wolverine fans to swallow. First, the loss of the Mariucci/Renfrew Trophy, which goes to the winner of the regular season series between the two sides. Second, a just about final goodbye to any fleeting ambition of winning the Big Ten in the regular season.
Still, it’s difficult to leave the weekend without an air of encouragement at seeing the Wolverines play some of their best hockey of the season on the road and against the nation’s top-ranked team.
Had Michigan fallen again in overtime Saturday, you still wouldn’t need to squint too hard to see reason for optimism in the team’s performance, but it would be difficult to find much cheer in a winless weekend. Thanks to Truscott, the Wolverines don’t have to confront that hypothetical.
However young and inexperienced it may be, Brandon Naurato’s Michigan left no doubt that it can play with any team in the country and, on Saturday, proved it can beat any team in the country too.
Odds & Ends
Top Six Swap
Entering the weekend, Naurato opted for a small but significant tweak to his lineup by swapping his top two right wings, with Brindley joining Fantilli and Duke, while Samoskevich slotted in beside Hughes and Rutger McGroarty.
The experiment proved an overwhelming success, with Brindley and Fantilli scoring four goals between them (three of them featuring one assisting the other).
No matter who he plays with, Gavin Brindley makes himself visible, but his feisty brand of creativity meshed instantly with his new linemates. Fantilli and Duke’s mutual penchant for driving the net seemed to open up the perfect pockets of space for Brindley to charge into, ensuring that his waterbug rushes culminated in dangerous areas.
Meanwhile, Mackie Samoskevich provided an alternately steadying and dynamic presence for Naurato’s “1B” line. The Connecticutian sophomore popped up all over the rink to keep play moving in the right direction for his freshmen running mates, while also taking command at various points with his signature elegance. Samoskevich even managed to outmuscle Knies for a short-handed clearance.
Unfortunately, the biggest reason for concern exiting the weekend cropped up late in Saturday’s third period, when Samoskevich was hobbled by an unfortunate Faber hit along the boards. Nursing an apparent shoulder injury, he would not return. Suffice it to say Michigan will be in trouble if its second-leading scorer is out for a prolonged period.
Hallum’s Homecoming
As significant as the trip to the Twin Cities was to the Wolverines as a collective, it carried an outsized personal import to freshman forward Jackson Hallum, a proud Eagan, Minnesota native.
When we caught up with Hallum prior to the November series with the Gophers, he explained his choice to defect to the Mitten as a means of forging his own path: “Everyone goes to Minnesota from Minnesota, so it’s kind of just something different for me to spread my wings and go somewhere else.” However, he also made plain his reverence for his home state, referring to Minnesota high school hockey as “the coolest thing in the country.”
In his first collegiate appearance back in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, Hallum turned in one of his best performances of the season. It should come as no surprise that the fleet-footed winger distinguished himself on the roomy expanse of 3M Arena’s surface.
On Friday night, Hallum was one of the most visible and consistent Michigan forwards—his pace and refined edges causing the Gophers problems in all three zones. The high-water mark came in overtime when he found himself in the unenviable position of a defending Knies and Logan Cooley in a two-on-two.
With Cooley—with speed built up and ample space in which to operate—bearing down on him, Hallum read the play with the alacrity and poise of a veteran defenseman. The freshman cut out Knies’ attempt to slide in a decisive pass to Cooley, then launched a counter attack. Hallum fed Mackie Samoskevich to begin the rush, then opened up room for his running mate to skate into with his lung-busting dash to the net.
He would then add an assist on Fantilli’s second Saturday, after having been heavily involved in the build up for Edwards’ opener.
Hallum’s point production hasn’t quite kept up with freshmen peers like Fantilli, Brindley, or Hughes, but he has provided plenty of reason to believe he will be a vital contributor for years to come.
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