Weekend 3: Pride, Fall, a Dash of Revenge
Top-ranked Michigan splits a weekend home-and-home with Western Michigan, suffering its first loss of the season
The University of Michigan men’s ice hockey team, holders of the nation’s number one ranking, stumbled this weekend, splitting a home and home with Western Michigan. On Friday night at Yost Ice Arena, the Broncos smothered their hosts and took advantage of the hospitality shown by Michigan’s defensive zone coverage, a combination that resulted in the Wolverines’ first loss of the season. Upon traveling to Kalamazoo for a Saturday night tilt, Michigan returned the favor in the form of a 3-2 overtime victory.
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In each weekend of the season to date, the nation’s number-one ranked outfit has failed to exit the weekend unscathed, and, unfortunately for Mel Pearson’s bunch, Friday night was Michigan’s turn.
Though our telescopic lens points always at the Maize and Blue, it must be said that Pat Ferschweiler’s side posed problems that flummoxed Pearson’s Wolverines. Beginning in the game’s first period, Western established that there would be no room for Michigan to carry the puck through the neutral zone.
Whenever a Wolverine took possession of the puck, four Broncos flooded the neutral zone, leaving Michigan with little choice but to rim a dump-in around the boards. Even gifted puck movers like Power, Hughes, and Blankenburg struggled to find enough space to attempt a stretch pass, much less complete one.
All the while, Michigan’s talented forward group, one that has relished opportunities to attack one-on-one all season, struggled to forge traversable paths toward the Western net. It seemed the closest the Wolverines got to scoring chances in the first period came just from shoveling the puck in the general direction of Brandon Bussi’s crease.
With Western having dulled their attack in transition, Michigan struggled to establish a cohesive enough forecheck to turn their frequent dump-ins into credible offensive opportunities. This is not to say that individual Wolverines showed a lack of effort in pursuing the puck, quite the contrary. Instead, it speaks to how sound a wall the Broncos constructed around the dangerous areas of the ice.
Compounding that problem (or perhaps intensified by it), Michigan offered its clumsiest game of the season in terms of handling the puck. Puck touches appearing routine posed unexpected problems, problems that led to odd-man opportunities for the Broncos and stopped the Wolverines’ in their own attacking tracks.
Despite the genuine challenges Western posed, the worst part of the game was self-inflicted. Thanks to the Wolverines’ negligent coverage in their own zone, Western was able to convert a healthy, but unextraordinary quality and volume of scoring opportunities into five goals. This shortcoming was especially evident on Rhett Kingston’s goal, which gave the Broncos a 2-1 lead.
Too often this season, Michigan’s puck handling has opened the door for odd man rushes’ returning play to their end of the ice, but on Friday night, even when the Wolverines did have sufficient bodies back to defend, they could not manage to blanket Western’s forwards.
And yet, despite these errors large and small, Michigan spent much of the third period with a feasible road to victory. Sure, part of the reason that path existed had more to do with potential firepower than what they’d shown on the evening, but this Michigan group has shown the ability to score in bunches. Aspirations of a multi-goal, single-period comeback did not feel absurd.
It was in the third period that Michigan sustained its most zone time of the night, but Western held firm and added a decisive goal of their own instead of allowing the Wolverines a path back to level.
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When you enter the weekend as the nation’s top team, a Saturday night overtime win to salvage a series split doesn’t feel like revenge. That said, the ride home from Kalamazoo would feel much longer if it came after the season’s first two losses.
Having just received the jolt of the season’s first defeat, Michigan jumped out to the kind of start I expected, taking a 2-0 lead on Brendan Brisson’s sixth goal of the season (which came with the man advantage) and Nolan Moyle’s first.
Brisson’s goal emerged from a well-rehearsed power play routine from Kent Johnson and Matty Beniers to set up a one-timer.
Moyle’s off the kind of end-to-end passing sequence Michigan could not string together on Friday night.
However, the Wolverines were unable to maintain this intensity, surrendering two goals by the end of the second.
The Broncos appeared poised to steal a second victory off of Michigan when Michael Joyaux, who asked difficult questions of the Wolverines all weekend, deflected a point shot past Portillo with under two minutes to play.
After video review though, officials determined Joyaux executed his deflection with a high stick, and the goal was waived off. The horn would then sound on a scoreless third, and it was time for three-on-three overtime for the first time this year.
Beniers found the first major chance of the extra session off a backhanded feed from Johnson, but his shot struck iron rather than twine. Moments later, after taking the puck for a meander through the offensive zone, Thomas Bordeleau found Nick Blankenburg, fresh from the bench and heading straight for the net. Blankenburg fired home a short-side wrist shot, and Michigan secured their series split, a triumph of leadership that the captain confirmed the victory.
It was by no means an easy result for the Wolverines. Where Friday’s game saw repeated challenges with puck management, Saturday night’s sheet at Lawson Arena seemed to cause the Wolverines struggles with skating all game long, with multiple players appearing to trip over ruts each period. However, as we discussed last week in reference to the Ice Breaker, it is important for this young Michigan team to prove, if only to itself, that it can grind out narrow victories as comfortably as it can barnstorm its way to a touchdown advantage.
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When taking the long view on the season, it proves easy to talk yourself into Friday night’s loss as a positive for this team. Fanciful thoughts of an undefeated season can be returned to the shelf, and the team now has proof-of-concept on its own mortality.
Discussing this Michigan depth chart meant constructing in your mind’s eye an unstoppable force. It was impossible to mention that the Wolverines had four of the 2021 Draft’s top five picks without imagining the team as unbeatable.
Even knowing that off nights and defeat come for the best hockey teams, it felt as though the only way to believe this team could lose a game was to see it happen.
I have no idea whether any aspect of this psychological account of my relationship to the Wolverines would resonate with the team itself, and so I have no intention of asserting that it must.
With all that in mind, it wouldn’t take much convincing to persuade me that Michigan’s talent gave them a sense of inevitability. After all, Lake Superior State challenged the Wolverines, and the Wolverines responded with a resounding answer. Last weekend, Michigan took home two top-five wins in hostile territory. It only makes sense that they would feel some version of the certainty I mean to describe here.
Having seen that certainty proved a fiction, Michigan responded with the kind of team victory road trips demand. In the end, the loss on Friday night provided more disappointment than Saturday’s win could amend. Nonetheless, Michigan showed a resilience that will serve them well: first by establishing their intentions in the form of a two-zero lead, then in rebounding from their own mishandling of said lead to cap off a victory.
It remains to be seen if Friday’s slip up will cost the Wolverines’ their place in the polls, but I for one harbor little doubt as to who the best team in the nation is, polls be damned.
Odds and Ends:
Amidst Friday night’s disappointing effort, Michael Pastujov was a rare bright spot for the Wolverines. A more conservative pundit than I might insist that the fifth-year senior ought to have shot more, but he appeared to my eye the sole Wolverine to cause appreciable challenges throughout Friday’s game. He showed slippery hands with the nimble feet to match, and it was his creativity that caused the Broncos the most problems. Kent Johnson was not far down that list, coming alive especially in the third period. Johnson is patient in areas where other players would never dream of holding up play to create, and he often earns the reward of a one-on-one opportunity for his daring. As hockey fans, we tend to believe that it is a team’s depth players that appear best in lopsided defeats I suspect because it is not as though we expect much scoring from them in the first place. Friday night offered an interesting counter example, given that Pastujov and Johnson provided what little spark Michigan could muster, and they did so not through grit but instead inventiveness.
In a week when arrival dress codes were in the NHL headlines, Michigan asserted itself into the national conversation with players arriving via e-scooter. The scooters abound in Ann Arbor, and it was not the first time members of the team arrived at the rink in such environmentally conscious style, but it feels worth celebrating on a night when Michigan fans would sooner forget the on-ice action.