[James Coller]

[Note: Yeah, the picture above is from the first time these teams played this season. It’s a good picture, man. It’s also a picture of Evan Allen, who had a great series. Also, the screenshots from the first game are really grainy because the stream was OSU’s scoreboard and the quality was middling.]

Friday, February 24, 2017

#12 Ohio State 4, Michigan 2

1st period

ALLEN GOAL

OSU 0 UM 1 EV 12:12 Assists: De Jong

De Jong crosses the line just a fraction of a blade’s length ahead of his teammates, just enough to keep the play onside. As they cross, Allen starts to drop back to provide a passing option as the trailer while the other skater goes hard to the front of the net.

The defenders have to play this with a fairly large gap between themselves and the Michigan skaters due to it being an odd-man rush. Allen gets a ton of cushion when he drops back. Even though only one defender is going to carry the netfront skater, they both have to check where he’s going long enough to make passing pack to Allen the best choice for De Jong.

Allen makes the smart play here and pulls it around the defender, which creates the time needed for a screen to begin to take shape in front of the net. Allen shoots at this point and beats Frey…high? Low? Can anyone tell with this jumbotron feed? The puck went in, I know that much.

[After THE JUMP: I understand this season despite not understanding it at all]

Gust Goal

OSU 1 UM 1 PPG 19:59 Assists: Joshua & Jobst

Jobst would like to pass back to the point here but is unable to due to a Michigan stick in the passing lane. That’s a nice, aggressive move at the top of the box to disrupt the play. The problem is that there’s a passing lane that’s about to open to Joshua, who’s standing next to the net.

Kile miscalculates and squeezes in a bit while hunkering down as if he’s going to block a shot. The shot never comes, though, as Jobst reads the wide open passing lane to Kile’s right and throws it low for Joshua. He takes the pass and spins, jabbing a shot at LaFontaine that he stops. There is, however, a rebound.

Kile flies to the front of the net to body up Joshua. At the same time, the skater who was in the high slot (Gust) heads toward the crease to clean up the rebound. Kile doesn’t see him; if he did, this is the guy he would have picked up. Gust backhands the puck past LaFontaine’s attempted kick save with fractions of a second left in the first period.

2nd period

K. Miller Goal

OSU 2 UM 1 EV 02:41 Assists: M. Miller

The puck’s chipped down the boards and Miller’s able to get after the loose puck thanks to the walling off of the Michigan defender who was frozen near the blue line and is now trying to turn toward the wall.

Luke Martin does a great job playing the two-on-one, getting his stick into the passing lane and eliminating Miller’s lone option. The play is moving toward LaFontaine but shouldn’t be too hard to read, as the one option left is to shoot. This becomes particularly clear when Miller starts to turn his hips.

LaFontaine drops into his butterfly and is beat…somehow. Over the shoulder glove-side? That’s where my intuition is leading me but it’s hard to tell with no replay and film that isn’t clear enough to make out jersey numbers, let alone a teeny rubber cylinder.

K. Miller Goal

OSU 3 UM 1 EV 09:50 Assists: Joshua & Gust

The goal almost never happens and yet is spurred on by Winborg getting his stick in the passing lane as OSU is breaking out of their defensive zone. The puck goes off his blade and jets into the neutral zone. Joshua, who attempted the pass that was batted away, recovers it and carries through the neutral zone.

Joshua’s path is widened once he hits the offensive zone; credit for this goes to Michigan’s defense. Michigan has four skaters back to cover OSU’s three. More importantly, said Michigan defenders are in good position across the zone. At this point, it looks more likely that Michigan will force Joshua to reverse course and hit a trailing teammate at the point than play going to the front of the net.

Joshua saucers a pass to Miller in the slot. Luke Martin’s positioning is fine relative to the speed with which Miller was charging the net. The puck is deflected off the two skaters and gets past LaFontaine.

LaFontaine does get run here but it was after the play and I think he sold it a bit (not that I blame him).

ALLEN GOAL

OSU 3 UM 2 PPG 15:06 Assists: Winborg & Kile

Kile has the puck on one wing of the umbrella and sees OSU’s highest-placed defender rotate toward him while another on his side wedges himself firmly into the shooting lane. Kile has Winborg open at the side of the net if he can find a way to get the puck to him; firing wide of Winborg and trusting him to read the pass and move further from the net to catch it shows quite a bit of trust, though it’s rewarded. It’s also the only way the puck’s getting moved into the lower part of the zone considering how hard OSU’s defenders are hedging.

As Winborg turns with the puck he’s met by one defender who has left the netfront area, while two of his teammates have converged on the Michigan skater in the slot. What Winborg does is made all the more impressive by the speed at which it’s done; he reads the ice in about two frames of the GIF. He sees the passing lane open through the slot to Allen on Frey’s right and somehow wires a perfect pass to him despite the nearest defender being a few inches away. Allen one-times it and Frey can do nothing but lunge at the puck.

Schilkey Goal

OSU 4 UM 2 PPG 19:53 Assists: Joshua & Jobst

Selling out to block a shot is always risky. It’s particularly risky when your team has already shifted the entirety of the defense to the shooter’s side of the ice. It leaves your team vulnerable to guys coming off the backside of the play if the block fails. The blue line below roughly divides the ice in half, and you can see that there are two OSU skaters who aren’t just unmarked but are essentially living rent-free in a spacious penthouse condo.

I can understand why the netfront defender feels he better not leave his man. I can understand why the defender in the high slot feels he needs to stand his ground; he’s cutting off the pass back to the point and ostensibly erasing a one-timer, though that’s still a far better shot to give up than anything to the guy in the red box. The problem is double-teaming Joshua in the faceoff circle. The guy checking from the top of the circle in is far better off getting out of there and flying toward the shooting lane from the point, especially considering his teammate selling out to block Joshua’s shot; nine times out of ten the defender checking from behind does nothing but create problems for the rest of the defense. That would allow the high-slot defender to rotate to the backside skater in the box (Schilkey) far earlier than he does i.e. maybe in time to make a difference.

Joshua shoots, the shot gets through, the two defenders checking him are made irrelevant, and the high-slot skater (can’t tell if it’s Warren or Slaker) is chasing across an expanse too vast to close in time. Schilkey is able to tap in the rebound with ease.

3rd period

No scoring

Saturday, February 25, 2017

1st period

PASTUJOV GOAL

OSU 0 UM 1 EV 09:39 Assists: Porikos

Cutler Martin does what he’s best at: agitate. He gets in on the forecheck and exerts enough pressure that the OSU skater blindly throws the puck away behind himself. It rims around the boards.

Porikos pinches down and gets the puck about halfway down the boards. He has a big lane to the front of the net and throws it forward, I’m guessing with the hope that it will result in a rebound.

Pastujov is sliding the right direction and, to his credit, keeps his stick on the ice. The puck hits it and is deflected up and over Frey. I think even Berenson called this a lucky goal.

“We don’t have enough dynamite to get this team to understand how desperate they have to play,” Berenson said. “We know we’re not that good. Maybe we didn’t know that two months ago, but I think we figured it out now. We’re just not going to overpower a team or out-finesse a team or outscore them if we just play up-and-down hockey. We’ve got to play better defensively, and I think our team learned that, and we’ll see if we can keep that in the mix next week.”

Red Berenson in The Michigan Daily after Saturday’s win

Well, there's your State of the Program address. The ice is tilted against them no matter the opponent; look no further than any of the times they’ve played MSU if you need additional evidence. This team is lucky to generate good shot attempts let alone score. They lost a massive amount of talent and replaced it with a solid but unspectacular recruiting class; those guys will develop into solid players, and some already have, but there’s no pure scorer in that class or on the roster. This was clear last spring.

What really gets me is that they’re apparently learning they have to play better defensively now. They should have been able to see that they needed to play better defensively in November. Everyone involved in the program should have been able to see that they needed to play better defensively if they had any chance of succeeding this year. I can’t speak for what goes on behind closed doors but I do know that something either isn’t being said the right way or a bunch of guys just aren’t listening. It’s hard to watch a style of play without style and it's harder yet to watch them make the same mistakes they've made for four years running. Even tougher to stomach, though, is that there are two series left this season, both are against ranked teams, both are at Yost, and both have absolutely no bearing on how this season ends aside from whatever drips of confidence can be harvested and bottled for the Big Ten Tournament.