i post the bear video again

Union and Michigan State are underway in a near-empty building, so we're off. Some final items before the madness descends:

HOCKEYBEAR. PLAYOFF TIME IS HOCKEYBEAR TIME.

HOCKEYBEAR IS GO

Cornell. The preview is here; the Big Red is a tight-checking team with a defensive emphasis and good goaltending. Usually getting an ECAC team in the tournament is a good sign—no team from that league has advanced to the Frozen Four since 2003. You saw the Air Force game, though. This is single elimination playoff hockey.

Line change? Michigan's broken up their top line at an odd time. In practice they've moved Derek Deblois up and Chris Brown down, leaving the lines like so:

1. Deblois-Wohlberg-Guptill
2. Glendening-Treais-PDG
3. Brown-Lynch The Elder-Moffat
4. Rohrkemper-Lynch The Younger-Hyman

Berenson's explanation of this is grim:

"I just think the lines were getting stale, especially Wohlberg's line," Berenson said. "I thought they lost their work ethic, and they were scoring as individuals but the line wasn't producing. In fact, the line was negative in the last 10 games.

"We can't go into a tournament with a line that is not helping the team, especially one that's supposed to be one of your best."

The top line was still filling up the nets, scoring eight goals in the last nine games, but they're –1 between them. How much is on them and how much is on Michigan's newfound addiction to terrible turnovers from the defense.

Also from that article: Michigan is 13-4-1 since Merrill returned, and he's +12.

Or maybe not? The Daily has another quote from Berenson that suggests Michigan may dump the change if it's not going well:

“When you see the line chart (on Friday) you’ll have a better idea,” Berenson said. “But I like the fact that we’ve got some flexibility. We’ve had different players play with different players during the year, and we’ve even had some guys play different positions. I think when you get to this point of the year, you have to be flexible, as a coach and a player.

“That doesn’t answer (the) question, but that’s my answer.”

It's possible Red is just sending a message.

2002 from darker eyes. Denver reminisces about Yost's apex:

"That was one of the toughest losses I've had in my career," says Kevin Doell, who led that club with 43 points and remains a veteran scorer with the Chicago Wolves of the American Hockey League. "When we had a lead going into the third period, we were good at shutting the door. Once they got that first goal and their crowd got into it, it was a huge momentum boost for them. It's still hard to swallow when I think about it."

And thus was born the NCAA's deathly fear of a home crowd for anyone other than Minnesota.

The start of it all. The Daily's Zach Helfland tell the story of Michigan's tourney streak beginning:

It was late Sunday night in March 1990. Bo had just retired, the Fab Five just months away from enrolling at Michigan, and Berenson had just finished a phone call that would decide whether his once-mighty hockey team would be relevant again after so many years.

The 2012 version of the Michigan hockey team encountered some bumps, but it waltzed into the tournament. So did the team before it. In fact, since 1990, only one team, the 2010 squad (which Shawn Hunwick led on its miracle run), was anywhere close to the bubble. But in 1990, it wasn’t that easy.

On one end of the call was Berenson, six fruitless years into his tenure in Ann Arbor. On the other was the NCAA selection committee. Ever since it beat Bowling Green in the CCHA consolation game the day before, Berenson’s team, firmly planted on the NCAA Tournament bubble, had been waiting for this call.

View from Cornell. An email:

Hi, I'm a Cornell fan.  I like your site and wanted to add a thought or two with respect to some of the comments.

About the ECAC's number of national titles: technically it is four, not three. Cornell (1967, 1970), RPI (1985) and Harvard (1989).  RPI also won in 1954, before the league was formed.  And BU walked off with 3 (1971, 1972, 1978) when Hockey East split off from the ECAC.

On the subject of Cornell's mascot/nickname confusion:  The nickname is the Big Red.  Just the color.  We tried to explain this to a Minnesota fan at the 2005 regional when they asked what the mascot is and they thought we were talking down to them.  But usually when we say "Big Red" to someone the next words out of their mouth are "Big Red What?".  In fact, one of the Cornell fan sites is called "the Big Red What?" 

Anyway, the nickname comes from a football song written in 1905 as the team wore red and white, the school colors since its founding.  The bear came along in 1915 when the football team bought a live black bear and kept it on the sidelines during games.  And despite a bear being in the Cornell sports team logos the university website still refers to the mascot as "unofficial".  Not sure what to make of that.  Long story short, nobody calls us "the Bears".

They're like Stanford, okay?

Etc.: Michigan is not exactly paranoid about letting people see their practices. Cornell is of course the team that Michigan emulated during the famous 1991 matchup at Yost that spawned a thousand angry swears. (HT: MHN.)

AKRON STATE IS HOCKEY BEAR TIME

The Essentials 

Eric Upchurch (original)

So that's what beating Ohio State feels like, in case you forgot or something. Apparently it involves lots of hugging, and not the cool Ace-meets-Stranger DAP hug kind. I'm talking about the the kind where you grab on like you're sharing a parachute and then hop up and down a few times to simulate a freefall, because you're not entirely sure gravity really applies right now and you should really find that out.

It was the counter clock, but also that they spent the last 10 years spitting in the face of the NCAA (discussion by michelin) and this completely worked for them because in college football winning makes you saints and angels (MGauxBleu) and if you do get caught it's okay because you can just fire accept the resignation of that coach and bring in a savior (SixZero). There was only one thing we could do in return: beat them at football.

That was pretty awesome. Also awesome: Denard Robinson:

So all Denard did was go out and play one of the single greatest games this rivalry has seen. Commanding an offense that heretofore this rivalry had maybe never seen. Beating back the undeservedly arrogant and smug naysayers, who for so long had relished his and his team's failures. This Saturday was not theirs. This Saturday was Denard's.

That's an afterglow diary from My name … is Tim. (Aftergloat from THE_KNOWLEDGE is here).

Airvipermb looked into Robinson's passing stats for this year and found steady improvement. And bwgrudt1484 put Denard's career numbers against M's career leaders. Robinson needs to average about 351 yards and 4 TDs per game the rest of his career to best Henne (unlikely) but 131 yards and 1.5 TDs be our best rusher ever. This is the first time I believe I've seen "Tacopants" referenced as a last name, kind of like how MaGuyver's first name finally came out in his 7th (and final) season. Both of those links are quick reads and worth it.

Not as worth it: the new hockeybear:

In the deep, frozen reaches of space there is a hockey puck. This puck electrifies and floats into the deleted hockey scene from A Scanner Darkly. Meanwhile a polar bear puts on a glove and transforms into a Power Ranger. Summoning his hockey stick from the ice planet of Hoth, Hockeybear stands atop the hockey puck, roars, electrifies, and cuts to a Science Channel special on volcanoes. Its most redeeming feature is the summoned hockey stick destroying the International Space Station while en route to Hockeybear, which (the destroying) is either the sole remaining nod to Hockeybear's ship-, world-, and Michigan's rivals-annihilating ways, or an important public service message about collateral damage when summoning objects through space (Voltron, Silverhawks et al. take heed!).

Michigan makes its final CCHA trip to Alaska-Fairbanks this weekend. Preview? Yesman2221 has you covered.

In etc. Eye of the Tiger examines the SEC Myth for cracks. See if you can guess which two of these three outstanding names are 2013 recruits that Ace interviewed:

Logan Tuley-Tillman • Ladynasty Galette • Jake Butt

And this link is 100% OT but did anyone else with a "Kovacs, Michigan" Google Alert feed accidentally end up reading the most Daily article ever this week?

Jump, weeklies, best of the board.

PLAYOFF TIME IS HOCKEY BEAR TIME

The Essentials 

North Dakota

Record. 32-8-3, 21-6-1 WCHA. Yeeeeaaaargh. NoDak's dominating run through the WCHA ended in regular season and playoff championships and the underlying numbers are almost more impressive. The Sioux had a +50(!) goal differential in 28 conference games and were +86(!) overall.

North Dakota hasn't lost since January 28th and hasn't even tied since February 18th. In their last 15 games they are 14-0-1 and most of those games have been hammerings. A large chunk of that is due to playing Michigan Tech four times (total goals: 28-4) in a weak section of their schedule, but like holy balls. Two weeks ago they were the sole one seed to come out of the regionals and they did it without drama, annihilating RPI 6-0 and Denver 6-1.

They are an easy favorite to win the title, but Michigan has weighted plinko on their side this time.

Previous meetings. None. How about…

Common opponents. Chart? Chart.

That's less alarming than it could have been. UND is 9-4-1 with a +8 GD. Michigan is 8-3-1 with a +9 GD. Schedule strength is crose enough. These are all good opponents (and Minnesota), suggesting that maybe when it comes to the top of the schedule the teams perform similarly. Too bad that suggestion gets way less powerful when you throw in games versus teams like Miami and Denver in.

Matt Frattin is so tired of having to do this every game

Dangermen. Like UNO, North Dakota has three solid lines of scorers. Like Colorado College, the top line is lethal. This is not a very good combination if you are going up against them. Hobey lock Matt Frattin leads the nation in goals with 36 and added 24 assists. Who's up for queefcore-scored highlights? You are:

Meanwhile, Jason Gregoire missed around a dozen games and still checks in with 25-18-43. Corban Knight, Evan Trupp, Danny Kristo and Brad Malone are all essentially PPG scorers, and then there's Brett Hextall (yes that Hextall) and his 13-16-29. If you ordered the rosters on a PPG basis you'd run through two full lines of Sioux before reaching the second Wolverine*.

These guys come in all shapes and sizes. Malone is a prototypical power forward with 108 penalty minutes who does most of his work in and around the crease; Trupp is one of those little buggers listed at 5'9". Mostly they're big, though. Rare is the North Dakota player under six foot and most are heavy for hockey players. They score lots, too.

*[This is a tiny bit pessimistic since Gregoire and Kristo both missed a big chunk of the season, allowing some of the other guys more time in high leverage situations (read: power play) to put up points. But not very.]

Defense and goalie and whatnot. After a couple of opponents whose goalies were less statistically impressive than Shawn Hunwick they run up against one for whom that is emphatically not the case. Sophomore Aaron Dell is in the top ten in save percentage with a .924. Hunwick's .922 is hot on his heels, FWIW, but it was nice going up against a couple of tourney teams and thinking "it's more likely their guy implodes than ours."

As for the defense, they are Chay Genoway, Jake Marto and huge. Geonway is basically Chad Langlais surrounded by snipers, a 5'9"—four FAKES out of five, there—defenseman able with the puck. He's got 31 assists on the season, good for eighth nationally. Marto is their version of Merrill. He's around 6'0", has 8-11-19 (five of those even strength), and took just three minor penalties the whole year. The other four guys are all at least 6'2" with freshman Derek Forbort topping out a 6'5". They're not offensive threats, but they don't have to be.

Special teams. Your power plays per game:

Despite a well-deserved rep for being dicks, North Dakota doesn't rack up penalty minutes quite like Red's old teams that had so much talent they didn't have to care. They do take more than their share of minors but kill 86% of them—fifth—and have eleven shorties. Since they've only given up 28 PPGs… yeah, they do not care about going to the box.

That talent allows them to draw a ton of penalties—they are second nationally in opportunities behind only Colorado College. Their power play is very, very good, too. It is just ahead of CC's at 23.3%, so if you thought watching the Schwartzes ping-pong the puck around was terrifying you're in for more of the same when Michigan is shorthanded.

Michigan remains mediocre in both phases but the penalty kill has dragged itself up from the mid-30s to 22nd in recent weeks.

Michigan Vs Those Guys

No pressure, and by no pressure we mean turn this coal into a diamond or we kill your dog

Burlon readiness check: harsh. Michigan's main advantage relative to 90% of college hockey is the ability to throw out any defense pairing against a top line and have confidence they will not get bombed. That was not the case last weekend when Kevin Clare was forced into the lineup by Brandon Burlon's allergic reaction; in the two weeks since Burlon has regained most of the weight he dramatically lost* and has been practicing on the regular. Given how leery Red was of putting Clare out even against CC's mediocre-at-best second and third lines, there's no chance he doesn't go with Burlon even if he's not saying so publicly.

So… how are you feeling, Brandon? Strong and good? Yes? Ready to live up to Red's declaration it's like "nothing ever happened"? We ask because there's no shallow end here. If anyone's going to be sheltered it will be Lee Moffie and even he is going to have a hard time escaping some very dangerous players. Burlon is going to have to do heavy lifting right away. If he's trying to check Malone in the crease it might not go so well.

*[80% of that was water but whateva.]

Enjoy your front-row seats, fourth line. I think we might see Moffatt on the power play some and Michigan will throw them out there every once in a while, but the fourth line is going to be vapor.

Scooter! Vaughn's moment of brilliance ended up being decisive and it will take something like it to take what looks like a loss and turn it into a win. Maybe from Scooter, maybe from someone else, but scrappy gritty Novakgoals aren't going to get it done against North Dakota. There might be some, but without someone stepping up and saying "Hobey this, Frattin" the prognosis is grim. Another breakaway that ends without even the threat of a goal would not be so good.

Of course, Michigan could just let Moffie shoot from the point at every opportunity and watch it pinball around, catch the post, and deflect in. That works too.

Carl/Rust. Michigan's other big advantage is they can ice a truly shut-down checking line and back that up with Carl Hagelin. I think they can keep it relatively even when those guys are out there—the problem is going to be the third line—and that should keep it within the range where bouncing pucks matter. Shut North Dakota down as long as possible, put something past Dell, and watch the pressure ratchet up until it shatters glass.

STAY OUT OF THE BOX. Stay out of the box. No box. Srs.

Steal it. Hunwick has done it before this year and while my past self is inventing a time machine just so he can show up right after I type this to slap some sense into me, most win scenarios involve Hunwick setting up halfway to the blue line and stopping every first shot and then doing some crazy stuff you can't even believe is happening.

Believe in the plinko. The NCAA tournament is stupid and unfair and a disaster and this year that's the way we like it.

Pray like hell. Seriously, yo.

The Big Picture

Win or die.

Elsewhere

Berenson: still not retiring. USCHO article has a bunch of quotes from coaches "scouting" the game. Here's Dean Blais wishing he didn't try to get an NHL job:

“[The Fighting Sioux] roll three pretty strong lines, so I think their depth is their biggest strength,” said Blais, who guided North Dakota to two national championships during his 10-year tenure from 1994 to 2004. “But they might be more talented [than Michigan] because of players like Frattin and Genoway that can make a difference in a game.”

Everything you could want from the North Dakota perspective. Comparison:

• Profile of Red Berenson in the News: 1000 words.
• Profile of Brendan Morrison in the Daily: 2400 words. No pictures by "Danger Nesbitt" this time but some archived stuff from the Daily in a slide show.

They're both good pieces but since the length and care taken in the Daily article is no exception—this happens like all the time—it's a good example of why it seems like the best sports section covering Michigan, period. The students are all trying to get clips that will get them jobs that will probably never let them write anything as good as the thing they did when they were writing to impress potential employers, because who has the money for that? Also the Daily kids obviously care. That's not something you can say about everyone. Or even most people. Also also, the Daily pieces seem specifically written for the web what with their multimedia aspects and newshole-crippling length.

Michigan Hockey Net digs up good old times against the Sioux:

Recent times not so good, but hey, it can happen. The United States of Hockey previews the Sioux (and Michigan, FWIW). Ten Things from Yost Built:

7) They have the #2 offense and the #3 defense in the country. That ranks them second in scoring margin (+2.00 goals per game) behind only Yale, which doesn't really count since we all know the ECAC sucks.

HOCKEYBEAR IS—AW, HAMBURGERS THAT'S NEXT WEEK

You Versus The Dread Sports Distracts You From

Good luck with that, buddy. You may even find yourself bowling. You hate bowling.

Scandals are pretty much sports too. Jim Tressel, man.

When in doubt.

The Big Picture

Next Thursday and, God willing, Saturday are the Frozen Four. The methadone of spring practice and the spring game-type-substance will provide a gentle glide path into May, but at that point you're just waiting for September. Prepare.

Excellent Daily story on the Zapruder goal:

“There was a kid behind the penalty box saying it was a goal,” senior forward Louie Caporusso said. “He just kept saying, ‘It’s a goal.’ ”

Yost Built screencapped the kid, too:

Michigan athletics loves pointing at things right now. FWIW, I disagree with his take on the Rust OT penalty. That was dangerous and deserved the call. Also, if you were wondering if CC's dominant performance meant the wrong team won last night from a Michigan perspective, don't be:

Boston College was 22-2-1 in their last 25 games. John Muse was 8-0 in the NCAA Tournament and something absurd like 22-1 in tournament play (NCAA and Hockey East, not sure if it counted the Beanpot).

Daily gallery and game story. Torrent. If you're wondering why we all act like scalded dogs this time of year:

Michigan had lost its last five NCAA Tournament overtime affairs, including 3-2 in double OT to Miami in the final of last year’s Midwest Regional.