[James Coller]

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Michigan Tech 2, Michigan 0

1st period

Birks Goal

MTU 1 UM 0 EV 05:36 Assists: Auk

Auk carries the puck in and shoots, the shot going wide and rimming around the boards to Lavigne’s right. Auk picks it up and fakes to the inside before pulling the puck back to his left. Allen defends this well, getting his stick out and keeping it in the shooting lane throughout the process of Auk’s inside-outside move. He somehow is able to get the shot away.

Birks swings his stick down at precisely the right time, deflecting the puck past Lavigne. De Jong tracks Birks and defends this pretty well; I don’t know what you’d do differently considering he had to skate up the wing and defend Birks’ initial shot (the one that went around the boards). This is a feat of incredible hand-eye coordination.

2nd period

Watson Goal

MTU 2 UM 0 EV 08:41 Assists: Lucchini & Birks

A note on this camera angle: I would have loved to make the gif from this one but was unable to as BTN2Go refused to load past the 15-minute mark in the second period after I rewound the film from here. Why? Who knows. I reloaded it over and over and eventually threw in the towel and switched sources.

Anyway, Lucchini fires the puck in deep off of the notoriously bouncy Joe Louis endboards. It, like, bounces. That’s what happens at the Joe. This is the Lidstrom special.

As Pastujov gets his stick down, you can see that this really isn’t a bad shot to give up; stick in the lane, way back in the zone, pinned to the outside of the zone.

Watson reads the puck well, snapping it on net the second he gets it on his blade. The thing I can’t figure out is why Shuart is on the inside of the faceoff dot. It’s possible that the skaters are being told to collapse on net, but when the puck’s at the top of the zone and there’s no MTU skater in the high slot (plus two Michigan defenders there to cover the guy who’s in the low slot) I don’t get the positioning.

I believe this hits Lavigne’s skate and is redirected in. He tracks the puck well but is too tall, which renders him unable to get into a butterfly on the shot. Granted, the shot get on net rapidly. The point about Lavigne tracking it well is important,, however, as that’s what I’d expect him to be in his crouch as it comes out to his right.

Friday, December 30, 2016

Michigan 5, Michigan State 4 (OT)

1st period

CALDERONE GOAL

UM 1 MSU 0 PPG 03:57 Assists: Marody & Slaker

Marody has Calderone to his right on a 2-on-1 break, but the Spartan defenseman does a nice job taking away the pass. That leaves Marody to pull the trigger, as the goalie expects him to.

Marody’s shot hits the far-side post and bounces back toward the goaltender. The puck hits the goalie’s leg pad as he turns around to look for the puck, and Calderone just shovels it in as soon as he sees it laying unattended. The other two MSU backcheckers aren’t able to make an impact here because one of them skates to Marody’s side of the net and the other flies past Calderone and drops his body to stop around the red line; by the time he loops back up to Calderone the puck is in the net.

LOCKWOOD GOAL

UM 2 MSU 0 EV 06:18 Assists: Unassisted

First Piazza tries to thread a pass through the neutral zone that’s picked off, then MSU turns it over near center ice and Lockwood gains possession. He skates toward the boards and across blue line.

The defenseman sees Lockwood bearing down on him and decides to take a swipe at the puck; Lockwood slams on the brakes, pulls the puck back, and the defender is left waving at air.

Lockwood then skates into the slot with Warren running a nice psuedo-pick, drawing the attention of the defender for a second and allowing Lockwood to skate in.

As Warren drives the net and the defender turns and stabs, Lockwood rips a shot to the near-side top corner. The screencap won’t do it justice, but the gif might. Lockwood shows a really impressive ability to read the ice and the placement of each defender on his way to the slot. I don’t think it makes a difference that the State defender with his stick outstretched below hadn’t turned when he reached the faceoff dot; maybe he gets a stick on the puck (doubtful the way Lockwood was skating), but I’m not sure he wouldn’t have stayed with Warren even longer in an effort to disrupt his path to the front of the net if he was facing the other way.

 

Lambdin Goal

UM 2 MSU 1 EV 08:11 Assists: Gatt

Here we have the equivalent of a badly busted coverage in football. Cutler Martin has the puck deep tries to chip it behind the net; Gatt picks up the loose near the goal, carries behind the net, and sees a massive open passing lane through the faceoff circle and into the neutral zone.

To add to the craziness, Lambdin has to spin to catch it on his forehand. Luce isn’t able to catch up even with the time it takes for Lambdin to slow down and pull off the spin move.

Nagelvoort comes out to the top of the crease to challenge. Even so, Lambdin goes bar down and tucks it into the near-side corner. Hard to get upset with Nagelvoort when a shot’s placed that well.

KILE GOAL

UM 3 MSU 1 EV 09:57 Assists: Sanchez & Marody

Sanchez carries in along the wing and gets locked up, with the puck poked away and gliding toward the end boards. Sanchez goes to pick it up near the corner but it skitters away; he’s able to pin his defender against the glass with his back as he turns, which allows Marody to pick it up.

Marody draws extra attention, as the Spartan defender gliding through the slot decides to keep gliding toward the back of the net in order to double up Marody. He simply drops the puck and knows the pass will work because Sanchez was able to box out his man.

Kile’s being checked by one guy in front of the net, and though another peels off Marody to try and get back he can’t do so before Sanchez taps a pass through the defenders to Kile. Kile takes a shot that Lethemon stops with his left leg pad.

You can see in the screencap above that Lethemon has his right leg up. He brings that back down and seals the five hole, but he also brings that leg in. Kile gets his own rebound and shoots far-side, and it goes past Lethemon just as he’s bringing that right leg pad in. With the rebound ending up right in front of him it’s not hard to see why he thought Kile’s second attempt would be to jab it in on a straight line; Kile does a nice job directing the puck while a defender’s shoving him.

2nd period

KILE GOAL

UM 4 MSU 1 EV 13:42 Assists: Piazza & Marody

Marody moves the puck low to high in an effort to stretch the defense out, moving it up the boards to Piazza at the blue line. The screencap below is taken a moment after Marody’s pass; he’s skating up the boards here, while Sanchez crushed his man into the boards and is taking off on a diagonal for the slot. Sanchez’s two plays allow the puck to get to the top of the zone while also freezing the defender tasked with covering Piazza.

Kile’s positioned behind the netfront defender. This works out very poorly for said defender. Piazza sees a lane and fires through traffic safe in the knowledge that Kile’s got the best available position to screen Lethemon. Kile sees the puck rise and gets his stick down, deflecting it into the net.

It was called a goal on ice but naturally had to be reviewed, and here’s the best shot I found of Kile’s stick placement and why it was indeed a good goal. I know it’s hard to tell the exact angle, but that looks pretty much perpendicular to the ice at the time the puck’s making contact. What felt like the beginning of a rout turned out to be the goal that vaulted Michigan into OT.

3rd period

Appleton Goal

UM 4 MSU 2 PPG 00:07 Assists: Osburn & Saliba

Saliba wins the faceoff back to Osburn, who holds the puck and waits for Appleton to break toward the middle of the ice. Warren sprints to his left off the draw. Piazza also skates to his left and up.

Appleton skates between Warren and Piazza and ends up completely, wholly alone at the edge of the middle of the neutral zone. I do not get it. I do not understand why they were so eager to lock down the wing when the one player who was in that space skated between and behind them. By the time they seem to recognize where he’s going he is very, very gone. Osburn’s stretch pass isn’t hard to complete; all he has to do is pass it up through a lane the size of side-by-side zambonis with the resistance coming once Sanchez flips his stick to the inside, which is after the puck is away.

Nagelvoort’s again hung out to dry. I’m guessing he thought Appleton was going to carry it in another stride or two, as the wrong-footed shot seems to catch him by surprise and beats him glove-side.

Gatt Goal

UM 4 MSU 3 EV 04:32 Assists: Wood & Haag

Slaker carries in and backhands a shot on goal, which is then cleared to the blue line. The puck hops over Boka’s stick and State’s off to the races the other way on a 2-on-1 rush that Boka turns into a 2-on-2 in relatively short order. Boka’s backchecking took away the pass, and he was able to seal the defender low so that this is what it looks like by the time Haag decides to cut to the middle for a shot.

State shows some nice touch passes here, with Haag passing to Wood in the slot and Wood passing to Gatt above the faceoff circle.

Warren tries to stop the pass from going to the point, which he does. Slaker glides over I’m guessing instinctually in order to cover the pass to the point that isn’t coming. He ends up way out of position to do anything; the puck is passed back into the low slot and then out to the opposite wing, which means Boka’s the only guy even remotely close to it. He steps out and tries to block it to no avail. I believe what happened is Cutler Martin (circled) skated too low and decided to stay there when the puck went up the wing even though Boka had the netfront guy covered; Boka had to chase the trailing wing that Martin never saw enter the zone. I guess it’s possible that Martin thought they had switched assignments after the pass left the slot and that Boka was going to jump out toward the top of the faceoff circle sooner.

Stenglein Goal

UM 4 MSU 4 EV 17:50 Assists: Ebbing & Cox

The puck’s sent deep off a hard shot; maybe State was looking for the Lidstrom special again. They sort of get it, with Cox skating to meet the puck and dropping it back to Ebbing.

Stenglein appears in the frame out of nowhere, but Ebbing seems to know he’s skating in and passes back to him. Calderone is circled above because he’s just drifting the whole time the play’s unfolding, and with Slaker down low and the middle of the slot thereby undefended he should (but doesn’t) notice when a guy starts to fly toward the net. Instead, he’s watching the puck and his teammates until it’s too late to do anything about stopping the shot or Stenglein. Nagelvoort has traffic in front and the shot comes fast, beating him as he tries to square to Stenglein.

Overtime

CALDERONE GOAL

UM 5 MSU 4 EV 02:58 Assists: Dancs & Slaker

Dancs gains possession of a puck that’s close to leaving the zone. He has one defender behind and one in front shaded inside him, so he decides to skate in and banks the puck off the boards with the intent to retrieve it on the other side of the State defender.

Dancs loses the puck after he bounces it off the boards but Slaker’s in good position and gets it. Slaker skates it back up ice a stride and then backhands a pass to Dancs near the corner.

Dancs cuts to the front of the net and is met by State’s Carson Gatt, who actually made a nice play here to peel off Slaker and get his stick on the ice in an attempt to re-route Dancs. Instead, Dancs plows ahead and gets tripped by Gatt. The puck comes loose in the crease.

Calderone flips it in while his legs are being taken out by Gatt and he’s being shoved in the ribs by another defender. Lethemon pulls his left leg pad in and sort of swipes at air with his glove; it looked like he didn’t want to get steamrolled here and pulled in, but that left Calderone’s side of the net open.

On defense: All those stretch passes converted were killers. Michigan's difficulty clearing the defensive zone has been discussed here and elsewhere, but it's worth noting one more time because of the speed and frequency with which both GLI opponents were able to get the puck from their defensive zone into Michigan's. From breaking down the stretch passes that turned into goals, it seems like guys aren't flying out of position so much as they're locking onto the puck without noticing the placement of opposing players around them, so when a guy sneaks behind them and a teammate sees boom, the pass is away and there's a breakaway opportunity. Providing a teammate with help is great when they're in a board battle, but doing so in the neutral zone while letting guys slip past and get wide open is something else entirely. The kicker is that Michigan can't make up for it, because as a team...

On offense: ...they're slow. Over and over again Michigan would lug the puck into their offensive zone and attempt to pass and then it would hit a stick or a body near the blue line and more often than not that became a turnover. Even when it wasn't a turnover, having to fight and dig out a puck to regain possession doesn't exactly give way to stretching a defense out or surprising a goalie with quick puck movement. I can see some of the defensive issues getting fixed because those seem like things that can be worked on with film study and switching where you're looking on-ice. I don't see the offensive issues getting fixed this season. Michigan is second to last nationally in Corsi For %; they've attempted 930 shots to the opposition's 1,323. Per College Hockey News, Michigan State's hovering at about 50% on the year and they outattempted Michigan 100-54. Michigan Tech's right around 50% on the season as well and they outattempted Michigan 74-56. I can see how the opposing attempt totals could drop a tiny bit, but I don't see a way for the offense's attempts to increase on a team that has difficulty skating and passing. If you can't do those two things then the only time you get extended zone time is with a man advantage. Otherwise, it's more or less pass/dump in, turnover, and the puck's going the other way.