Weekend #2: Ice Breaker Championship and Statement Victories
The Wolverines steam roll third-ranked Minnesota-Duluth, then outlast number one Minnesota State to take home the Ice Breaker Championship
The Michigan Wolverines men’s ice hockey team, who entered the weekend ranked third in the nation, traveled to Amsoil Arena in Duluth, MN, where they knocked off the fifth-ranked Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs and top-ranked Minnesota State Mavericks on consecutive nights to win the world renown Ice Breaker Tournament.
* * *
On Friday night, the Wolverines fell behind 1-0 before netting five unanswered goals, knocking off their host Bulldogs by a crooked scoreline.
The inciting incident for the comeback came when Duluth forward Noah Cates sent a flying elbow into the head of captain Nick Blankenburg with about five minutes remaining in the first period. At the time of the incident, Duluth led the game 1-0 and was outshooting Michigan 13-5. They would not register another shot on goal until roughly five minutes into the second.
The officials assessed Cates a five-minute major and game misconduct. Duluth managed to hold off the Wolverines’ top power play unit for most of the major, but as time with the man advantage dwindled, Luke Hughes notched his first career collegiate goal, one-timing a puck past Bulldog goaltender Zach Stejskal off a royal road pass from Michael Pastujov.
The Wolverines settled for carrying a one-one draw into the first intermission before scoring two a piece in the final two frames to seal what ended up a lopsided victory.
The most notable of those tallies came off the stick of (surprise, surprise) the inevitable Brendan Brisson. On the play, which gave the Wolverines their first lead just over six minutes into the second period, Brisson collected an inviting seam pass from Thomas Bordeleau, pulled the puck in tight to his skates, then zipped a between-the-legs shot beyond the reach of Stejskal’s blocker.
A short-handed marker from Garrett Van Whye early in the final period, giving the Wolverines a 4-1 lead, put the game out of Duluth’s reach. The first shorty of the season for Michigan came when Van Whye intercepted an ill-advised “D-to-D” pass and earned himself a breakaway from his own blue line in. Stejskal got a piece of Van Whye’s wrister, but it wasn’t enough to keep the puck out of the net.
A pair of Matty Beniers goals, one on the power play and one at even strength, accounted for the other two scores in the 5-1 victory.
* * *
On Saturday night, Michigan earned its fourth consecutive win in match-ups with the nation’s top ranked team. They have not fallen to a national number one since a 2014 OT loss to the University of Minnesota. When this week’s polls are released, the Wolverines will ascend to the nation’s top spot themselves.
In their most competitive game of the season by some margin, the Wolverines jumped out to the game’s first lead when Nick Blankenburg cranked a one-timed slap shot from the point past Maverick goaltender Dryden McKay on the power play. It was the second goal of the weekend for the Wolverines’ second power play unit.
That lead would prove short-lived though with the Mavericks scoring twice before the horn sounded on the second, carrying a one goal advantage into the game’s last period. Before five minutes passed in the third, Bordeleau snuck from the corner toward the net for a deft deflection of a Jacob Truscott shot to level the score.
Bordeleau, whom coach Mel Pearson referred to as a “really smart, cerebral offensive player” after the game, went on to a collect the lone assist on (take a wild guess) Brendan Brisson’s game winner with just south of five minutes to play in the game. On the play, Bordeleau showed magnificent shouldering, a term coined by skills coach Darryl Belfry and explained here by Jack Han. Shouldering refers to a player’s ability to transition between or blend discrete skills. In this case, Bordeleau was able to corral a rather casual flipped clearance from Brisson and spin around his defender in a single, seamless movement. The result was a clean zone entry and odd-man rush opportunity, which Michigan fans know well tend to end in Brisson goals.
In between the Bordeleau and Brisson goals, Michigan survived one major scare off a terrible turnover from Erik Portillo behind his net. Portillo’s blunder left a yawning cage for the Mavericks, but Portillo managed to scramble back to the net front in time to clean up his own mess.
The Wolverines held off MSU to cement a victory and the tournament championship, setting up a colorful photo in front of a more Minnesota-inclined crowd.
* * *
On its face, the Ice Breaker Championship is a meaningless trophy. When I imagine this year’s Wolverines first assembly to discuss their ambitions for the season, I feel confident in my suspicion that the Ice Breaker was not at the forefront of anyone’s mind.
However, the victory, in hostile territory, constitutes a loud statement of intentions from the young-and-talented Wolverines. That the Wolverines did not enter the season as the nation’s number one team despite an unprecedented array of talent, reflects one of our most fundamental collective beliefs about sport in general and hockey in particular—that great teams must be disciplined and experienced rather than youthful and flashy.
This weekend, the Wolverines proved that despite their reliance on young stars they are more than capable of ousting two of college hockey’s premier programs. Scott Sandelin’s Duluth side, 2018 and 2019 national champions, represent the nation’s model program. They are everything we believe an elite hockey team must be, and fresh-faced Michigan managed to travel to their home rink and dominate them, showing the same ability to carve through them with incisive passes that they had against Bowling Green and Lake Superior State.
The top-ranked Mavericks provided Michigan with its most trying test of the season to date. Michigan could not roll over the Mavericks in a flurry of dizzying skill and speed and instead showed a different dimension to their game—the ability to play a disciplined, collective, grinding style and take control of a back-and-forth contest away from Yost (albeit with more than a little flash mixed in).
These Wolverines may be young but consider this weekend’s results their warning to the rest of the nation: despite their youth, they are here not just to dazzle but to dominate and win. As Juwan Howard noted via Twitter last night, there is reason to suspect last night’s celebratory photo won’t be the last of its kind this year.
Odds and Ends:
In the spirit of facing the season’s toughest tests, Erik Portillo delivered his most impressive performances of the young season this weekend in Duluth. As described above, his most notable save came from a problem he caused, but beyond that hiccup and recovery, Portillo faced quality chances in a way Lake Superior State and Bowling Green couldn’t muster, and he rose to the occasion. If goaltending was one of the major questions facing this season’s squad following the graduation of Strauss Mann, Portillo has provided a convincing answer thus far.
Mel Pearson tinkered a bit with his lineup a bit this weekend with Dylan Duke, Mark Estapa, and Ethan Edwards replacing Jay Kearney, Eric Ciccolini, and Keaton Pehrson in the Saturday night match up, despite the easy win over Duluth. Perhaps more intriguingly, Pearson has developed a quirk of listing his lines in an order that does not seem to square with their respective talents and usages. On Friday night, Jimmy Lambert’s line was listed first, followed by Van Whye’s, with Bordeleau’s and Beniers’ bringing up the rear. On Saturday, Lambert’s fell to fourth on the official line up, but Van Whye’s was still listed ahead of Bordeleau’s and Beniers’. I would be curious to hear more from Pearson on why he writes out the lines this way, though it is a purely academic distinction.
Friday night was an especially fun one for the Hughes family. In addition to Luke’s first collegiate goal, eldest brother and Michigan alum Quinn notched an assist in the Vancouver Canucks victory over the Philadelphia Flyers. Meanwhile, middle brother Jack scored a pair including the OT winner in the Devils’ victory over the Chicago Blackhawks. Jack punctuated his goal with a phenomenal stick toss into the rowdy Prudential Center crowd.