Week 3: Sweep Through the Soo
Michigan beats Lake Superior State 5-2 then 5-1, flexing it offensive muscle up and down the lineup while also flirting with danger in the form of hordes of minor penalties
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In a neat synecdoche of their team’s performance, Michigan’s top line scored six of the Wolverines’ ten goals on the season’s first road trip, but, for all their offensive dominance, that unit also contributed a whopping nine minor penalties. On Saturday night, each of its three constituents took two trips to the box. The production was enough to secure consecutive comfortable victories, but the penalties ensured kept an overmatched opponent within striking distance throughout the series.
Over the weekend, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team swept through Lake Superior State in Sault Ste. Marie, winning by 5-2 and 5-1 margins on consecutive evenings. On both occasions, the Wolverines overwhelmed the Lakers quickly with their offensive firepower before riding out disjointed, penalty-riddled affairs. Even if the pace was derailed by frequent interventions from the team in black-and-white stripes, a rollicking Taffy Abel Arena made for a pleasant backdrop to a series in which the Maize and Blue once again flashed its attacking muscle.
Entering Friday’s game, Brandon Naurato threw his forward lines into the blender. Senior Eric Ciccolini slid onto a line with Gavin Brindley and Rutger McGroarty, disrupting what had been an all freshmen operation. Jackson Hallum (late of said freshmen line) added some pace and aptitude as a puck carrier to a line with Nolan Moyle and Mark Estapa (the latter of whom moved from the wing to center). Meanwhile, Philippe Lapointe rejoined the lineup alongside TJ Hughes and Kienan Draper.
The untouched line? The top one, still manned by the fearsome triumvirate of Adam Fantilli, Mackie Samoskevich, and Dylan Duke. Before the game was a minute old, the trio offered a clear explanation as to why they stuck together.
Even if his reputation is more for ruggedness around the net, Dylan Duke flashed his creativity in open ice to set up the opening marker. With a timely intervention on the back check, Duke won the puck, eluded a Laker along the blue line, and fed a streaking Fantilli. The pass was quintessentially Duke: perhaps lacking the flair of some of his highest-skilled teammates, but lethal nonetheless as it sliced across the “Royal Road.” Fantilli, for his part, provided a devastating finish, the puck seeming to disappear in the milliseconds between his release and Laker goaltender Ethan Langenegger turning to retrieve it from his net.
On the second goal, Michigan illustrated the ruthlessness with which it can reset its attack. The goal began with Lake State winning a defensive zone draw and achieving temporary relief by ladling the puck to neutral ice. However, rather than affording the Lakers an opportunity to catch their breath, a combination of Luke Hughes, Samoskevich, and Jacob Truscott worked the puck without hesitation back to the tape of Fantilli, who had room to operate one-on-one with a defenseman entering the Lake State zone. From there, Fantilli offered an inside-out move to drop the unlucky Laker to the ice and beat Langenegger. By the game’s end, Michigan’s top trio would register twenty-one shot attempts between them.
Both goals illustrated Fantilli’s bottomless bag of tricks with the puck, but they also reflected a finely-tuned transition attack from the Wolverines. Before the first period ended, Truscott would stretch Michigan’s lead to three, doing his best Luke Hughes impression as he walked the blue line before depositing a shot perfectly into the top corner beyond Langenegger’s blocker.
The shot was a “sifter,” one in which a defenseman (often leaning back to spy the perfect angle) launches a wrister that is theoretically far too soft to beat a goalie from distance. However, within a context of netfront traffic (provided here by McGroarty and Brindley), it affords a sharp-shooting defenseman the opportunity to emphasize precision rather than power. The skill is a favorite of Lightning defenseman Mikhail Sergachev, and here, Truscott pulled it off with aplomb.
In the early going of the second, Kienan Draper added a fourth. Though Draper benefited from a fortuitous bounce in front of the cage, he showed the instincts of a classic power forward to put himself in a position where he might benefit. The Bloomfield Hills-born freshman drove the net hard, as if with a veteran’s awareness of the premium ice available to him on the play, before taking advantage of some good fortune.
At the start of the second, Michigan seemed to be playing its best hockey of the night, turning up the offensive pressure on the Lakers in waves. However, just as that pressure intensified, the Wolverines were guilty of a few defensive lapses and unnecessary penalties that stalled their momentum. Jordan Venegoni pulled one back for Lake Superior just before the game’s midway point, and the second was the only period in which the Lakers could match Michigan in shots on goal (sixteen a piece, as opposed to the 2-1 margin the Wolverines stitched together in the first and third).
The Lakers struck again early in the final period and had what could have been a third ruled out for goaltender interference before Adam Fantilli iced the game (and completed the hat trick) with a long-distance empty-netter.
If there was one area for improvement for Michigan, it would be in alleviating all doubt in a game in which the Wolverines’ carried a clear advantage but allowed the Lakers to hang around. Though even when it dipped to two, Michigan’s lead felt reasonably safe, the Wolverines’ head coach would have preferred not to leave the game up for grabs at all.
After the game, Brandon Naurato told The Michigan Daily, “I would have liked for us to open it up a little more, to push them. I think it’s normal, but it’s something that we’re not happy about. (When) we’ve got teams on the rope like that, we have to finish them off early.”
Nonetheless, Michigan’s 31-17 advantage in even strength shots translated to a 64.6% share, a figure that reflects sustained dominance for all but a brief stretch in the second. Even if there is room for improvement in terms of sealing a victory, it’s hard to quibble with that level of five-on-five supremacy.
Saturday night’s contest followed a familiar narrative, with Michigan grabbing an early lead on the strength of its top line, threatening to blow the Lakers out of the rink, then re-opening the door with a flood of penalties.
Samoskevich opened the scoring on a long-distance shot with the help of a Fantilli screen.
Then, Fantilli doubled the lead on a nifty netfront backhand with Michigan boasting an extra attacker on a delayed penalty.
Early in the second, T.J. Hughes made it three after Hallum forced a turnover on a Laker attempt to exit the zone, with the former sending Laker goaltender Seth Eisele lunging across the net only to bury the puck to the short side.
Hughes would grab another by pouncing on a power play rebound later in the period, albeit with a Timo Bakos power play goal for the Lakers’ sandwiched between.
It’s easy to get forgotten amidst a crowded freshman class, but Hughes still found a way to take center stage Saturday night, or at least share it with Fantilli. Nominally, Hughes centers the fourth line, but his presence on the Wolverines’ top power play unit offers a reminder of the offensive upside he brings to a role traditionally reserved for a grinder. Offensively, the story of the weekend for the Wolverines was the Fantilli line’s dominance, but again, to see the likes of Hughes, Draper, and Truscott find the back of the net offers thorough reassurance against fears of a top heavy lineup.
Encouraging though the offensive output on the weekend was, the abundance of penalties—particularly Saturday night—jump out as a problem to be cleaned up as the Wolverines move forward. Effective penalty killing meant Michigan killed off nine of the Lakers’ ten power plays on Saturday; the Wolverines were able to limit LSSU to just eleven shots across those ten power play chances, but the sheer volume of penalties taken (eleven, one of which coincided with a Laker minor) made conceding a power play goal almost inevitable.
Naurato attributed some of that penalty kill success to a reinvigorated emphasis on shot blocking, in a post-game interview with The Daily: “We needed to block more shots. [Rob Rassey, the assistant tasked with handling the PK] challenged them before the game and they did. When the puck’s on our stick and we have an opportunity to clear it, it’s a big deal to clear it. That kills off another 15 to 20 seconds versus trying to make the extra play. I don’t think we’re perfect, but we did a lot of really good things.”
Even with the parade to the penalty box, Michigan did a better job of putting Saturday’s game out of reach than it had Friday’s. Dylan Duke scored the lone goal of the third period with a short side shot that seemed to fool Eisele off a Fantilli feed.
In assisting, Fantilli followed up his hat trick Friday with a goal and three assists Saturday and brought his season point total to fifteen in six games, leaving him the nation’s top scorer.
Saturday’s shot chart again reflected Michigan’s dominance, with the Wolverines earning a 66.7% shot share at even strength on the evening. It was far from a perfect performance, but it’s difficult to find too much fault in a sweep decided by a 10-3 score on aggregate in which the team effectively doubled its opposition in five-on-five shots.
To be sure, Michigan has obvious growth areas—namely in finishing off a vulnerable opponent and in improving discipline—heading into next weekend’s tussle with Western Michigan, but a 5-1 record and the Wolverines’ continued offensive explosion leaves ample room for optimism heading into the last hurdle before the opening of Big Ten play.
Odds & Ends:
RIP Ian Hume
We would be remiss if we didn’t open this section with our heartfelt condolences to the family of Ian Hume. Hume, Michigan’s long-time equipment manager, passed away this week, not long before the Wolverines’ trip Up North.
For a portrait of the vibrancy that Hume brought to the Michigan dressing room through his long tenure in Ann Arbor, consider this 2020 feature from The Daily’s Josh Taubman:
Holtz & Casey Pair
Throughout the young season, the defense pair of Seamus Casey and Steve Holtz have been a bright spot on the Michigan blue line. Normally, Casey brings the adventurous offensive dynamism and Holtz serves as defensive stalwart, but Friday’s game offered at least a partial inversion of that paradigm.
Casey, on more than one occasion, used his speed and composure to quell promising Laker rushes.
Meanwhile, Holtz played what may have been his best offensive game as a Wolverine, even without registering a point. Michigan’s tallest skater was notably more active in the offensive zone than we’ve grown accustomed to seeing and offered a toe drag along the blue line that roused the Wolverine bench.
Entering the season, there was little doubt that Michigan would be able to trot out an outstanding top pair in Jacob Truscott and Luke Hughes, one that meshed beautifully a year ago. However, the emergence of Casey and Holtz as a second pairing (along with the return of Ethan Edwards and steady performances of Jay Keranen and Keaton Pehrson) have helped the Wolverines absorb the departures of Owen Power and Nick Blankenburg to the NHL.
Edwards Debut
Speaking of Edwards, the Alberta-born blue liner made his season debut this weekend. In his first game back, Edwards made clear that, despite having been sidelined for the season’s opening weeks with a lower body injury, the skating that helped distinguish him as a freshman was unperturbed. The future New Jersey Devil legged out a breakaway opportunity off a defensive zone faceoff in the third in which he simply skated past the entire Laker defense.
Edwards’ returned to the lineup left Luca Fantilli the odd man out along the blue line. I would wager that Fantilli’s scratch was more about his stylistic similarities to Edwards than any deficiencies in the elder Fantilli brother’s game. Like Edwards, Luca Fantilli plays a game predicated on skating and playmaking. Throw in the fact that Fantilli plays the left side, while dependable veterans Jay Keranen and Keaton Pehrson man the right, and you have one more reason to scratch the freshman. Nonetheless, Naurato recently lauded Fantilli’s ability to immediately incorporate feedback (specifically adjusting his technique in defending the rush between the Friday and Saturday games against Lindenwood), and I would be surprised not to see him folded back into the lineup before too long. Regardless of when he returns, Fantilli’s availability and strong play offer reason for optimism about Michigan’s depth on the back end.
Special Teams Battle In Brief
Though both teams had ample opportunities, it was a rather quiet weekend on the scoreboard for both sides’ power play units. Friday and Saturday nights each ended with one PPG a piece for Michigan and LSSU, but those raw figures are somewhat deceptive. If we want to pick a winner of the specialty teams battle, it doesn’t require too much creativity to break the tie. On Friday night, Michigan’s power play marker was also an empty netter from its own end of the rink; valuable though it was in icing the game, the goal did not reflect the Wolverines’ ability to convert as a unit in the offensive zone. Meanwhile, on Saturday, though it didn’t officially count as a power play goal, Fantilli’s tally came with Michigan at 6-on-5 and awaiting a delayed penalty. Combine that with having to ward off twice as many calls to short-handed duty, and it’s fair to say Michigan was the superior team on special teams Saturday.
On the whole, Michigan finished the weekend 12/14 (85.7%) on the penalty kill and 2/10 on the power play. The former figure is impressive, even if it screams out for improved discipline, while the latter is solid if a bit underwhelming for a group of the Wolverines’ talent.
As such, sharpening the power play knives and improving discipline will be clear points of emphasis in the coming week.
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