Week 4: Broncos Busted
Michigan earns two chaotic victories to duck past the Western Michigan Broncos, riding the offensive wave from stalwarts Adam Fantilli, Luke Hughes, and Nolan Moyle for a de facto state championship
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“I think if you played ten, fifteen more minutes, it might shift or change three or four times,” said Brandon Naurato. He said it after a 5-4 Friday night victory at Yost, but it could have applied just as easily to a 6-5 overtime triumph the following night at Kalamazoo’s Lawson Ice Arena.
In sum, the University of Michigan men’s hockey team swept the Western Michigan University Broncos over a home-and-home this weekend. Both games featured high flying end-to-end hockey with a healthy spattering of animosity between the two sides. Either game or both could have gone the Broncos’ way. Instead though, Michigan improved to 7-1 on the season, and, with respect to the promising start to Adam Nightingale’s rebuild at Michigan State, the Wolverines likely secured a state championship along the way.
Twice during Michigan’s Friday night victory, a Wolverine attacker raced toward the Bronco net, having sprung himself to an unobstructed path to Cameron Rowe’s cage thanks to a defensive zone takeaway. In both cases, the menacing Wolverine looked off a passing option that promised to outflank Western, only to beat Rowe himself.
The first time, in the second period, that attacker was Adam Fantilli, an Ontario-born freshman whose nation-leading eighteen points leave him a threat to unseat Connor Bedard of the Western Hockey League’s Regina Pats as the number one overall pick in this Spring’s NHL Draft. Even if his passing option was as skilled a marksman as Mackie Samoskevich, it came as no surprise to see Fantilli call his own number and convert. After not quite a month of collegiate hockey, the centerman’s release would already be the obvious choice as the featured attraction at a haunted house targeting NCAA goaltenders.
The second time, in the third, it was Nolan Moyle, a fifth-year senior from Westchester County who mulled minor league hockey and the transfer portal in the offseason before returning to captain the Maize and Blue. Jackson Hallum, whose effort all night earned him postgame plaudits from his head coach, dashed up into the play to provide Moyle an option, but the Wolverines’ captain had eyes only for the net. His wrister beat Rowe cleanly, and Michigan had a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
When asked about the goal, Brandon Naurato couldn’t help but smile, before saying “He wanted it. I’m so happy for Nolan; he deserves it…We’ve been talking about some offensive things recently. He’s been watching more video, and he’s brought [linemates] Jackson [Hallum] and Mark [Estapa] in so they’ve had a great week of prep, and they proved it.”
Naurato added that he thought Friday’s contest was the best game of Hallum’s nascent collegiate career, saying that a player who works to “clean up habits” based on feedback at Hallum’s pace is “the most rewarding thing as a coach.”
Michigan had trailed once and led twice before a Bronco power play goal early in the third brought the two sides back level. For much of Friday’s game, Michigan’s elite talent kept it in the fight against the straight-ahead style of Western. There was the Fantilli tally and then the wondrous Samoskevich backhand that temporarily lofted Michigan into a 4-3 lead late in the second. But in the game’s most decisive moment, it was an undrafted winger playing in the bottom six who made the exact play Fantilli had in the second: capitalizing on a takeaway to lead a two-man rush opportunity, only to eschew a promising passing option for a snipe.
Freshman T.J. Hughes credited his captain for “great anticipation” to intercept a Bronco pass along the point in the defensive zone, before adding that he felt the utmost confidence once Moyle broke free: “I knew he was scoring. I had so much confidence in him. He deserves it.”
Of course, Friday’s game didn’t start so smoothly. The game’s opening minutes unfolded at a sluggish pace and were defined by Michigan’s struggle to escape its own end. With the Wolverines reluctant to flip the puck out of their defensive zone, Western’s forecheck and board play left Michigan flummoxed as to a path through neutral ice.
The Broncos opened the scoring when Dylan Wendt converted on a three-on-two. Wendt’s goal came 4:16 into the first period, and it was the game’s first shot, reflecting the slow pace with which the contest kicked off.
The game’s second shot came a minute and six seconds later, and it too found its mark with Hallum seizing on a fortuitous bounce to beat Rowe with a first-time backhand.
Though Hallum pulled the Wolverines level, Western Michigan dictated the game’s terms for at least its first dozen minutes. Michigan struggled to escape its own end, and its forays forward seemed as liable to produce a Bronco counter attack as an offensive chance for the hosts.
On one occasion not long past the midway point of the first, Steven Holtz retrieved a flipped Bronco dump-in from behind the net. With Hugh Larkin—the Broncos’ most advanced forechecker—providing scant pressure at best and behind the shelter of Erik Portillo and his net, Holtz surveyed the ice before him. And surveyed. And then sent an aspirational pass to Hallum in the neutral zone, Western having walled off any alternative possibilities.
However, as the first progressed, Michigan managed to open up the game. From there, the tilt rocked back-and-forth as the two sides traded blows in transition for forty minutes.
In the second period in particular, the game proved as easy to seize control of as a greased watermelon. Fantilli (on the aforementioned rush chance with Samoskevich) and T.J. Hughes (capitalizing on a puck-handling misadventure from Rowe, forced by an opportunistic Holtz) scored within two minutes of one another to give the Wolverines a 3-1 edge early in the frame.
Western erased that lead in an even shorter span with Max Sasson and Chad Hillebrand scoring a minute and seventeen seconds apart as the frame drew to a close, only for Samoskevich to vault Michigan back in front thirteen seconds after that. The game went to the second intermission 4-3 in favor of the hosts.
Jamie Rome tied the game again, this time with the game’s lone power play goal, just under six minutes into the third, before Moyle dealt the decisive blow with the clock reading 9:02 to play.
After the game, Naurato spoke to the turbulent nature of the victory: “We were just trying to ride the emotions, the back and forth. I thought we did some really good things, there are some things we can clean up, but huge win and good for the guys for being resilient and getting it done.”
The head coach suggested that dictating a game’s terms from the start is a skill his team still needs to sharpen, saying: “We need to establish how we want to play and dictate the game versus seeing how it goes. I think with a lot of younger players, even guys that are older who just didn’t play as much in the past…they haven’t felt that failure yet of it doesn’t work and now you’re playing from behind. Even when we’re up three-one, we gotta make it four-one, we gotta make it five.”
Even in an imperfect performance—one which saw the Broncos set up far too many quality looks at Portillo’s net, Holtz pointed out that his team relished the chance to play a fast-paced game against a formidable rival.
“I’m obviously biased, [but] I think we’re the best skating team in the country, and if you want us to skate, we’ll skate,” Holtz asserted. A bitter matchup “gets the adrenaline going and gets a little goose bumps…they’re super fun, super energetic games to play in. You can’t let the emotion get the best of you, but like I said this is why you play hockey to play in games like that, rivalry.”
In summating the night, Naurato explained that the pleasure at his team’s perseverance outweighed his typical approach of separating analysis and outcome: “I never evaluate our games on wins and losses just because we’re pushing towards the future, but it’s huge to get that win. It’s good to close it out and they did a good job.”
As was the case Friday, Saturday night’s game in Kalamazoo saw Michigan squander multiple leads only to triumph late, the main difference being that the second go-round required overtime. Like Friday’s, Saturday’s affair resisted sustained control from either side, but Michigan again persevered on the strength of its top-end talent.
You couldn’t say in good faith that Rutger McGroarty’s Michigan career got off to a slow start. The Nebraskan freshman was a point-per-game player and a valuable piece of the penalty kill entering the weekend. Nonetheless, a Saturday night hat trick got the Wolverines off the blocks and formally announced his arrival in Maize and Blue.
McGroarty notched the game’s first two goals—both of them on the power play, before registering the hat trick’s final leg in the early stages of the third on a shot only he seemed to know found its mark. The third goal gave Michigan a short-lived 5-3 lead five minutes into the final frame of regulation.
In the time intervening McGroarty’s second goal and his third, Western scored thrice with Adam Fantilli twice providing an answer for Michigan.
After McGroarty’s third, a pair of Bronco goals (the last a Carter Berger bid with an empty net) sent the game to overtime. From there, the outcome hinged on the skates and blade of Michigan’s talismanic sophomore defenseman.
It hasn’t been an easy start to the ‘22-23 season for Luke Hughes. Returning from an injury suffered at August’s World Juniors, Hughes has flashed the transcendent skating that helped him stand out as a freshman, but the offensive production from a year ago had dried up in the season’s early going.
On Friday night, Hughes teased the possibility of an imminent offensive breakout. The lanky blue liner made a decisive keep-in to set up Samoskevich’s backhand (a backhand the Connecticutian winger waited with the patience of Job before delivering to the back of the net).
Hughes also authored one of his signature one-man rambles through the neutral zone Friday night, another hint that more offense was near on the horizon.
If Friday night’s game offered a trailer of Hughes’ powers, Saturday was the feature presentation. The climax came in overtime. Moments after Rowe robbed him on a glorious opportunity, Hughes turned to the Fantilli-Moyle formula from Friday: seizing on a loose puck in his own end, racing through the neutral zone, thinking better of a passing option, and beating Rowe.
Unlike Fantilli and Moyle, the youngest Hughes brother appeared to at least consider sending a pass on the odd-man rush he created with his defensive acumen and skating. A subtle glance at McGroarty took Bronco defenseman Aidan Fulp out of the shooting lane. Now with a clean look at Rowe’s net, Hughes sentenced the Broncos to a sweep.
He punctuated the goal by ensuring that the Broncos’ faithful Lawson Lunatics got a close look at Michigan’s celebration and by thanking them for their raucousness with a bow.
Having entered the season with a heavy burden of expectation thanks to an outstanding freshman season and then enduring a slow opening few weekends in point production, Hughes’ moment of overtime brilliance carried with it an air of catharsis.
As Brandon Naurato explained to The Michigan Daily’s Connor Earegood after the game, “He’s trying to put the world on his back every day. He can breathe, he can sleep well tonight. Just happy that [goal] went in. He was phenomenal, man, it was his best game of the year.”
With the sweep, Michigan offered a compelling counter argument to the notion that it had “ducked” Western at last season’s Great Lakes Invitational.
The preponderance of blown leads and quality chances against Erik Portillo show that this Wolverine team has room for improvement, but three wins against ranked foes before the calendar flips to November suggest that Brandon Naurato’s team has credibly reloaded following last Spring’s mass exodus to professional hockey.
Michigan will return to action next weekend, taking on an undefeated Penn State team in State College.
Odds and Ends:
T.J. Hughes Continues to Impress
We’ll keep it to one Odd and End this weekend, but we would be remiss if we neglected to point out Michigan’s other Hughes’ continued strong start to his collegiate career.
Hughes spent the first three weeks in Maize and Blue centering Michigan’s fourth line but received a different assignment for the clash with Western. Naurato moved the freshman up to the second line with McGroarty and Gavin Brindley, where he manned the right wing.
On its face, Hughes’ goal Friday night was the product of good fortune, with Holtz forcing Rowe into a mishandle that left the freshman with a wide-open net.
Hughes has also seemed to benefit from similar “right place, right time” interventions in his function on Michigan’s top power play. His first career goal (against BU two weeks ago) exemplifies this trend: the freshman popping up at the right moment in the right spot to grab a goal at the far post.
In isolation, plays like these could scan as pure happenstance, but when the same player continues to benefit from a similar dynamic, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that there is more to the picture, an indicator that a well-trained hockey IQ must at least be working in tandem with fortunate bounces.
Throw in nifty passes like the backhand feed Hughes provided Adam Fantilli during the second period last night, and you have ample reason to believe Michigan may have struck gold in its penultimate addition to a freshman class that wants for neither elite talent nor depth.
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