Friday, November 13, 2015

Michigan 7, Niagra 3

1st period

UM 1 NIA 0 EV 07:05 Connor (4) from Piazza (1) & Nieves (2)

Boo Nieves has the puck behind the net. He reverses course to avoid a defender, but still ends up getting hit. As he’s hit he tries to backhand a centering pass to the netfront skater, but the pass is deflected out to Sam Piazza.

Piazza’s initial shot is into a mass of bodies, but the puck takes a fortunate bounce and slides back to him.

Piazza’s defender is closing in, and he does a really nice job of reading the ice in a split second. He sees Kyle Connor open at the side of the net and a big passing lane through the crease.

Connor is a supremely talented player. (To that point: the pass was a little long, so Connor had to gather while gliding backwards, sapping a lot of what he could put on the shot). The near side of the net is supremely open. This is called goal-by-goal analysis. I think you know what happened.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the goals]

UM 2 NIA 0 EV 09:50 Selman (3) from Boka (2) & Kile (3)

Nolan De Jong drops the puck along the boards for Alex KIle, who reads the defense well. He sees that they’ve edged to their goaltender’s left, and the shift leaves Nick Boka open at the point.

Give the defender in the top left corner of the above screen cap some credit, as he’s able to close the gap between himself and Boka very quickly. Like, quickly enough that Boka is just barely able to sneak the shot under the defender’s outstretched stick.

Justin Selman’s setting a nice screen and he gets his stick up as Boka shoots, tipping the puck past O’Brien. It’s simple, but it shows why it’s so important to get a guy camped out in the slot.

UM 3 NIA 0 EV 10:41 Connor (5) from Warren (4)

Brendan Warren starts a break through the neutral zone and passes to Connor just as he crosses the blue line and enters the offensive zone. Connor carries in deep…

…and then does one of those puck-on-a-string moves, ripping it across the front of the defender. That dude just became irrelevant to the play in a hurry.

Connor’s move allows him a one-on-one opportunity, and his shot release is so quick it’s in the top corner before the goalie thinks about lifting his glove. That shot’s also impressively accurate. Kyle Connor: probably pretty good.

Connor also took a frustrating late hit after the play that left him shaken up; he returned to the game. The most frustrating part was that the refs picked up the flag for targeting.

2nd period

UM 4 NIA 0 EV 01:45 Marody (4) from De Jong (2) & Warren (5)

Warren drops it for Cooper Marody on the right wing, and Marody shoots it wide. The puck careens to the left and around the boards, where De Jong retrieves it. Marody skates into the slot as this is occurring.

De Jong sees this and puts a shot into the slot hoping for a redirect from Marody, and that’s what he gets. The goaltender has no chance.

UM 5 NIA 0 PPG 13:53 Motte (5) from Compher (5) & Marody (5)

Michigan’s running the umbrella on the power play and Niagara counters with a diamond. Compher has the puck at the point and passes to Marody to get the defenders moving. The intended effect is achieved, and once that happens Compher’s open again at the point, so Marody passes back.

Compher shoots, and his shot is deflected by Motte; one of the reasons for running an umbrella is to have two screeners in front to tip and, well, screen, so you can file this under “good execution.”

This puck barely gets tucked inside the post; the goaltender again has no chance at seeing the redirection.

UM 5 NIA 1 EV 18:11 Lomsnes from Pietrobon

Calderone sends a puck around the endboards for Connor. Once Connor realizes that it’s too fast and too far ahead he pulls up; he needs to keep skating and try to close the gap in hopes of being able to effect this. The puck slides into the neutral zone, and a 2-on-1 develops.

Werenski is the lone defender back and plays this perfectly. The skater to his left is calling for a one-timer, but he dives at just the right moment and takes away the pass. Racine’s able to stop the shot, but it hits his leg pad and flutters up and over.

Not much Racine can do here, and Werenski can’t recover and switch to the other skater considering he was on his stomach a second ago. This is a goal that looks like a fluke because what happened near the crease was, but there’s a chance (albeit slim) that this could have changed if things go differently in the offensive zone.

3rd period

UM 5 NIA 2 EV 04:07 Kovachis from Farmer & Pietrobon

Michigan’s defense forced Niagara to dump the puck in. It’s rolling around the endboards, and it looks as though a Michigan skater (I’m pretty sure it’s Motte) is going to pick it up and take it behind the net. Instead, he gets sort of a half swipe attempt to clear toward the blue line. De Jong has to change directions and head to the boards above the faceoff circle to try and retrieve.

He can’t there before Farmer, though. He passes to Kovachis at the blue line, and Kovachis winds up for a huge slap shot.

He beats Racine top corner on a shot that’s tucked inside the bar so closely it makes the water bottle explode.

UM 6 NIA 2 PPG 04:20 Calderone (4) from Werenski (5) & Nieves (3)

Nieves wins a faceoff, and the puck slides back to Werenski. Take note of Calderone, who immediately takes off for the front of the net while his defender sees the lost faceoff and the puck heading to Werenski and bugs out for him.

Werenski one-times a strong slapshot from the top of the faceoff circle, and though the initial save is made the goalie isn’t able to control the rebound. It falls in front of him, which happens to be right where Calderone’s skated.

There are no defenders nearby to check Calderone off the puck, and the goaltender is square to where Weresnki was; any stop from him is going to be acrobatic, as he’s having to dive across the crease. He gets his glove out, but it’s not in time to stop the shot Calderone lifts.

UM 7 NIA 2 EV 09:38 Werenski (2) from Downing (3) & Marody (6)

Marody wins the faceoff and Warren (who should have gotten the second assist on this) sweeps a pass back to Downing at the blue line.

Downing passes laterally to Werenski, who has plenty of time to load up his shot with the gap they defense is giving him.

Fair warning: this shot gets on net so quickly it’s hard to track, so this shot path is my best guess. It looks like the puck finds a path through the bodies in front and goes in under the goalie’s arm near-side, hitting the post and nestling just barely inside the far side of the net.

UM 7 NIA 3 EV 12:26 Dzakhov from Lomsnes & Muto

Michigan survives a 3-on-2.5 rush, with Downing blocking the initial shot. Nieves, who was trailing but close enough to the play that I threw that extra .5 in there, tries to clear but fans on the loose puck. Also, take note of what’s happening at the red line; Downing gets obliterated, and the guy he was covering is freed up to head to the front and set a screen.

Two Michigan defenders are behind the play, so this is now effectively a 2-on-1. Catt* goes into his butterfly as the pass hits the tape of the stick instead of looking around the screen, and things immediately go from looking like this…

…to this. That is a goaltender’s no man’s land.

Catt tries to recover by jumping at the shot, but he can’t get a piece of it with his arm or shoulder and is beat to the corner.

*[Catt replaced Racine with about 10 minutes to go in the third; a five-goal lead seemed like a good enough buffer for getting the third-stringer some ice time.]

Notes/Ramblings/Hot Takes:

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I feel this win was unsettling because of what I’ve seen before. Maybe looking at everything through a lens that’s been clouded by three years of disappointment is a disservice to me and a disservice to this team. I certainly hope that’s the case, because if it isn’t then a team that’s looking eerily similar to the last three years is actually a carbon copy of the teams* from those three seasons.

David Malinowski of Maize N Brew wrote about the players and Berenson not seeing eye-to-eye on their defensive mistakes after the game, and I agree with both parties. Berenson’s right about Michigan’s defensive-zone play lacking effort and consistency in clearing, while the players are right that their defensive miscues didn’t really lead to the goals they allowed. (That’s the case for at least two of them). It wasn’t what I saw in the three goals allowed that was concerning; it was an inability to dig a puck out of the corner, an inability to cleanly break out through the neutral zone, and an inability to get skaters off pucks in the defensive zone that took me back to 2012-15.

I’m aware of their offensive prowess, but I have little faith in that carrying the team any further than it has the past few years. At some point you have to be able to stop someone to win, and I haven’t seen that this season. This weekend’s series against Boston University will be as big a test as Michigan has left on the schedule, and the information gleaned from a road series against a higher-ranked opponent is going to be either really frightening or really enlightening; RPI’s heavy-handed treatment of road games has enough of an impact on postseason qualification that, unless a Big Ten team improves a lot, .

*[Take your pick and you can draw a parallel to them; choosing a particular season isn’t necessary.]