Week 6: Four out of Six in South Bend
Michigan plays with a speed that would be unrecognizable to anyone who saw these two sides collide last year, but a Saturday night ND comeback keeps the Wolverines from a perfect weekend
If the axiom that styles make fights holds true, Notre Dame and Michigan’s get-togethers on the ice make for a must-watch fixture. The polarity of Michigan’s speed and skill in transition set against the Irish’s attempts to stick a wrench in the game’s gears invite duels in which both sides vie to establish their distinct style of play.
Through eighty minutes of hockey this weekend, the Maize and Blue offered a masterclass in playing on the front foot and dictating the game’s terms. Puck support in transition and connectivity afforded the Wolverines rush chances that seldom seem to come against Jeff Jackson’s Notre Dame; meanwhile, when the game required it, Michigan was content to dump pucks in and create off the cycle or forecheck. However, in the second period of Saturday night’s affair, the Irish retook control, slowed the game’s pace, and staged a two-goal comeback to set the stage for an overtime victory.
The end result is that over the weekend, the University of Michigan’s men’s ice hockey team took four of six possible B1G standings points in South Bend, cruising to a 5-1 victory Friday before falling 3-2 in overtime the following evening.
Friday night’s first period was not the Wolverines’ best of the weekend, and the two sides exchanged power play goals. Michigan’s conversion arrived via a Mackie Samoskevich snipe, by now a familiar site for Wolverine fans. The goal carried with it an air of retributive justice, with Samoskevich having suffered a Nick Leivermann cross-check to set up the power play.
Though Michigan didn’t leave the first with a lead, the team’s thirteen shots on Ryan Bischel hinted that the Irish may struggle to smother the Maize and Blue as they did throughout the sides’ four regular season collisions a year ago.
In the second, Michigan played arguably its strongest period of the season and raced to a 5-1 lead in a frame in which it outshot Notre Dame by a staggering 18-4 margin. Though we’ve thus far highlighted their desire to play with speed, the Wolverines’ first three goals illustrated their success at rising to head coach Brandon Naurato’s challenge of creating offense in diverse ways.
Eric Ciccolini put the Wolverines ahead with a goal that emerged from the effective forechecking of T.J. Hughes. Hughes nabbed the puck off Irish forward Hunter Strand before showing impressive vision to pirouette away from pressure and find Ciccolini streaking across the slot. From there, the senior used an outstanding first touch to get the puck to a strong shooting position, from which he beat Bischel. For a player who hadn’t registered a point since the season opener against Lindenwood, it was a well-deserved goal.
To stretch the lead to two, Michigan earned a goal through its cycle game in the offensive zone. The ensuing rebound from a Jacob Truscott point shot left the Irish coverage in flux. From there, Adam Fantilli found Dylan Duke at the goal mouth, and Duke’s redirect from point blank range left Bischel with no chance at a save.
Jackson Hallum then put the game out of reach with a dose of Michigan’s classic transition speed and skill. The swift freshmen sniffed an available lane with the Irish attack spread thin in the Wolverine end of the rink. Keaton Pehrson, sensing the same opportunity as Hallum, provided a beautiful one-touch feed into space after intercepting a Notre Dame attempt to rim the puck around the boards.
Hallum was about even with two Irish defenders as he crossed the red line, but, by the time he moved in on Bischel, those same defenders were comfortably in his rearview mirror. Having earned himself time to make a move, Hallum then undresses Bischel with a neat forehand-backhand finish.
To earn that three-goal margin, the Wolverines scored three different ways: one off the forecheck, one in the offensive zone, and one in transition. I suspect that level of variable creativity in attack delighted Naurato.
T.J. Hughes would ice the game in the dying stages of the second with another power play tally.
On Saturday night, the Wolverines seemed to pick up where they had left off Friday in the first. Michigan outshot the Irish 14-10 and earned a two-goal lead thanks to Ethan Edwards’ first of the season and another long-range Samo snipe with the man advantage.
The first showed more offensive zone creation, and the second demonstrated that Michigan’s power play continued to hum along.
Unfortunately for the Wolverines, the Irish seemed to swing the series with a quintessentially Jeff Jackson second period. The visitors still outshot their hosts (8-6), but the fourteen combined shots on net was the lowest figure of any period all weekend, a full eight shots fewer than its closest competitor.
In general, shot attempts are an imperfect illustration of pace but often the best proxy we have in hockey. While it’s possible that a porous defensive team can be misinterpreted as playing fast because they are constantly getting caved in, combined shots provide a broad-strokes view as to what volume of offense is being created.
For Naurato, it was frustrating to see his team fail to kill off the Irish after a strong start. “We have a two-goal lead,” Naurato told The Michigan Daily’s Noah Kingsley. “That’s where you have to put yourself in a position where it’s out of reach for them.”
Saturday’s third period was the only one of the weekend in which the Irish managed more shots than the visitors (13-9). A number of key saves from Erik Portillo kept Michigan afloat and sent the game to overtime. The junior netminder warded off a serious Irish flurry with just under seven minutes to play in regulation on a sequence that concluded in him freezing the puck while mask-less. Two and a half minutes later, Portilllo denied a Ben Brinkman wraparound bid by extending his left leg to leave Brinkman with nothing at the post.
On the whole, Erik Portillo showed no signs of rust from last weekend’s absence with a strong performance in South Bend. Across the two games, Portillo stopped fifty-one of the fifty-five Irish shots that came his way—good for a .927 save percentage on the weekend.
In overtime, the sides traded chances before Grant Silianoff dealt the decisive blow off an odd-man rush opportunity. In losing in the extra session, Michigan salvaged a B1G standings point but still felt as though it had left something on the table.
“The big thing was we were trying to go one-on-one too much,” freshman defender Luca Fantilli told The Daily’s Charlie Pappalardo. “Yesterday, we were getting pucks behind them, and that’s the way to break that system.”
Now four games into Big Ten play, Michigan has taken six of the twelve points available to it. That figure will have to improve if the Wolverines want to compete for a regular season conference title, but it’s worth noting that muddy results have been standard across the league so far.
Entering the year, the three favorites to win the conference were Michigan, Minnesota, and Notre Dame. None of those three are in the top two in the B1G standings as of this writing, and between them, they have just one sweep across eight series in conference play (the Gophers over the Irish in Minneapolis last weekend).
Meanwhile, Adam Nightingale’s Michigan State sit atop the league, having been projected to finish the season as an afterthought in year one of Nightingale’s rebuild, with an impressive .778 points percentage through six conference games.
The good news for the Maize and Blue is that they have played just four of twenty-four Big Ten games; there is lots of time to add consistency to the moments of brilliance we have seen from the young Wolverines in the first four legs of their B1G journey.
The first opportunity to make amends on that front comes this Thursday, when the Gophers visit Ann Arbor for a two-game set.
Odds & Ends
Adam Fantilli: Wanted Man
An obvious sub-plot of Friday’s victory was the Irish’s attempts to diminish the younger Fantilli’s impact by any means necessary. Twice, Jeff Jackson challenged seemingly routine Fantilli hits as majors, an overt (and cynical) attempt to take the Wolverines’ talisman off the ice.
In describing Notre Dame’s attempts to defend against Fantilli, Naurato didn’t mince words, telling Pappalardo: “You know what they’re trying to do. 100% that’s what they’re trying to do. They don’t want to play against him, and that line can’t play against him, so they want him off the ice.”
Through twelve games, Fantilli is no stranger to the penalty box, but the outsized attention he received Friday clearly had little to do with his own actions and more with Jackson’s agenda. To be fair, Jackson’s job is to win games by any means necessary, and it’s not hard to understand his motivation in adopting those tactics. Nonetheless, the officials’ response left Naurato visibly laughing on the bench while listening to their explanations on more than one occasion Friday.
Fair or not, it will be worth monitoring whether other B1G foes turn to similar tactics in attempting to slow down the Nobleton, Ontario-born forward as the season progresses.
Buzzing Brindley
Freshman forward Gavin Brindley hasn’t gotten himself onto the scoresheet since an assist in the October 21st victory over Lake Superior State, but that’s not for a lack of effort. Brindley was one of the most noticeable skaters all weekend for the Wolverines.
His game resembles fellow-freshman Hallum’s, but perhaps with a bit more of a dependence on quick cuts than top-of-the-range, straight-ahead speed.
Over the weekend, sporting a visor rather than full-cage for the first time this season, Brindley was up to his usual tricks—posing problems for the Irish with his relentless speed with and without the puck.
In the third period Saturday, Brindley set up one of Michigan’s best opportunities to grab a regulation victory. Amidst a netfront scramble, the freshman showed impressive vision to send a feed out from the chaos around Bischel’s crease to Luke Hughes. Though Bischel stopped Hughes’ one-time drive, it was an impressive piece of playmaking.
If he keeps playing this way, the points will come, soon and in great numbers, for the Floridian freshman.
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