Week 5: Split in State College
Michigan splits a tumultuous two-game set with Penn State. Buoyed all week by backup goalie Noah West, the Wolverines looked lifeless Friday before rebounding for a chaotic overtime win the next night
As the University of Michigan men’s hockey team awaited the puck drop before Saturday night’s overtime period, disaster loomed near and heavy on the horizon. The night prior, Michigan sleepwalked through a 3-0 loss to Penn State, characterized by frequent and profound defensive lapses. After appearing to sort those issues out for fifty-odd minutes Saturday, a disastrous second half of the third period saw the Wolverines’ 3-0 lead erased with the recurrence of those defensive demons.
By all rights, momentum sat entrenched on the home bench, and the visiting Wolverines were on the precipice of suffering a humbling sweep days after taking over the nation’s top ranking.
Unfortunately for the home team, momentum didn’t draw the first shift for the Nittany Lions, while Mackie Samoskevich and Adam Fantilli did for the Maize and Blue. Twenty-four seconds later, Fantilli beat PSU goaltender Liam Souliere with a deft wrist shot, depositing a carem from the end boards that missed the net off Samoskevich’s blade moments earlier. In the twenty-four seconds of overtime, Michigan salvaged a positive result from a turbulent weekend, while no Penn State skater managed to touch the puck.
For the second straight Saturday, Michigan would ride out of the weekend with a cathartic overtime winner. That victory punctuated a series in which the Wolverines suffered, regained their footing, stumbled anew, then triumphed—all with starting goaltender Erik Portillo unavailable and backup Noah West in net. Though absent their number one option between the pipes, goaltending was an area of strength all weekend, with West sharp enough both nights to keep his teammates afloat in games where their defensive effort did not always merit it.
On Friday evening at Pegula Ice Arena, Michigan authored a performance critically low in vital signs. In Noah West’s first start since his days at Robert Morris University, the Wolverines played a lethargic first period, while receiving a flurry of Nittany Lion chances against.
Whether eager to disprove that their undefeated record was the product of a soft early season schedule or keen to challenge a backup goaltender, Penn State roared out of the gates with a first period in which it outshot Michigan 15-4. PSU couldn’t beat West, despite the frequent and high-quality chances it generated, while the Wolverines endured their least productive offensive period of the young season.
In an October edition of the Midweek Roundup, normal starter Erik Portillo pointed to the value of seeing lots of pucks early on in an appearance, saying “It’s nice to get a feeling for it early…You don’t want to stand there, and it’s like any performance I think you want to get that start going and then you go from there.” In other words, seeing lots of early action may not have been the worst way to break in a goaltender making his first start of the season.
However, Michigan’s inability to provide any offensive support for West proved more problematic. Last Friday night against Western, Michigan overcame a sluggish first period (or at least first half of the first period) by cranking up the game’s pace in the second. With the tempo increased, the Wolverines offense seemed to find its rhythm.
In the second period of Friday’s game, however, pushing the pace only seemed to create more room for the well-oiled Penn State counter attack. Michigan mustered ten shots in the frame, its highest total in any one period on the evening, but it conceded eighteen to the Nittany Lions along with a pair of goals.
PSU opened the scoring after hemming Michigan into its own end for a prolonged stretch that ended in a wide-open Ture Linden scoring from point blank range. The Nittany Lions would double their lead later in the period off a glorious tic-tac-toe passing combination.
After last Friday’s win over Western Michigan, Brandon Naurato said “Michigan’s been a great rush team for thirty years. We’re trying to be better in [the offensive] zone.” He added last Tuesday that one of the defining traits of championship teams is their ability to win a variety of different types of game.
It was in this regard that Michigan learned a difficult lesson Friday night. After a slow start, the Wolverines sought to shift momentum by slamming on the gas pedal. When Penn State proved unfazed by the increased pace (and even seemed to thrive after the acceleration), Michigan never found an alternate gear.
Perhaps it could have been a night for the kind of offensive zone-based attack Naurato described as a work-in-progress last weekend. Instead, the only reason Michigan managed to hang in the game into the third period wore extra protective gear and stood between the pipes.
Noah West stopped forty-six of the forty-eight shots that came his way for a staggering .958 save percentage on Friday night. Even those gaudy figures do a disservice to West’s performance, in which fast onrushing Nittany Lion skaters were never more than a shift away.
In a postgame interview with The Michigan Daily’s Connor Earegood, Naurato was blunt: “West was outstanding. He deserves more from the rest of the guys.”
The attack never found consistent ways to ask questions of the PSU defense, and, defensively, Michigan leaked quality chances throughout the game. It was a wholly forgettable Friday night performance for all save the netminder.
On Saturday, the Wolverines arrived with renewed defensive vigor and established control over the game with special teams superiority.
Samoskevich opened the scoring on the power play with the kind of inch-perfect wrist shot he has made routine in the season’s early days. Though Samoskevich finished the job with his quicksilver release, Dylan Duke and T.J. Hughes did yeoman’s work to create netfront traffic and provide the Connecticutian winger with service.
The goal began with an impressive pass from Duke in the slot out to Samoskevich, whose initial wrister sailed wide. T.J. Hughes, showing instincts around the net that have become his hallmark of a fledgling collegiate career, retrieved the rebound and worked it back to Samoskevich for another go, this time a decisive blow.
Thirty seconds after Michigan killed off a Luca Fantilli minor later in the frame, Hughes got himself into the goal column. With a swift intervention of the glove, the former Brooks Bandit set up a backhand, forehand move, which he roofed beyond Souliere’s reach.
As we noted last week, if Hughes scored once on what looked a favorable bounce around the net, we might chalk it up to good fortune; when he does it every weekend, it’s impossible to deny his intelligence in the vicinity of the crease.
By the midpoint of the second, Michigan seemed in total control. It was not as though West had nothing to do in the Wolverine crease, but the chaotic flurries or wide-open Nittany Lions at the goal mouth from Friday night were nowhere to be found.
With six and a half minutes remaining in the frame, the Maize and Blue provided what felt at the time a decisive shift from Nolan Moyle, Jackson Hallum, Mark Estapa, Ethan Edwards, and Seamus Casey.
The quintet was trapped on the ice for a pair of icing calls. After the first, Naurato used a timeout. After the second, that option was no longer on the table, and Michigan appeared in serious jeopardy.
Instead, the stranded five—lungs straining for relief—delivered one of the best defensive shifts Michigan saw all weekend. While Penn State retained possession for nearly forty more agonizing seconds, the Wolverines hounded the puck all around the zone and denied their hosts any serious path toward the slot. The Nittany Lions could hold the puck, but they couldn’t break down Michigan’s defensive shell. Eventually, Moyle lifted the puck to neutral ice, and the beleaguered Wolverines had won sweet relief to the bench.
In warding off the PSU onslaught, Michigan showed a command of the central areas of the rink it could never seize on Friday night. Not quite five minutes later, Samoskevich underscored the Wolverines’ newfound control of middle ice by banging in a Fantilli feed from the goal mouth.
With a three goal lead and just a period and change to play, the Maize and Blue seemed to have secured a redemptive victory. However, an unwelcome resurgence of Friday’s porous defense invited Penn State back into the game over three minutes and fifty-nine agonizing seconds just past the midway point in the third.
Were it not for more heroics from West between the pipes, Michigan could easily have fallen doomed in regulation.
Instead, the Pittsboro, Indiana native turned aside one last bid from the Nittany Lions to send Michigan home without a point, and the game went to overtime tied at three.
From there, Samoskevich and Fantilli combined one last time, and the prospective lottery pick in the Spring’s NHL Draft pushed Michigan over a finish line that had proved elusive in the third. With the goal and earlier assist, Fantilli boosted himself to a neat twenty points in ten collegiate games; Friday’s shutout defeat is, to date, his only NCAA game without making his way to the scoresheet.
So what to make of Michigan’s weekend, which teetered between tumult and calamity before ending in relief?
On the one hand, there is the flat Friday performance and disaster of a second-half of the third Saturday (which cost Michigan points in the B1G standings, even if it ended in victory). Both games provide more than trivial cause for concern, whether that’s trepidation about the inability to find a way into the fight Friday or the unconvincing closing Saturday.
On the other hand, the youthful Wolverines showed resilience in their decisive response to Friday’s defeat and in rallying to close out Saturday’s victory.
Throughout the season, Naurato has touted his green team’s proficiency as quick learners, citing players like Luca Fantilli, T.J. Hughes, and Jackson Hallum for their work to immediately act upon feedback from the team’s coaching staff. For fifty minutes Saturday, they looked as though Friday’s loss had cautioned them to the perils of ceding control of the middle of the rink and losing track of one’s defensive assignment. In the final ten minutes of regulation, Michigan provided a reminder that there was more learning left to do.
This weekend’s lessons came at more than a small price: a regulation loss and an overtime win leave the Maize and Blue with just two of the six B1G standings points available to them thus far. The defeat may well cost Michigan its seat atop the polls.
With a challenging trip to South Bend to take on Notre Dame next up on the schedule, Big Ten play has assumed an urgency from its earliest stages.
Even still, thanks to Fantilli and West’s heroics, Michigan can head back to Ann Arbor having taken a game off a team that has offered a loud declaration of intention to compete for a B1G title in their barn. As Naurato and his team explained repeatedly this week, the season’s goal was not a November number one ranking, but an April one.
Now for Naurato’s bunch, it’s time for another week of learning and preparation in hopes of a more consistent effort next weekend against the Fighting Irish. The head coach speaks often of the value of “failing forward” for his young team, making mistakes and learning from them quickly. An inconsistent weekend against a quality opponent that culminated in success provides the perfect springboard for failing forward into South Bend next weekend.
Odds and Ends
West the Racer
After he stopped seventy-eight of the eighty-three pucks that came his way in his first two Michigan starts, you know about Noah West the netminder, but you might not know about Noah West the auto racing enthusiast.
West’s mask is painted and designed by a family friend named Noah Ennis, based in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Wests met Ennis, who had played hockey growing up, through their work in the racing industry. Ennis painted helmets for drivers, so he became a natural candidate to paint Noah’s first goalie masks.
The Wests work in the world of open wheel race cars, helping out a variety of teams across NASCAR and IndyCar while running a family-owned open wheel racing team. West explains his father’s work as “a lot of aerospace engineering stuff, satellite dishes, and stuff like that.”
West himself experimented with racing when he was younger but soon found that he preferred working on his family’s four cars in his spare time to actually racing them. Working on the automobiles has become a staple of the goaltender’s summers.
L. Fantilli draws in Saturday
The only player to draw into the lineup between Friday and Saturday was Luca Fantilli. Kienan Draper became a healthy scratch, and Jay Keranen joined the fourth line to accommodate his addition.
Brandon Naurato offered further tweaks to his lineup (namely, moving Rutger McGroarty back to Gavin Brindley’s wing or reinstating the third line of Hallum, Estapa, and Moyle), but, considering the uninspired Friday effort, it was perhaps a surprise not to see more wholesale changes.
Leaving the lineup mostly unaltered from Friday’s poor performance suggested Naurato’s faith in his young team’s process. Inserting Fantilli demonstrated Naurato’s belief in the talent of his young players and a willingness to keep attacking, even after a lackluster result.
So often coaches air toward conservatism in recovering from a difficult loss: turning to veteran players and hunkering down in a defensive shell. By adding Luca Fantilli to the fold, Naurato took the opposite tack—adding a gifted puck-mover still honing his defensive acumen to better facilitate smooth transitions through the neutral zone.
Fantilli provided just that from the first period, showing confident edges as he explored the offensive zone and delivering well-weighted passes from his own end to set the Wolverine attack in motion.
In sticking with the weekend’s theme, it was an imperfect performance from the elder Fantilli, but his talent was obvious. Adam is the apple of NHL scouts’ eyes, but Luca—liable to spend more time in Ann Arbor than his younger brother—is quietly blossoming into an effective player for the Maize and Blue in his own right.
Weekend of WoHo
Having neglected the world of women’s hockey in this week’s Midweek Roundup, we would be remiss if we didn’t note a few highlights from the weekend so far.
The University of Michigan women’s hockey team returned to action Saturday afternoon after a bye, hammering Lake Superior State 5-0 at Yost. The Wolverines rode a three-goal third period to a comfortable victory. Jessica Simmer netted a brace, and Sandrine Ponnath completed the twenty-nine save shutout. The Wolverines will return to action within a few hours of this newsletter going live, completing the Lake State series at 3:30 Sunday afternoon.
In other WoHo news, the Premier Hockey Federation (formerly the National Women’s Hockey League) opened its season over the weekend. One name that will ring familiar to Michigan hockey fans is that of Connecticut Whale forward Melissa Samoskevich. The eldest sister of Mackie, Melissa serves as what her younger brother described as the “Topher [Scott] of Quinnipiac,” working as the director of player development and operations at her alma mater, where she once served as Bobcats’ captain. Mackie explained that her role at Quinnipiac doesn’t require much work on the weekend, freeing Melissa up to continue her playing career with the Whale.
Samoskevich drew attention over the weekend when she employed a “squeegee” maneuver to the face shield of one Boston Pride skater.
Samoskevich’s younger brother missed out on a prime opportunity to perform a similar operation against a Penn State team for whom every skater seemed to wear a fish bowl and would presumably have of course appreciated a quick wipe down from the Wolverine sophomore.
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