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pairwise

Michigan Hockey Rooting Guide: Week 22

By NastyIsland — February 23rd, 2018 at 11:00 AM — 14 comments
Filed under:
  • arizona state
  • big ten tournament
  • hockey
  • pairwise
  • pairwise ranking
  • rooting guide
  • seedwatch

ASUPresser

Breaking News: Herm Edwards is also Arizona State’s hockey coach* [AZCentral.com]

*He isn't, but does he know that?

Arizona State Preview

 

PWR

Corsi

PP%

PK%

Players Drafted

Skaters >.75 PPG

GAA

Save%

Michigan

11th

17th

15%

77%

7

2: Marody, Calderone

2.61 (Lavigne)

.912 (Lavigne)

Arizona State

55th

56th

12%

82%

0

1: Pasichnuk (.75)

3.44 (Daccord)

.910 (Daccord)

Things Michigan Should Try to Do Against Arizona State:

1.Fix the PP. Michigan's power play is a paltry 46th in the country. At some point, the Wolverines are going to face a team that limits their chances (a la OSU), and they're going to need to get man-advantage goals. This is the perfect time to work on it. The Sun Devils average 16+ minutes/game in the penalty box. They have an average kill rate. Michigan should have some power-play opportunities this weekend. They may want to try a few new wrinkles.

2. Be More Aggressive on the PK. So, also stay out of the box, but if you must take penalties, maybe use these chances to be more active in pressing the puck. Michigan has been dreadful on the penalty kill all season, and ASU has an anemic power play at 12%. Use this time to practice killing penalties instead of just surviving them.

3. Bury this team. This is not a good hockey team. Look at almost any statistic or metric and they're middling at best, bottom-end at worst. ASU's top scorer is a defenseman. They have two road wins (over Holy Cross and...Michigan Tech?). They've also been bombed by Penn State, Boston University, and Providence. Michigan has done the hard work (sweeping ND) and clawed back to an at-large bid. They need to finish off this run and set up a Big Ten Tournament where they're playing for a seed line instead of barely qualifying.

Last Thoughts. I'm excited to see ASU. They're a new team to D1 college hockey, and this is their first trip to Yost. Part of the fun of college sports is seeing a bunch of different teams in non-conference play. I'd never seen Vermont before they came to Yost this past Fall.  Hopefully, the Sun Devils can continue to build a program and become a nationally competitive team...after this weekend, of course.

[After THE JUMP: surveying the B1G landscape, who to root for around the country, and...Skip-Bo?]

Read more »
  • 14 comments

Tech Effect

By Brian — February 20th, 2018 at 1:23 PM — 44 comments
Filed under:
  • game columns
  • hockey
  • mel pearson
  • pairwise
  • tony calderone

2/16/2018 – Michigan 4, Notre Dame 2 – 15-13-3, 10-10-3 Big Ten
2/18/2018 – Michigan 1, Notre Dame 0 – 16-13-3, 11-10-3 Big Ten

38542876140_cb8a91f119_z

[James Coller]

About halfway through the third period on Sunday I started to wonder about 1-0 victories, specifically how long it had been since Michigan had made one lousy goal stand up. (ENGs do not count for our reckoning.) I probably should not have done that. It's the kind of thinking you deeply regret when a puck passes behind the goaltender and still deeply regret even when it miraculously squirts out the other side. I still thought it, though. It seemed plausible Michigan would accomplish this thing.

The answer turns out to be shockingly recent: on February 15th of last year Zach Nagelvoort had a 42-save shutout as Michigan squeezed by OSU 1-0 thanks to a Nick Pastujov goal. But the larger wonderment still stands, I think, because you have to go all the way back to the 2011 Life As A Vole national semifinal against North Dakota to hit the next one.

Those games were similar in that both featured Michigan scoring a weird early goal and then hanging on for dear life. They got outshot 2 to 1 in both, and at no point until the final buzzer or blessed Scooter Vaughn empty net goal did victory seem probable. I know this about the 2011 North Dakota game because I remember every terrifying moment of the third period. I know this about last year's Ohio State game, which I probably did not watch, because I saw other games that hockey team played. At no point during either game did anyone wonder about 1-0 victories, because clearly this would not be a 1-0 game.

So they are very different than Sunday's 1-0 win against then-#1 Notre Dame, in which Michigan outshot the Irish by a large margin 5x5. Two power plays and another two minutes of frantic face-clenching action after ND pulled their goalie got ND to near-parity, but not quite, and when the buzzer sounded Michigan had finished its four games against the Big Ten's best team having outplayed them everywhere except their penalty kill. And on Sunday they'd done it in a very un-Michigan way: by matching Notre Dame's relentless discipline.

Each team had one opportunity at a three on two, sort of. Depending on how you want to classify odd-man rushes, it might have been zero. Notre Dame's didn't even get inside the Michigan blue line. I don't think I've ever seen Michigan have a game where they don't give up an odd-man rush. Maybe it's happened against a tomato can here and there, but probably not. The last five or so years of Michigan hockey has been about trying to outscore your mistakes, which they managed to do when they the Connor-Motte-Compher line and at no other point.

It's taken a while for new-era Michigan to work past the recent chaos. Since resuming in January, it appears they have. They're 8-5-1 against a slate of opponents who—except for Michigan State—are all either in the tournament or plausibly on the bubble. That's not the greatest run in the history of hockey; it has been good enough to take them from the deep 20s to a three seed. Expecting more would be insane. Just last year Michigan was hovering amongst the very worst teams in college hockey in Corsi...

image

white included to demonstrate that there ain't no more teams

...and this year they're a point or two above average. This is a one year turnaround that matches what Mel did when he arrived at Michigan Tech. Tantalizingly, he had another gear from there.

Tech won 13 games the next year and 14 in 2013-14, the first year of college hockey's new landscape. This alone is impressive in the modern context of Tech hockey; that's the first time Tech had won double-digit games since Bob Mancini did it from 1993 to 1996.

That alone would not be impressive enough to grab the Michigan job, but then Pearson had the following three seasons:

  • 29-10-2, at-large bid to tourney as #2 seed, #5 ES Corsi*
  • 23-9-5, WCHA regular season champs, #3 ES Corsi
  • 23-15-7, WCHA playoff champs, NCAA bid, #3 ES Corsi

Unless Michigan hits the Jack Hughes jackpot, Michigan's not going to have another Connor or Larkin for a couple years here. The recruiting pipeline dried up a little deep into the Red era, so they'll have to make do with guys who grind their way up the ranks year by year, like Tony Calderone. It's been tough for Michigan to win with just those guys of late; transcendent talent was needed, and even then it wasn't always enough.

There's no transcendent talent this year. Even Quinn Hughes is a year away from being able to tell when he should plunder the opposition crease and when he should stay back. Michigan scores goals like the one lousy one they made stand up on Sunday: forcing a defensive zone turnover from the opposition and flinging it in over the goalie's shoulder before the defense can re-set. But it works, because they can go a whole game without giving up an odd man rush. For anyone who watched the last few years of Michigan hockey that sounds like a 180 on a dime in a leaky battleship.

Michigan looks ahead of schedule in year one, headed for a wide-open tourney with a couple of recent one-seed Ws painted on its nose cone. It turns out that Mel Pearson was exactly the right guy. Not because he's been in Ann Arbor for 30 years already. Because he'd already walked into a reclamation project with a power washer and some 20-year-olds.

PAIRWISE SECTION

I said last week that sweeping ND was close to a lock at-large, and whatever particularly devastating combination of events would have made that statement untrue have not come to pass. CHN just ran its Pairwise Predictor—20k Monte Carlo simulations of the rest of the season—and Michigan comes out with a 95% chance of a bid, and a two-thirds chance to get a 3 seed or better.

That doesn't mean this weekend's series doesn't matter. Those projections weight games according to KRACH, the statheads' preferred college hockey ranking system, and one of the main reasons Michigan is in near-lock territory is because that system gives Michigan an 82% chance to win any particular game against Arizona State. Splitting this weekend puts Michigan back down in the danger zone:

image

1-1 this weekend puts Michigan at 13 or 14, most likely

Dave pointed out on the podcast that this year is ripe for bid steals because most of the top spots in the Pairwise are NCHC or Big Ten teams. Providence and Northeastern are the only HE teams currently in the tourney; BC and BU collectively have a ~34% chance to steal a Hockey East Bid. Cornell and Clarkson are the only ECAC teams in at-large spots. CHN gives those two teams a whopping 79% shot at winning the playoff title, but if Cornell does go down a bid steal is likely. Minnesota State is the only WCHA team currently in the field; that's another 38% shot at a steal.

It is possible for Michigan to fall to 14 if they sweep Arizona State and then get swept in the first round of the playoffs by a decent PSU or Wisconsin team, and at that point they'd be vulnerable if two bids get stolen. They are not entirely out of the woods but they'd have to blow it pretty hard to even put themselves in a spot where an odd combination of results booted them.

This weekend is one for focus, though.

  • 44 comments

Hockey Bracketology Update!

By Brian — February 12th, 2018 at 1:16 PM — 11 comments
Filed under:
  • hockey
  • pairwise

28425482749_c14a8406cc_z

hope you guys have an iron D, because the ride is bumpy [Bill Rapai]

Since the last time we checked, Michigan was swept by OSU, split with Wisconsin, and took an old-fashioned three point weekend from MSU. This has moved them up to #14 in the Pairwise, which is probably 50/50 to be in. If this sounds better than those results justify, well, there's bad news:

image

That's the current RPI, which is a 100% proxy for PWR for teams Michigan does not play. There's a fairly significant  gap between Michigan and #13 WMU, and an incredibly narrow one down to #17 PSU. Their upward mobility is limited, and even remaining in the same spot might be tricky.

Or at least it would be if not for this weekend's looming series. Michigan has a home and home against #2 Notre Dame, which is a massive opportunity. While splitting that series doesn't move Michigan up it does solidify their position, and put them in a spot where sweeping Arizona State (7-18-5 and #56 in the RPI) moves them up to 11th in PWR*. Getting both shoots Michigan up to 8th(!).

Getting that split is the tricky part. ND is #2 for a reason. But Michigan played ND dead even earlier in the year, losing a pair of 2-1 games in which they outshot, out-Corsi'd, and out-housed the Irish. Getting one of two this weekend is very possible, and hugely important.

The conference tournament will also impact Michigan significantly, and unlike the old CCHA days there are few tomato cans to draw. ND has won the conference and gets a first round bye; OSU is all but locked into the #2 spot. Michigan currently stands third, three points in front of Minnesota and four in front of Wisconsin. Minnesota has two games in hand. Their finishing stretches:

  • Minnesota: home series against OSU, road series against PSU.
  • Wisconsin: road series against OSU.

Minnesota is probably going to get the 4 points they need to pass Michigan—which holds the tiebreaker—and Wisconsin is not going to get their five, leading to a first round series at Yost against the Badgers. This would be a massive swing series. Assuming a sweep versus Arizona State (because there's no point in doing this if they don't), outcomes:

  • Split with ND, sweep Wisconsin: #8
  • Swept by ND, sweep Wisconsin: #14
  • Split with ND, 2-1 vs Wisconsin: #11
  • Split with ND, 1-2 vs Wisconsin: #14
  • Swept by ND, 2-1 vs Wisconsin: #15
  • Swept by ND, 1-2 vs Wisconsin: out
  • Split/swept vs ND, 0-2 vs Wisconsin: out
  • Sweep ND, 0-2 vs Wisconsin: #13.

A sweep this weekend puts Michigan in a spot where sweeping one of the worst teams in the country is a near-lock at large. A split versus ND means any series win in the first round of the playoffs is probably good enough. Getting swept this weekend means Michigan will be in the danger zone short of an autobid.

Have fun storming the castle!

*[This is a parallel universe where only Michigan plays games.]

  • 11 comments

In With A Chance

By Brian — January 22nd, 2018 at 12:57 PM — 24 comments
Filed under:
  • game columns
  • hockey
  • pairwise
  • penn state

1/19/2018 – Michigan 4, Penn State 0, 11-10-2, 6-7-2 Big Ten
1/20/2018 – Michigan 3, Penn State 2, 12-10-2, 7-7-2 Big Ten

39079535784_fd9df3be97_z

incoming [James Coller]

Here's a weird graph.

image

That's Michigan hockey's Pairwise ranking. For those who may have forgotten this weird thing about college hockey, the Pairwise is a computer ranking that selects and seeds the NCAA hockey tournament. Yeah, man, the robots took over like 20 years ago and hockey is fine with it.

This graph shows Michigan leaping from the mid-20s in that ranking to 15th last weekend. There are 16 teams in the tournament and one conference that will definitely occupy a spot with an otherwise-out auto-bid team. So... yeah. They'd be in if they got lucky with conference tournaments.

Hockey's made some tweaks that make some games more valuable than others but not even I, a person who knows what the Pairwise is and can give you its life history, believed that an 8-10-2 Michigan team could haul its ass from "not even on the bubble" to "maybe in the tournament" with one weekend sweep against Minnesota. Nor did I expect a sweep against another bubble team, Penn State, to do nothing further. I guess Michigan consolidated its gains?

Anyway, this caught me off guard. I hadn't even looked at the Pairwise all year since there seemed to be no reason to. I'd been interpreting the hockey team in front of me as a try-hard, much-improved outfit that had too far to go in one season. This weekend I saw... basically that, but now with a tourney bid at stake. Against the rootinest, tootinest, shootinest team in all the land. Penn State.

25947007358_6c2772aa04_z

[Bill Rapai]

----------------------------------------------------

If there were seven seals that had to open before last year's Michigan Hockey Apocalypse, #2 or #3 was A Penn State Program The Same Age As My Son, Who Regularly Has To Be Told Not To Bite People, Gives Michigan The Business. Year 1 PSU went 3-2 against Michigan despite winning just five other games all season and knocked Michigan out of the tourney with a two OT win in the conference tourney. Year 2 PSU went 3-1.

Adding insult to injury, these Penn State teams played like Red Berenson teams, zipping up and down the ice pell-mell while trying to score goals with skill, if skill would do, or sheer erosion if it wouldn't. Penn State was (and is) prone to exploding into bits because they don't quite have the talent to do what they want to do, but from the drop they seemed to be a version of Michigan on the rise instead of the decline.

Penn State's still Penn State. At certain points their sheer aggression overwhelms. Michigan got out of the gate slow on Friday and shots were 9-3 PSU despite a Michigan power play ten minutes in. One particular shift on Saturday saw the Slaker line so gassed they couldn't even ice the puck; they ate two solid minutes of desperate defensive zone time. Lavigne got the biggest cheer of the night for swallowing a puck directly in his chest to end this shift.

That shift was the second half of the Saturday game writ large. Michigan staked itself to a 2-0 lead and seemed to have the much better chances through 30 minutes even if a bunch of point shots had PSU ahead in shots on goal. Dave had Michigan with an advantage on shots in the "house" through 20, and then the roof caved in.

The rest of the game was spent with Penn State even more amped up than they usually are. The last ten minutes of the second period was nonstop PSU attacking, with the defensemen pinching on almost literally everything. Whenever Michigan broke PSU's line they had a shot at an odd-man rush that they couldn't quite put together. (A major reason why: Yost's ice still sucks even after they redid the plant.) Michigan struggled to cope in the third, with PSU launching 31 shot attempts, almost half of them from the house.

Lavigne stood tall; puck luck bit PSU. And then Penn State pulled the goalie with three minutes left. That was finally it. PSU scored twice and made the final minute a sphincter test. They lost because Michigan did pay off on one of the opportunities PSU's hyper-aggression provided, when Dakota Raabe scored the first goal of his career on a breakaway.

If that didn't feel too different than previous PSU games, the Friday game did. Michigan outshot and significantly outchanced PSU after the rough start; that 4-0 win probably should have been 4-2 or 4-1, but it was not that scramble to hold on Saturday.

That's the team: working for it. Getting there. Still liable to get clonked. But in it. For the duration.

DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK, CALL IT THE PAIRWISE STATUS

Hey, pairwise is relevant again! Hooray. I used to have to eyeball this stuff but there is now an excellent site called College Hockey Ranked that plays out the various scenarios over and over again and spits out graphs. Here's Michigan's graph:

image

To (probably) be in position for an at-large when conference tourney play starts Michigan needs to go 6-4 down the stretch. That would be about a 75% shot at the #13 spot, which is safe in all but the most apocalyptic bid-stealing scenarios. At 6-4 they would probably have to win their first round series to feel good about securing the bid. 7-3 would be pretty secure. 8-2 and they'd be close to 100% safe, but that's a tall, tall order.

Because college hockey's RPI gives you bonuses for beating highly-ranked teams and weights a road W 50% more than a home win, the most important games left by far are this weekend's series at OSU (#6 PWR) and the ND (#1 PWR) home and home, especially the road half of it. Even a split this weekend is pretty good.

Since the Pairwise is now identical to RPI unless head to head intervenes, with limited exceptions anything that's good for Michigan's RPI is good for their pairwise. The main thing to root for is for Michigan's opponents in the top 20 to do well unless there's a direct conflict.

This means you're in favor of Minnesota winning games—Michigan has already banked 3 Ws against them. Penn State is a little trickier because they still manage to win their comparison with Michigan because their 3-1 H2H deficit is made up for by their better RPI and Common Opponents, and then RPI breaks the tie. Your pecking order in conference:

  1. Minnesota—Gophers literally cannot win a comparison with M so win away, Goldy. This may change if M and Minnesota are specifically competing for a last at large spot late. For now, go Gophers.
  2. OSU/ND—both of these teams are big quality win bonuses waiting to happen if Michigan can pull games off of them in their upcoming series, and are so far ahead of Michigan that there's no way Michigan could win a comparison with them.
  3. MSU—irrelevant.
  4. PSU—Quality win bonus, on the one hand, bubble team on the other. Michigan can win or lose this comparison based on PSU does, and their QWB isn't huge.
  5. Wisconsin. Currently safely out but plays their way on to the bubble with 5 wins in their last 8.

Nonconference teams you hate because they're on the bubble are Providence, UNO, Northeastern, Harvard, BGSU, Northern Michigan, Miami, and BC, but this far out it's about 90% Michigan and 10% how others play. This is especially true because the league has four bubble teams (M, Minnesota, PSU, and Wisconsin). If they finish third in the league they're probably good.

  • 24 comments

Unverified Voracity Isn't Saying That It's Zombie Apocalypse Time, But…

By Brian — February 17th, 2016 at 5:13 PM — 135 comments
Filed under:
  • austin davis
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  • zombie apocalypse

Football Booklet Cover

IT'S MADE OF PAPER UNKNOWN TO MANKIND. The Daily has a book that compiles all their Harbaugh stuff, Harbaugh-related stuff, and Harbaugh-tangential stuff from the past year. You can order it for $5 plus shipping, or skip the shipping and pick it up from the Student Publications building on Maynard. Proceeds help the Daily keep running so they can continue to pump out epic features. Someone's got to write COLUMNS that don't make you want to die.

If this is the start of the zombie apocalypse I'm going to be upset. Gotta give me at least five years of Harbaugh before the end of the world.

The Ross Academic Center is being quarantined pic.twitter.com/Cp0L7jFiAr

— Jason Rubinstein (@jrubinstein4) February 17, 2016

Apparently most of the swimming and diving team is sick and they're checking the pool for something that turns you into a flesh-eating, non-verbal lumbering horror. Sounds like they should check the press box, not the pool.

Marge_vs._the_Monorail_(promo_card)monorailcolorWATER-410x600

Also please not before the MONORAIL. True story: one of the first Every Three Weekly articles ever was about an outlandish plan to join Central Campus to North Campus with a monorail. (In it, Tom Goss projected it would make money thanks to monorailgoblue.com, because Michigan had just launched mgoblue.com. Also it was on paper. I am old.) Well, IT'S HAPPENING DOT MONORAIL:

Schlissel, city envision monorail to unite North and Central campuses

Tuesday, University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel reintroduced the idea of creating a rapid transit system between Central and North Campuses, a project that has essentially been dormant since 2013.

Would I ride this just to ride it? Definitely. Let's put our town on the map.

Yes, thank you sane person. Man, has it been hard to keep the fisk in the garage after the latest and dumbest hot take explosion about Harbaugh. The main reason I haven't opened both barrels is indecision about whether I should go after Mitch Albom, Drew Sharp, or Tony Barnhart, all of whom put the literary equivalent of Skyline chili on the internet in response to Harbaugh's plan to visit IMG. Nothing has been as dumb as this, though:

image

I mean… I can't put it past a guy whose version of the "Art of the Deal" will be titled "Chasing Rutgers," but cumong man. Put down the Confederate flag bong and sober up.

I may break down pretty soon here and call someone horseface, but for now Andy Staples is keeping me sane:

The Power Five leagues, including Sankey's SEC, got autonomy legislation passed so they could loosen some restrictions that other Division I schools wanted to keep tight. The new attitude in major college sports was supposed to be this: If you want to do it, do it. If you don't, don't. That lasted until several millionaire coaches got mad at another millionaire coach trying to mitigate their competitive advantage.

I'm so so done with being Meatloaf The Football Program: I'll do anything to win but I won't do that. Staples does mention that Harbaugh getting up in his players' spring break might come up during the infinite lawsuits the NCAA is fighting, but since a bunch of spring sports already do that it's likely a moot point. And as I always point out, Michigan fans should be hoping amateurism dies swiftly and comprehensively for the same reason the Yankees don't want a salary cap. I don't think Harbaugh is consciously attempting to point out the hypocrisy, but I'd support him if he was.

Meanwhile in attempts to negative recruit based on the above. Michael Dwumfour opens up about his recruitment process, detailing an ill-fated Penn State trip:

The Penn State coaching staff knew the competition it was up against. According to Dwumfour, the Lions poked fun at Jim Harbaugh’s recruiting techniques.

That didn’t sit well.

“When I was at Penn State, I heard jokes about Harbaugh and stuff like that,” Dwumfour said. “In the back of my head, I’m thinking ‘What he’s doing is working, obviously. Instead of criticizing him, you might want to take some of his techniques to try and help yourself out and get some recruits.’”

The prospect of Penn State coaches making fun of Harbaugh's sleepovers boggles the mind, but I put nothing that is bogglingly dumb past James Franklin.

Status of Bush the elder. Devin Bush Sr was long rumored to be on the verge of a Michigan job, something that he was openly hoping for in an interview with Brandon Brown:

“For me, if I was to get an opportunity, because I would love to coach at the next level, I never wanted to put it out there because I didn’t want to move my kids while they were in high school. If you get into that world you could be moving every eight to ten months. Once my son graduated, now I would be open for an opportunity because I don’t have to worry about moving kids, it’s just my wife and I.”

That sounds like a guy who is waiting for the Ts to get crossed and Is dotted. And now that Michigan's down Greg Jackson they might look at him for that job as well; Bush's profile isn't that far away from Jackson's: former NFL safety, little high-level experience. Harbaugh grabbed Jackson when he was an assistant DBs coach with Wisconsin.

Who doesn't these days? Tom Brady's agent wants to blow up the NCAA, and he's likely correct about how the edifice comes tumbling down:

This is the promise of [Don] Yee's advocacy. He is a football insider with firsthand knowledge of how a business works and the credibility to make people listen. He is exhausted, he says, by talk without much action and has reached the point of arguing for revolution: Blow up the system. Start over. Build anew. "This generation of players has more tools at its disposal than any other to be heard and to organize," he says. "If they adopted a Twitter hashtag of #disruptthefinalfour for the NCAA tournament, they would at least start a discussion. And significant change typically happens through some discussion that is too large to ignore."

All it would take is two basketball teams deciding to delay a Final Four game and amateurism is all over but the shouting. They don't even have to refuse to play. All they have to do is agree to start the game 15 minutes late, and there will be no illusions as to where the power actually resides. Yee:

"Nothing will change for the players unless they take the responsibility of becoming something more than willing victims to this system," Yee says. "At some point, you have to look in the mirror and ask yourself, 'Who am I? What am I doing? What's going on, and what am I doing about it?' These players, they have all the power -- they simply don't realize it."

That is correct. Someone's going to be the NCAA's Curt Flood, and pretty soon. Related: Sonny Vaccaro talks to the NYT, says the same things Vaccaro usually does.

I guess he's a Walverine. Michigan fans have this odd conversation about whether it's okay to be a Michigan fan without having attended the school. They do this largely because MSU fans are livid that nobody who doesn't go to MSU gives a damn about the Spartans and project this anger all around them. Meanwhile 95% of Alabamans are either Auburn or Alabama fans, and… uh… let's just stipulate that more than 5% of Alabamans do not have a degree from either institution. (Ace, at home, just screamed "BAN BOOKLARNIN'" again.)

It is good to have Michigan fans scattered about with no other connection to the school. One of them just joined the recruiting class:

“Honestly I’ve been a Michigan fan since I was little,” [Dylan] McCaffrey said. “My grandma is a big Michigan fan. She has a house about 40 minutes away [from Ann Arbor], so I don’t know why, but I just ended up loving them. I could’ve always seen myself going there, and in the end I just went back to how I felt about Michigan as a kid.”

Another person who was a Michigan fan for no particular reason: Jabrill Peppers. Let all who want to root for winged helmets do so irrespective of their degrees, and let MSU fans stew about it.

More on "floor seats". Everyone hated it. Especially people who have televisions. ESPN trotted out some poor damn spokesperson, who immediately torpedoed any sympathy I might have for her with a statement so inane it bordered on Dave Brandon Hire:

ESPN was built on trying new things and taking risks, and tonight is just another example of that.

ESPN was built on showing people athletics contests, not utterly failing to do so.

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[Eric Upchurch]

Austin Davis is looking rather different these days. Many people thought taking Davis was questionable at best when Michigan did, and it is going to be strange next year when Michigan has up to six post players on the roster (Doyle, Donnal, Wagner, Wilson, Davis, and Jon Teske). But Davis has done everything he can to prep himself:

635908046831956828-AUSTIN-020816-KD-12[1]While he was 6-10 a year ago, he was also 265 pounds. Today he is a svelte 235 and his game has benefited immeasurably.

“The big thing is I changed my diet around; I changed it pretty drastically,” he said. “And then I got on a new weight program.” …

A year ago, Davis was more of a plodder as he moved up and down the court. His teammates often had to wait for him to join them before they could run their offense.

That, more than anything, is why no major college offered him a scholarship — and U-M coach John Beilein made Davis aware of that fact.

“We had a directive,” said Eric Davis, Austin’s dad. “Coach Beilein really wanted to see him start moving better and running the court better.”

He has, and he now looks like a college post. Whether he'll still look like one in college is unknown; his 79% shooting percentage is indicative of both his talent and his competition level.

Who runs Big Ten hockey? The equivalent of Tom Anastos. Tom Anastos, hockey coach, not Tom Anastos, CCHA commissioner. Because Anastos was all right at the latter before being thrust into a role he had no frame of reference for. Ditto the folks running Big Ten hockey:

“Coming from a non-hockey background, it’s kind of hard for me to imagine a fan in the state of Minnesota who wouldn’t be excited to see a Michigan or a Michigan State come in to play,” he said. “I recognize and acknowledge that significant rivalries developed over the years in the previous leagues, and that’s fine."

Minnesota fans did not like this interview with Brad Traviolia, not one bit. I'm not much of a fan either. Nobody comes to the Big Ten hockey tournament because most fans are very far away from said tournament no matter where it is.

There is no possible solution to this problem. A neutral site Big Ten tournament is never going to draw. I have had season tickets for a decade now and I have no plans to ever go to a neutral site Big Ten Tournament, because that product sucks. It sucks being in a big empty building where hockey is going on. I am barely willing to put up with it for an NCAA tournament game. A Big Ten tourney where everyone makes it in doesn't even come close to moving the needle.

The only solution is to go to series on home ice, which four of the six schools should support since they have dedicated rinks. If Wisconsin or Ohio State don't want to host because of high school sports, they don't have to. Quit letting two schools that clearly don't care about hockey dictate to the 3.5 that do.

Hockey tourney status: don't collapse. Jim Dahl's excellent Pairwise projection site is reaching peak utility as hockey comes down the stretch here. Michigan is in barring a spectacular collapse:

michigan

Even 2-5 likely sees them sitting in a pretty secure at-large spot, though they'd definitely want to win a game in the Big Ten tournament. Three wins and they would be all but a lock going into that tourney unless results elsewhere conspired against them; 4-3 and they're 100% in.

A one seed would require Michigan to absolutely sprint down the stretch; even a 6-1 finish most likely sees them still a 2 going into the BTT.

I have no idea how good this goalie is. The Daily's Jason Rubinstein on Michigan's poor, bombarded goalie:

After three and a half years, Racine is playing the best hockey he ever has in a Michigan uniform. Berenson named him the team’s bona fide starter more than three months ago. For his last six games, he boasts a .931 save percentage, a career high for any stretch over five games that he has played.

And this past weekend, he was the only reason Michigan managed to escape Madison with five points, rather than three. In Saturday’s contest against Wisconsin, the Wolverines won in a shootout, despite surrendering four goals.

“You should’ve seen him at Wisconsin,” Berenson said. “He stood on his head, and we had no business winning the game based on the chances we gave up.

“That was his best game of the year.”

This has got to be the strangest year for hockey since I've been paying attention. They give up four goals to a very bad Wisconsin team only because their goalie stands on his head; they are on pace for a two-seed.

Etc.: Barry Alvarez apologizes for saying innocuous, accurate thing about UW hockey. Bob Miller on incoming goalie Jack LaFontaine. Jim Harbaugh adopts a kitten. PWO Anthony Kay profiled. Incoming hockeyist Nick Pastujov also profiled.

  • 135 comments

Indiana Or Baylor

By Brian — January 18th, 2016 at 4:09 PM — 37 comments
Filed under:
  • #chaoshockey
  • cutler martin
  • game columns
  • hockey
  • ohio state
  • pairwise

1/15/2016 – Michigan 5, Ohio State 5 (OT) – 13-3-4, 4-1-2 Big Ten
1/18/2016 – Michigan 8, Ohio State 6 – 14-3-4, 5-1-2 Big Ten

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[Bill Rapai]

I can't do better describing the alternating waves of euphoria and loathing this hockey season imposes on the fan than this guy who asked a question on twitter:

@mgoblog if this were football would Michigan be Baylor or Indiana?

— Grant Williams (@g_williams_1999) January 18, 2016

I was feeling pretty Indiana as Michigan looked set to drop Sunday's game. Three minutes later I was feeling pretty Baylor as 3-5 turned into 6-5.

The scoreline is everything. If you're up this is one of the most electric Michigan offenses since Brendan Morrison. If you're down this is just another late Berenson team that waddles around wasting its talent with mind-bending defensive breakdowns. Last weekend was a high-amplitude sine wave oscillating from one state to the other.

In the aftermath of an okay weekend we can see that both things are true. Michigan's top line of Motte-Compher-Connor is putting up numbers Michigan hasn't seen since Red's hair was actually red. Connor (18-18-36) is second nationally in PPG. Compher (7-25-32) is fifth. Motte (18-10-28) is tied for thirteenth. Motte and Connor are tied for the national lead in goals per game. If this keeps up someone is going to have to dig through the history books to see where those guys stack up.

Meanwhile someone tweeted out that it was "incredible" that Steve Racine had only given up five goals, and was entirely correct.

The spray chart on Racine that period. Incredible he's only given up 5 on 40 shots. #MichiganHockey #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/Vo9wB6JCK3

— Jeremy Parks (@j_mitchell47) January 17, 2016

That is one period! One period of hockey on skates and everything! Michigan skates five NHL draft picks on defense! Steve Racine has a .906 save percentage and he's kind of a hero!

Michigan was outshot 27-16 in that second period, fell behind by two goals, and proceeded to not allow Ohio State a shot until they had run off four consecutive goals in the first ten minutes of the third. So I dunno man.

So far they've managed to make it work, and as the season progresses their schedule looks less and less like an albatross. Each game Dartmouth wins both helps Michigan's tourney chances and slightly reframes how impressive Michigan's record is. With everything going right—about which more later—Michigan has a very good record against a reasonable schedule. Their RPI SOS is 20th and the rest of the season is split 50/50 between good teams and bad.

They're probably going to make it. Unless they don't. During the second intermission last night I was sure they weren't. I mean, anything can happen at any time. But they've built themselves a buffer here, and seem to be outracing their mistakes. Big Twelve Hockey is now a thing, and it lives in Ann Arbor.

Get in and anything can happen. This used to be a curse; now it feels like hope. Michigan switches between behemoth and bust multiple times a weekend. Indiana or Baylor? Ask again later.

Bullets

Why did that even happen? For all the rivalry stuff that gets tossed around, OSU games aren't unusually chippy most of the time. The 8-6 series finisher was exceptionally clean throughout, largely because everybody was too busy scoring to hit people. Then all hell breaks loose in the aftermath, including an ugly incident where Cutler Martin punched a defenseless guy on the ice in full view of the world:

Last night's @umichhockey vs. Ohio post game: Just when Kearney thinks it's over, Martin says it's not. pic.twitter.com/QOFmV8ZKX8

— Bill Rapai (@BRapai) January 18, 2016

I can't imagine Martin is going to be available for an important Penn State series after that. There was a bunch of other extracurriculars that might ensnare another player or two as well. All of it came seemingly out of nowhere.

I don't know what to make of the defense. When you're as bad as Michigan was this weekend it's not anything that is traceable to one player, or even the defense corps as a whole. Michigan has breakdowns all game every game from wingers, centers, and defensemen. I kind of thought things were getting fixed during the MSU series, but that was probably just MSU being very bad at hockey.

I do wish we'd held on to Andrew Copp. In retrospect Larkin was never going to stick around since he's an NHL all-star. Copp also went direct to the NHL but has 4 points in 41 games; his defensive abilities would be very welcome on this team.

OSU does not feel like a bad team. The contrast between OSU and MSU couldn't have been greater despite their similar records. Michigan spent half of the Friday game unable to get a clean zone exit because of the OSU forecheck. The Buckeyes are also super aggressive on penalty kills. They made a lot of mistakes in an attempt to control the game; contrast that with MSU's incredibly passive style. One of those styles has upside.

For big stretches of both games OSU took the game to Michigan; Michigan fought back and tilted the ice the other way after settling down and devising adjustments to what OSU was doing. The Buckeyes are very young this year; if they finish the year as strongly as they've played over the last month they could be a team to keep an eye on next year.

Man, Dan Dickerson is good. I'm not really a baseball person but I've heard bits and pieces of Tigers games for years because I'm often tuned to WTKA. Dickerson is their play by play guy, and while he's good it doesn't leap out at you because baseball is a slow, leisurely sport. Dickerson comes off as a very professional but standard baseball guy.

Hearing him do the games this weekend was a revelation. He was outstanding at a completely different variety of sport, one with a ton of things happening one after the other.

Here is a thought: Michigan needs a real play by play guy. Jim Brandstatter is a miscast color guy and I think everyone knows it; Michigan should add Dickerson to the booth. September might be tough but making it work would be good for everyone.

I thought Manny Legace was also good. He does the thing that goalies (in any sport) do where they focus a bit too much on the guy between the pipes, but he had a lot of interesting technical hockey things he related intelligibly.

Pairwise check

A shootout doesn't matter to the pairwise so Michigan gets a win and a tie out of the weekend. Michigan slides up to 7th in the rankings. I am pleasantly surprised by this. I thought it would be tough for Michigan to move up much unless they had good weekends against PSU and Minnesota.

Why is this less grim than I was projecting early in the season?

  • OSU won its tourney. Wins over BC and Cornell (8-0!) are inexplicable. They also give OSU a huge boost. Whereas before they were hanging out in MSU territory in RPI they're 38th now, ie, worth beating.
  • BU has done well. They're 12th in RPI, which give Michigan a quality win bump in addition to helping them out with SOS.
  • So has Dartmouth. They've won 5 of 6 and are just inside the top 20.
  • Robert Morris is beating up on Atlantic Hockey. They're 21st in RPI, just a hair away from the quality win bump, and should continue that—they have a +32 goal differential in conference.
  • The Big Ten is heavily stratified. Both PSU and Minnesota are in the top twenty while OSU, MSU, and Wisconsin cannot buy wins against the top of the league. This helps all three teams with at-large hopes thanks to QWB.

Everything that could go right for Michigan's RPI has over the past few weeks, which has moved Michigan off the bubble despite not having opponents who provide much traction.

Rooting interests remain obvious: for PSU and Minnesota and all of Michigan's nonconference opponents. You should double down on hating MSU—not that you have a problem with that—because they are so low in RPI that soon wins against them will not even count in Michigan's calculations, at which point MSU losses boost the rest of the Big Ten while not impacting M.

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