Week 15: A Fierce Rivalry, Another Sweep, and a Trophy
Michigan fights through MSU in East Lansing Friday, then snags a last-second in Saturday’s Duel in the D. Across both games, the young Wolverines appeared a team keen to prove its postseason mettle
As the seconds ticked away in overtime Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena, Michigan head coach Brandon Naurato believed a shootout was imminent, but sophomore defenseman Luke Hughes had other ideas.
With his coach mentally running through his shootout options, Hughes deposited the rebound from a Jay Keranen point blast (one that was fired with just a second to play) into the back of the net. The clock read 0:00, and the Wolverines mobbed Hughes in neutral ice.
“100% I didn’t expect us to score, I started writing down who I was gonna circle for the shootout, but good for them for fighting ‘til the end,” said a rueful but smiling Naurato at his post-game press conference.
On the strength of Hughes’ overtime heroics, Naurato’s team clinched its seventh straight win, third straight sweep, and sixth straight Duel in the D.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Michigan outlasted its most geographically proximate rival Friday night in East Lansing by a 4-2 scoreline. It was a game that lent credence to the axiom that good fences make good neighbors.
Slow Friday starts an apparent relic of days gone by, the Wolverines commanded the puck and dictated the game’s terms from the opening faceoff. 3:17 into the game, sophomore Mackie Samoskevich converted that territorial dominance into a lead.
A prudent Luca Fantilli pinch set up a T.J. Hughes backhand pass to Samoskevich in the slot, where the Connecticutian winger beat Spartan goaltender Dylan St. Cyr with a snap shot. All three plays were made with the first touch.
Four-and-a-half minutes later, freshman sensation Adam Fantilli doubled the lead with a power play goal.
Fantilli arrived late to the offensive zone after a controlled break out, took a pass from Gavin Brindley, then did what he always seems to do: Wiring a wrist shot from the slot past a helpless goaltender.
Four minutes after that, Brindley concluded an absurd spell of Wolverine possession with his seventh tally of the season, a goal that offered an undeniable illustration of Michigan’s imperious start.
In the build-up, Michigan spent nearly a minute in the offensive end, before a desperate Nash Nienhuis clearance offered a temporary reprieve for MSU, with the second line of Dylan Duke, Hughes, and Samoskevich priming the pump for the eventual goal via an extended offensive zone passing sequence. Before Nienhuis’ clearing effort, the Wolverines had even managed to bring on the top line of Brindley, Fantilli, and Mark Estapa without leaving the zone.
The puck left the Michigan State end for about ten seconds, before the Wolverine onslaught resumed. An Estapa wrister from the inner slot struck the post, but the near miss was no problem for the Maize and Blue. Michigan recovered the loose puck, and a royal road pass from junior defenseman Steven Holtz teed up a Brindley one timer. 3-0, visitors.
“How good did our O-zone look before everything turned into a circus?,” asked head coach Brandon Naurato with a grin after the game. “We’d like to get back to that.”
After Tiernan Shoudy found a soft spot in Michigan’s slot coverage to make it 3-1, the second period descended into chaos under the feckless watch of officials Jake Rekucki, Andrew Bruggeman, Bill Hancock, and Jonathan Morrison.
Post-whistle skirmishes escalated after each stoppage, before tensions boiled over with a bit more than five minutes to play in the second. A mesmerizing Adam Fantilli rush and feed for Nolan Moyle led to St. Cyr smothering the puck. However, the action did not conclude but rather mounted upon the play being whistled.
By the time the game resumed, more than nine minutes had passed, and the crack team of Rekucki and Bruggeman had administered thirty-eight PIMs, including a disqualification for Adam Fantilli, which ended the freshman’s evening and rendered him ineligible for the following evening’s affair at Little Caesars Arena.
The brawl was a natural consequence of the B1G officiating crew’s utter inability to manage the rivalry match-up. Sensing an officiating standard somewhere between ambiguous and lackluster, players took disciplinary matters into their own hands. That the crew required almost ten minutes to sort out the penalties (an especially long time considering that the conclusion was to even up all of the calls) made the remaining twenty-five minutes of hockey feel pointless or an afterthought.
“It’s tough when there’s a ten-minute break, and we’re buzzing, and we’re up three-nothing, whatever it was at that time [3-1], it’s tough to stay with it,” said captain Nolan Moyle after the game. “But I think it shows our team growing and the maturity growing. I think we did a really good job of sticking with it, and, even with that break, just sticking together and having that bend but don’t break mentality, and I thought we did a really good job all around.”
The fisticuffs also obscured Michigan’s stellar performance between the whistles to that point in the game. Despite Fantilli’s subtle yet incisive feed for Moyle in the immediate run-up or the shift-upon-shift territorial domination of the first period, officiating ensured that the post-game discourse had little to do with hockey.
“We had the puck the whole game, and we’re chasing the game because we’re in the box,” said Naurato from the Zamboni tunnel after the game. “How do you want me to word it? They can’t play with us. They can’t play with us…unless they goon it up. So we got the bad end of the deal there.”
Naurato’s assessment was not a subtle one, but it is difficult to find fault in his conclusion when comparing the game’s first two periods. In the first, Michigan played its characteristic possession game to perfection, building a three-goal lead with one passage of “attack, retrieve, release” brilliance after another. In the second, the Spartans turned down the game’s pace while cranking up the dark arts, baiting their in-state rivals into de-emphasizing the action between the whistles.
Whether at the individual level of Fantilli or from a team-wide perspective though, the second period raised questions about the young Wolverines’ ability to remain level-headed in an intense rivalry environment. MSU seemed to arrive at the same diagnosis as Naurato—that the Spartans’ path to success would depend on disrupting U-M’s momentum through post-whistle chicanery. Based on its relative efficacy, Michigan should expect to see a similar approach from any foe it encounters once the postseason begins.
It was not the first time we’ve seen Fantilli grow frustrated and respond in kind during a game of escalating tensions, and the Wolverines need number nineteen on the ice full stop. Still, it was also hard not to derive a certain pleasure from the way Fantilli drew a hard line in the sand after one post-whistle whack too many or his wrestling heel showmanship on the way off the ice before a hostile crowd at Munn Arena.
A Nico Muller goal brought the margin to just one five minutes into the third, putting the outcome of what no longer felt like a hockey game into some doubt, but Gavin Brindley’s second of the evening—this time with St. Cyr lifted for an extra attacker—cemented the victory with just over a minute to play (and kicked off one last bout after the whistle).
For the Wolverines head coach, the team’s ability to reset and find a way to finish the job in the final frame was encouraging, even if it did lose its head for a few moments at the conclusion of the tempestuous second period.
“You don’t realize it unless you’re a player or a coach and you’re standing on that bench,” explained Naurato after the game. “It’s tough to keep calm and—I don’t know if we kept our composure, but for them to battle through that and stick to the plan of getting the three points in the Big Ten and a win is extremely impressive.”
As far as Adam Fantilli’s elder brother Luca is concerned, games like Friday’s have their appeal, even if there is a cost to be paid for the over-boiling physicality: “Any time you get to play in a barn like that, with a lot of fans, and in a big rival army game, it’s definitely exciting and definitely the juices flowing before the game and during the game, so yeah I loved every second of it. It was a great time.”
The following evening, Michigan struck first once again, but the going wasn’t as easy as it had been at Munn the night prior. The Wolverines opened the game with an impressive first five minutes, but State would push back, applying pressure of its own at Erik Portillo’s end of the rink.
With just over four minutes to play in the first, T.J. Hughes put the Wolverines ahead with a PPG. It didn’t come from a scintillating passing sequence but rather from the Hamilton, Ontario-born freshman getting the puck on net and then in the net through heavy traffic just beyond St. Cyr’s crease.
That lead evaporated within three minutes though, as Spartan captain Miroslav Mucha beat Portillo amidst a scramble at the goal mouth. The score would remain tied until a Jeremy Davidson goal from distance on the power play eight minutes into the second to give State its first lead of the weekend.
However, before the LCA PA could finish announcing Davidson’s marker, Dylan Duke answered with a classic Dukian redirect from just in front of St. Cyr.
The Duke goal further evinced the instant chemistry between the newly minted line of Duke, Samoskevich, and Hughes. Beyond their two goals Saturday, the line posed problems all evening for MSU—whether creating off the rush or in zone. At the first sign of a Wolverine wobble all weekend, Michigan’s most reliable player (and with Adam Fantilli out of the lineup, its most reliable line) steadied the ship with an immediate answer.
Fifty-four seconds later, freshman Frank Nazar III—playing in just his second collegiate game—recovered a loose puck in the neutral zone, raced in on St. Cyr, then, after a brief mishandle, retook the lead for the Maize and Blue, scoring his first NCAA goal.
“I was kind of looking for the shot,” explained Nazar after the game. “But I was also thinking pass, and then at the end, I kind of fumbled it, like thinking too much pass, so I kind of faked it, and I was just able to get hold of it and sneak it in top shelf.”
Unfortunately for the Wolverines, the 3-2 margin would not survive State’s third period push. With just under five to play, grad transfer Michael Underwood restored the game to level terms with a seeing eye shot from the point. Despite credible chances both ways in the late stages of regulation, the game would progress to overtime.
2:16 into the extra session, a Duke tripping minor put Michigan’s Iron D streak in serious jeopardy. However, yeoman’s work shorthanded from a combination of Brindley, Moyle, Holtz, Ethan Edwards, and Jay Keranen saw out the 4-on-3 kill.
“Brindley, Edwards, Hughes, Nolan Moyle [were] huge, and then obviously Portillo making some saves, but to control possession, to clear the puck, it’s big time,” noted Naurato after the game, before acknowledging his nerves as he took in those two minutes. “It’s stressful. You’re in OT, and it’s 4-on-3, and they got guys who can score, so our guys did an unbelievable job.”
Then, just a shootout appeared necessary, Luke Hughes scored his second overtime game-winner of the season, sending Little Caesars Arena into one last fervor and the maize and blue faithful home happy.
There are lots of reasons to celebrate the Wolverines weekend: B1G points, Pairwise points, a win streak extended, an Iron D streak extended. For Michigan’s process-oriented first year coach though, the weekend was less about a result and more about what the path to victory might portend for the stretch run.
“Our goal isn’t to win seven games in a row in the regular season; it’s to continue to find our identity and be peaking toward the end of the year, so that’s just what we’re moving toward,” reflected Naurato. “And you know Adam will be back, hopefully some of those other guys will be healthy soon, and this can be a special group.
“I feel like the last three weeks have been huge for [getting ready for the postseason]. We do have a young team, and these guys are still growing every day, and there’s growing pains through it, but they’re doing a lot of great things. All these guys are taking major steps and all the credit goes to them for the type of people that they are.”
Odds & Ends:
Nazar Debuts and Dazzles!
As exciting as Friday evening’s game was—first for the hockey, then for the skirmishes, the best news of the night for Michigan fans came pre-game, when the Wolverine line chart revealed the NCAA debut of freshman center Frank Nazar III. For a team short on natural centers, Nazar’s arrival couldn’t come at a better time as the Wolverines enter the stretch run.
It was a mostly quiet debut for the first-round selection of the Chicago Blackhawks, but Nazar showed flashes of the transition dynamism that made him such an appealing prospect at last summer’s Draft, most notably a between-the-legs pass for Jackson Hallum on an odd-man rush opportunity.
If Naurato opts to keep those two together, I suspect it won’t be the last time the pair of fleet-footed freshman find themselves bearing down on goal with speed together. By the game’s end, Nazar appeared on both special teams, in addition to his regular shift between Hallum and senior Eric Ciccolini on the third line.
“[Nazar] did a lot of good things,” said Naurato after the game. “It’s thought to not play games and come into a game like this, and I thought he did a great job. I was [consciously managing his minutes] at first, until the game went the way that it did. When you don’t have enough bodies, he has to play.”
As Luca Fantilli pointed out, Nazar’s season debut “He’s an unbelievable player and to see him come back from that injury and staying positive, having a pretty good game tonight was special for all of us. It’s emotional.”
If there was any rust to knock off, Nazar took care of it in his season debut, before making plain the reason Chicago took him in the first round a night later.
“He was 100% physically, and then my job the last week and a half was to just try and get him mentally prepped and feeling good about himself,” explained Naurato. “He’s a kid with a lot of confidence, but he’s a thinker, he’s a student of the game and just wanted to make sure to let him know that you don’t have to light the world on fire game one, so he just waited til game two.”
Nazar marked the occasion of his first collegiate goal by popping off his right glove and miming a phone up to his ear. In his postgame presser (another collegiate first), the freshman explained the celebration in response to the first question he received.
“Something I kinda thought about in the moment,” Nazar noted, before breaking into song to provide further context. “A little bit before the game was just thinking of an Eminem song where it’s like ‘That’s why they call me Slim Shady. Tell em I’m back.’ So it’s like call your friends, tell them I’m back. Something like that, but just excited to get out there and score that goal.”
Between the between-the-legs pass and the Saturday celly, Nazar announced his arrival to the college hockey world with authority. When asked whether it was difficult to debut on a rivalry weekend and then come to an NHL barn with a trophy on the line, he responded “To you guys, it seems pretty big, but to me, that’s what I’m here to do. I want to play, and I want to play in these big games.”
After a two-game sample, it appears Nazar might just be a contributor to the Wolverines’ postseason push, if only he could show a little confidence in himself.
West Sets the Tone Saturday
On Saturday, Michigan once again gave its fans reason for excitement before the opening puck drop, this time courtesy of back-up netminder Noah West.
As the buzzer sounded on pregame warm-up, West found himself staring down Underwood from across their respective benches, both keen to be the last player off the ice.
After an exchange of glances, West appeared to concede and head for the dressing room, only to duck back out after Underwood departed. The veteran play from West established the standard for Michigan on the evening.
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