Week 17: Irish Stall Momentum
Michigan unable to find its stride against Notre Dame, losing out on the regular B1G title and suffering a season sweep to the Irish
The University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team entered the weekend with the chance to secure the program’s first ever regular season Big Ten championship. By the time the final whistle sounded on Saturday night’s game, Michigan would settle for second in the Big Ten, swept by Notre Dame on the weekend and the season.
Until the dying breaths of the third period Saturday night, it appeared Michigan might salvage something from the series. Even with Friday’s (regulation) loss, a win Saturday could have been enough to salvage the B1G title. Even if it didn’t, Michigan could reclaim some semblance of momentum as it began its postseason journey.
Instead, Trevor Janicke wasted no time depositing a loose puck he found just outside Erik Portillo’s crease into the back of the net. The clock read 3:08. That Janicke created the space for the goal by steamrolling Dylan Duke away from the puck was apparently of no concern to the officials.
The game wasn’t over, but it felt like it was. Notre Dame could fall back into its defensive shell, ride out another three minutes and change, and seal the season sweep over Michigan.
The Wolverines would continue to charge for those remaining minutes. In a way, it seemed Michigan’s only sustained offense came from those moments of desperation, but even that frantic push wasn’t enough to unsettle the Irish and find the back of the net.
Jeff Jackson has coached Notre Dame since 2005, having previously won a pair of national championships with Lake Superior State in the 1990s. Jackson’s teams have an identity as clear as any in college hockey, playing the kind of game hockey pundits insist the postseason necessitates.
The Irish defensive system is a bit like a slingshot. As you progress the puck ice against them, tension builds and their pressure intensifies. At first, you may feel you have space in which to operate, but as you encroach upon the Notre Dame net, you find yourself swarmed.
The moment the Irish create a turnover (and they always seem to) all that pent up pressure releases in an instant. Notre Dame flies forward in unison; the attack is fast and vertical, wasting neither time nor movement on the quest for the opposing net.
By counterpunching with such intensity, the Irish aim to find a numerical advantage. Their opponent believes itself to be on the verge of an opportunity, only to stumble onto treacherous ground, fork over the puck, and end up vulnerable.
Though the non-call preceding Janicke’s goal left its fans irate, Michigan’s chief cause for alarm has to be its attack. Notre Dame plays its defensive brand of hockey with unique effectiveness, but there is a reason that style is perceived as essential to playoff success.
In the postseason, as officials grow more reluctant to sound their whistles and the stakes mount, a grinding bunker-and-counter approach tends to create a more stable structure than a team that wants to dictate the tempo of a game with its offense.
Of course, the postseason also lends greater importance to match-ups and tactics, and Notre Dame’s sweeping success against the Wolverines suggests a blueprint for potential opponents in the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments.
In the end, Notre Dame’s success came from the security it felt in its own strategy. The Irish did not need to cower in the face of Michigan’s lineup, even with the Olympic Four back in the fold. Instead, the Irish were disciplined but without compunction about pouncing on the opportunities that did emerge.
Meanwhile, the 6-on-5 bids at the end of each game excepted, Michigan’s attempts at offense never seemed to yield sustained pressure. The end-to-end rushes of Luke Hughes never came against the Irish’s stout structure. The Van Whye-Moyle combination managed to do a bit of forechecking, but never much. Owen Power never took command with a shift spent entirely in the offensive zone while spending half that time with the puck on his tape.
Michigan’s first goal of the weekend vaulted the Wolverines into an early Friday night lead. Though the game was not yet two-and-a-half minutes old, Notre Dame had already threatened with more than one quality chance. The goal came when Mackie Samoskevich recovered a puck off a face off and immediately set his eyes toward an activating Nick Blankenburg. Samoskevich threaded a cross-ice pass to his captain that caught the Irish defense off guard, and Blankenburg had a wide-open net to shoot at from point blank range.
It was an impressive combination from the pair, with the freshman winger showing impressive vision and anticipation and the senior defenseman showing his signature nose for the net. However, it would not prove replicable for the Wolverines, who struggled to connect on similar passing plays for the remaining fifty-seven minutes of the series.
Michigan’s only other goal offered a similar lesson: dangerous chances could come from horizontal passing. In this case, that cross-ice pass came on a power play, and, while Power’s feed for Matty Beniers left Beniers with much more to do than Samoskevich’s setup for Blankenburg, it ended up in the back of the net.
Again though, the goal appeared more of an isolated incident than a beacon of hope for more offense ahead. Of course, a pair of sterling performances from Matt Galajda in the cage didn’t help Michigan’s cause.
Now, the Wolverines find themselves facing serious adversity for the first time in 2022. The regular season title is out the window, and, instead of enjoying a first-round bye, Michigan will be in action next weekend, hosting a first round series with Michigan State. Should Michigan emerge from that series, a Big Ten semi-final date with Notre Dame would likely await.
It’s easy to turn to pessimism following Michigan’s fourth straight loss to the Irish. No first B1G regular season title. While that carrot is out to window, it’s worth pointing out that the best news for Michigan begins with the fact that the championship it just lost out on is not the ultimate target.
Michigan has two more chances for hardware this season: the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments. Whether it faces the Irish in either or both, Michigan will encounter similar tactics to the ones Jackson’s team play to perfection, and it can expect a similar tolerance from officials toward contact away from the puck.
In his post game comments to the Michigan Daily’s Connor Earegood, head coach Mel Pearson said “If we didn’t know what it was gonna be like (in the postseason), now we do.”
Does that mean that all of Michigan’s offensive flair will inevitably amount to nothing in its two postseason tournaments?
Perhaps, but it doesn’t have to. While this sweep at the hands of the Irish might prove to be a harbinger of disappointment to come, it does offer a reminder of the intensity required by playoff hockey and its vanishingly thin margins.
The lapses in net-front coverages or the prolonged spells of offensive isolation that have plagued the Wolverines at different points throughout the season are correctable errors.
Even if it wasn’t enough to win a regular season title, Michigan still boasts the most talented roster in the history of NCAA hockey. This team will have the firepower to compete with any opponent set it ins path.
It is no surprise that a team as offensively gifted as Michigan believes it can always outgun such foibles, and in some ways, that mindset of infallibility surely strengthens the team’s resolve.
However, when the volume of offensive opportunities falls and the stakes of each individual contest climb, no team can afford to let its concentration slip.
Now, Michigan has somewhere between one month and two to determine how all of us ought to remember this sweep to Notre Dame. Was this result foreshadowing or course-correcting? We can’t know for now, but Michigan will have the chance to make up all of our minds.
Odds & Ends
KJ wastes no time making an impact
For the most part, the Olympic Four had the same experience as their teammates: frustration at being rebuffed time and again by the Irish shell. If there was an exception to that rule, it came from Kent Johnson.
The British Columbian winger managed to create some semblance of trouble for the Irish, though even he struggled to link up with teammates following his bursts of inspired play.
In particular, Johnson found a way to sustain offense through patience and determination on the puck. Despite his slender frame, Johnson has a unique ability to shield the puck with his back side, warding off defenders as he waits for a teammate to find space. The trouble all weekend was that despite all that patience from Johnson, those spaces hardly seemed to come available.
Though he didn’t record a point on the Wolverines’ lone power play conversion, Johnson also served as a catalyst for his unit (the Olympic Four plus Mark Estapa).
Jack Han wrote all the way back in November about KJ’s versatility on the power play, suggesting that ability was unparalleled in NCAA hockey. Han spoke to Johnson’s ability to fit comfortably in all five spots in a traditional 1-3-1 power play structure: on either flank, at the point, in the bumper, or along the goal line.
What stood out about Johnson’s power play efforts this weekend was that he seemed to be doing all this on a single power play. Especially Saturday night, as the Wolverines moved the puck through the offensive zone, Johnson was never far away, providing immediate puck support and offering his gifts for facilitation wherever the puck went.
It was another reminder that, in contradiction to the conventional wisdom around skilled players, Kent Johnson does not choose between eye-popping skill and night-to-night effort. Both are part of his game every time he steps on the ice.
Portillo’s Weekend on the Edge
If Janicke’s goal* was the turning point in Saturday’s contest, Friday night’s game hinged on a puck handling blunder by Erik Portillo. After Michigan earned a five-minute major for head contact (assessed against Johnny Beecher) as time expired on the first, the Wolverines began the second on the penalty kill.
Michigan held up without surrendering much to the Irish for the first three minutes, but Portillo flubbed a bold attempt at clearing the puck in traffic and the Irish were left with an empty net.
It’s easy to chastise Portillo for the blunder, and, in retrospect, it appears obvious he should not have chanced a foray beyond the crease, given the concentration of players converging on the puck.
With that said, puck handling has been a strength for Portillo this season, and one bad experience shouldn’t sour Michigan fans on him ever attempting it again.
More importantly, Portillo was outstanding for Michigan Friday and Saturday, perhaps never more than in the first period of Friday’s game when Michigan surrendered one odd-man rush after another to the Irish. Were it not for Portillo’s efforts, the game could have been out of reach before Beecher even took his penalty.