minnesota duluth

THE ESSENTIALS

THE US 

It's Tourney Time everybody! David and I have covered this Michigan Hockey team rather vigorously throughout the 2020-21 season on this blog (you can listen to this week's HockeyCast here!), but I understand that this is the time of year when non-hockey diehards tend to tune in to watch the important games, so I'll get everybody quickly up to speed on the season. 

Michigan came roaring out of the gates with a 4-0 start but skidded into the break to close the first half a disappointing 5-5. Since the start of 2021, it's generally been a pretty fun ride: 10-5-1 with a +36 goal differential over that span. There have still been frustrating letdown moments, but after watching this team play the other elite B1G teams (Minnesota, Wisconsin), there's every reason to believe Michigan can make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament and beat the best of the best on the right day. 

Michigan is powered by their youth and the overwhelming talent of that youth. The Wolverines boast two current first round picks (Brendan Brisson, Cam York; Johnny Beecher, also a first rounder, is OFTY), as well as three players who will go in the lottery of the 2021 NHL Draft (Owen Power, Kent Johnson, and Matty Beniers), in addition to a high second round pick in Thomas Bordeleau. The Wolverines are probably the most talented team in college hockey in terms of pure NHL talent, but as a consequence, are one of the NCAA's youngest teams. They also rely heavily on that young talent, with their top four scorers all being freshmen. Junior Strauss Mann, who could be playing his last games in the Maize & Blue this weekend, has held down the net with another stellar season. When Michigan is playing well, they have a high powered offense, a sturdy defense, and excellent goaltending, with few holes to exploit. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Scouting the opponent and more thoughts]

4/9/2011 – Michigan 2, Minnesota-Duluth 3 (OT) – 29-11-4, season over

There's a track on the Robert Earl Keen live album I've listened to incessantly since I was maybe a junior in college in which it's just him introing a song with a story. It's about how he went to the second Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic. Keen lies that he was "about 27 years old" at the time and had a date—his first date ever. He had so much fun in "the Willy Way" that he had to go take a nap.

He woke up from his nap to hear a man on the PA announcing that there had been a fire in the parking lot and that 40 cars had burned up. The first winner: RHP 997. Now, you might wonder why Keen and I remember that so well. In Keen's case it's because it was his car. In my case it's because I've listened to this story hundreds of times.

Keen's obviously devastated by this news, but his date laughs. Keen reminds her "we don't have a ride"; she responds "I do." Keen is introduced to Tarzan and Adonis, who promise to "take care of her, man." She departs. Keen is left with not enough of a car to carbon-14 date and no date when just a few hours ago he having the best time of his life.

He sits down.

He sits down on the grass. On the burnt grass, the black, burnt dirt and grass, and he weeps. "Big, old, giant tears."

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I don't know, man.

I've got a post in the hopper titled "the bottom" that details the stunning descent in Michigan athletics that started when Bo died the day before Football Armageddon and to my eyes stopped on January 17th when Greg Mattison was hired away from an NFL team to coordinate Michigan's defense. Since then the basketball team exceeded anything approximating reasonable expectations, Jim Tressel and Ohio State seem to have started a long, ugly process of implosion, and the hockey team deflected its way to a 50-50 shot at glory. We are finally on the way up.

That doesn't mean they are. Hagelin and Scooter and Hunwick just saw something slip through their fingers they'll never get back. I guess Hunwick has a shot next year but a quick look at the roster shows a team that should be happy to extend the tourney streak—in all likelihood this was it for Tiny Jesus. I'm trying to decide whether this is actually worse than last year. At least last year promised this year; right now it's hard to see Michigan back here for years, like when Boo Nieves is a sophomore and whichever 2013 forwards stick might be awesome. Next year's impact help is playing in the OHL.

So I'm not sure when that shot will come again. Maybe it will be next year—hockey is bizarre that way—but despite a season as frustrating as a conference championship can be by the end I was deeply, deeply invested in Hagelin and the kids who gave him a flag and our 5'7" third-string walk-on goalie with a story the Air Bud producers would send back as too hackneyed. The hours after the North Dakota game were one long shuddering as my body gradually remembered things other than pure terror, and to lose—to frankly deserve to lose—after that was like all the horror described last year but with more finality. That happened and won't happen again and it wasn't enough.

Keen goes on to room with Lyle Lovett and carve out a career as a minor country star who doesn't have to give a crap what Nashville thinks, but being a musician doesn't come with eligibility restrictions. I spent Saturday thinking of all the guys who came and went during Michigan's long championship interregnum: Cammalleri and Comrie and Shouneyia and Hensick and all the other brilliant 5'8" guys college hockey makes into gods. Jed Ortmeyer, who has more work ethic in a finger than I do in my entire body and once killed two St. Cloud players in the first five minutes of a tourney game at Yost. Jack Johnson. Milan Gajic and his magic ability to not score spectacular goals. Jason Ryznar and Craig Murray always seeming way better than they were. Al Montoya sitting in the penalty box. Brandon Kaleniecki living inside the goalie's jersey. Jay Vancik convincing me he was an NHL player. Bob Gassoff, who I once screamed "why even give him a stick?" in the general direction of.

I wrote about the fans and thought I'd write about them after—I guess I am, but not in the way I wanted to. Today we add Caporusso and Vaughn and Hagelin and Langlais and Winnett and Rust and Hogan to the list of people to valorize at some point in the indeterminate future.

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As Keen was dripping onto the grass some guy from the festival came up and said "the least we can do is let you meet Willy," but Willy had to go jam with Leon Russell. Many years later he recorded one of Keen's songs as part of the Highwaymen—this is all in the story.

At some point Michigan is actually going to win another goddamned national championship and some of this will be redeemed. Not all of it, though. Shawn Hunwick is never going to do that again, and nothing's ever going to match the Swedish flag and my complete failure to get people to replace all words in the goal cheer with "bork" when Hagelin scores. Things come and go; this one has gone and I'm stunned at how much I miss it already.

Seriously, No Bullets

Why this is so early in the morning. You see, Rudy, the fiancée's dissertation is due today and it's like 350 pages and I edited all of it and at one point there was a sentence with three different serial commas in it and my head exploded and I haven't actually gone to bed yet. So 1) early post because I decided it was now or never and 2) I am going to bed and will see you tomorrow and will bump Tom's weekly when I wake up this afternoon. kthxbye.

Okay, one. Congratulations to Duluth, who got a deserved win. I don't know what it was, but they spent the entire game turning Michigan's defensemen. Were they just blown out from the North Dakota game? I find that hard to believe when they had two days off and Duluth also played, but I hadn't seen anyone get around Michigan's D with that consistency all year. Since that includes UND and some other very good teams I wonder if the semi just took too much out of them.

It's impossible to be mad at a team with no previous titles and so many guys with awesome beards that don't match their blonde hair; congrats.

A brief set of links before the moment of truth.

via

Burlon will not play; line chart is the same as it's been all tournament.

Ten Things from Yost Built:

In reading up about Duluth, it sounds like they're scary offensively, but are largely a one-line team. Michigan will have last change in this game, which is a good sign as we can get Rust's line out there against the Connollys. The defensemen don't activate often, but Faulk is as good as it gets at both ends of the ice. He's got a killer shot on the power play, and that opens things up for the Connollys and Fontaine down low.

I forgot to put that some guy named Tim would look up "sieve" in whatever language was needed to communicate with a goalie who needed to be informed that he was one.

Hunwick hits the NYT:

“A year ago, I would have told you there was no chance this would be happening,” Berenson said. “And yet he nearly got us to the Frozen Four last year when he had to come in in the late season as an emergency. He had never started a Division I game.”

“And even this year, when he was competing for the starting job and Hogan was healthy, it looked like Hogan was going to take over. Then Hogan got hurt again, Hunwick came in, got a shot, and he’s played every game since. And here we are.”

His dad was puzzled by his decision:

"That's all he's ever done, is play goalie," his dad said. "I don't think he's probably ever played 12 games out. … I can't imagine why you'd want somebody to shoot the puck at you."

Red on Glendening, the other consistent member of the Annihilation Co:

“It seems like a lot of the younger generation, they feel entitled, and not as willing to work,” Berenson said to media before practice Friday. “But I tell you what, the kid sitting at the end of the table here, Luke Glendening, he came to Michigan like (senior goaltender) Shawn Hunwick — with no expectations. I didn’t know if he would ever play a game, and when I saw him on the ice, I realized that this kid has something special.“

Hagelin took the last one hard last night:

His postgame obligations complete, Carl Hagelin limped his way back down the hallway underneath the Xcel Energy Center on Thursday night and slowly made his way to the Michigan dressing room.

A large bag of ice was taped around his left ankle and foot, altering his gait.

Others: Spath on Red's legacy. Nesbitt drafted by AnnArbor.com to write on the final. Burns on seniors/team stuff that seems like the truth instead of a cliché this time around.

Let's go blue.