Hockey Holds The Banner High

Various impressions from a weekend against Ohio State (W 4-3 Friday, W 6-1 Saturday):

Ah, Markell. I have a love-hate relationship with Ohio State coach John Markell, who's stewarded the Buckeye program for a remarkable 13 years without doing much other than pick up the occasional NCAA bid when his French-Canadian seniors are actually good. This happens rarely, which is fine by me.

Markell's teams always play to goad opponents. This is most apparent whenever the goalie covers the puck, at which time Ohio State will always do the bitchiest thing possible in the hopes of getting a retaliatory penalty. At one point Saturday an OSU player took a shot from just inside the blue line that Hogan covered. The shooter skated length of the zone to give Hogan a completely unnecessary snow shower.

This makes them easy to hate, but their general ineptness also makes them easy to beat, which usually makes the easy to hate part a little cherry on top of a victory sundae.

All in all, the situation is remarkably like what Notre Dame was dealing with under Dave Poulin. Since no one really cared about hockey at Notre Dame and Poulin seemed like a nice guy they let him stay on for like ten years without doing anything. Then they boot him, pick up Jeff Jackson, and the very next year they're way better.

Argh, Wilkins. My relationship with Mark Wilkins is plain hate. DCNole on the Rivals hockey board summarized this excellently, so let me crib:

One of my least favorite officiating crutches is when a play that isn’t deemed a penalty suddenly becomes a penalty after something happens a few seconds later.

Case in point #1: Wohlberg drives the net on a shorthanded breakaway. The backchecking forward does a nice job to disrupt Wohlberg’s scoring chances. In the process, he bumps Wohlberg into the goalie as Wohlberg clearly attempts to stop before making contact. Contact occurs. Goofy backup sieve from OSU lunges out of the crease and attempts to go after Wohlberg. No penalty call is made when the impact occurs, but as soon as the goalie overreacts, suddenly its matching minors: the goalie for trying to attack Wohlberg, and Wohlberg for “charging the goaltender”, which was completely ridiculous.

Case in point #2: Hagelin skates behind the net after OSU goalie has played the puck. OSU goalie makes an unexpected turn to take the long way back to his crease and collides head on with Hagelin. This wasn’t a check. It’s a bump. The goalie doesn’t go down. Hagelin pursues the puck. No indication that a call is coming. Cranky OSU defender then goes berserk, chases Hagelin down, and punches him in the head 3 times. Carl throws no punches and mostly just looks surprised that the OSU player is going so nuts. End result? OSU defender who leaded three punches to Hagelin’s head, and then actually punched the ref (by accident) as he tried to land more blows, gets a minor for contact after the whistle, and Hagelin gets a double minor for roughing (even though he did nothing) and charging the goaltender (who was behind the net, and was every bit as at fault for the harmless collision). In both cases, it appeared that Michigan was not going to be called for a penalty until OSU over-reacted.

That was a minor annoyance in a game Michigan was leading by five goals, but that's the kind of officiating that encourages post-whistle goonery, condones OSU's bitchy tactics, and ends up with tons of unnecessary penalties. I've been watching this guy referee CCHA games for ten years; in that time I have seen all ten guys on the ice sent to the box at once, preposterous game misconducts, and a general tendency to self-aggrandizement.

Once way back in the day—also against OSU—a couple friends and I decided to bet on the total penalty minutes in the game with Price is Right rules; I don't remember who won or what their guess was, but I do remember the final count: 120(!!!). This was the "ten guys in the box" game, which really allowed Wilkins to show off his penalty-calling chops but in no way slowed the mayhem.

In my slightly younger and slightly more rage-filled days I briefly considered a weekly CCHA referee rating system where 10 was Dr. Zaius, 5 was a feces-flinging monkey, 2 was an LSD-tripping monkey with Down's syndrome, and 1 was Mark Wilkins. Unfortunately, that seemed to require actual artistic renditions of the various states and I am the Mark Wilkins of drawing objects.

What? Though Michigan won the Friday game they were outshot by 12, outplayed in general, and spent long sections of the game futilely attempting to break out of their own zone; I thought I'd be spending this time decrying the general state of the team and their early-season struggles.

So, of course Michigan comes out and blows the doors off on Saturday minus their #1 center. (Yes, Ohio State maintained a slight advantage in shots but in terms of territory and actual chances Michigan annihilated them.) I don't know, you tell me.

We want Bork. Carl Hagelin is by far my favorite player on the team. Just watch the kid: he makes a thousand tiny little plays that keep possession or keep the zone or get it out of the zone and he backchecks like a demon. Also, he is Swedish. (Kudos to the students who've been sporting an enormous Swedish flag the past couple weeks.)

So, like, I'm not totally thrilled with this:

The biggest change in today’s practice was Carl Hagelin’s move to the third line center. The sophomore has played left wing on the top two lines thus far this season, and he filled in at center when Matt Rust was scratched Saturday because he was “dinged up.” Michigan coach Red Berenson called Hagelin’s efforts “terrific” on Saturday as he accumulated four blocks in the game.

Berenson moved Hagelin to the third line so he could remain a centerman.

“There’s more opportunity for him to get the puck and to help out defensively at center,” Berenson said. “When you’re playing on the road, you’re worried about team defense first.”

I mean, I get it. Hagelin spent a few games at center late last year when Rust broke his leg and my reaction was something like "bork schwing!" And on Saturday I was ready to run out and learn the Swedish national anthem. Hagelin is perfect as a center; anything to get him more involved is great. But bumping him to the third line?

Michigan does roll their top three lines pretty equally, so there's that, but if Michigan's trailing late I kind of want Hagelin out there. Or if they're leading late I'd like to see the Hagelin-Rust lockdown package. Eh. Red obviously knows more about hockey than a thousand copies of me.

With the Palushaj line staying intact, you'll see Turnbull, Winnett, and the two freshmen flanking Rust and Hagelin in some combination; this is the part of the post where you envision Pacioretty fitting in somewhere and sigh heavily.

Sigh.

Stepping forward. As the season progresses it's getting easier to read who's taken a step forward this season. Guys who have improved:

• Tim Miller has gone from snakebitten, goal-free guy who would hopefully kick around the fourth line to an effective net-crashing counterpart to Caporusso and Palushaj. He scored the game-winner Friday by putting his head down grinding his way to the front of the net, where he redirected a pass in. He is what he is; this year Michigan has a much better use for him. Miller also had two or three crushing, clean checks over the weekend.
• Ben Winnett got stuck on the fourth line last year and was the one disappointment in the freshmen class; this year you can see his stickhandling skills more prominently and he's getting some power play time. It hasn't shown up on the scoreboard yet, but it's coming.
• Greg Pateryn got passed over for walk-on Eric Elmblad early in the season; now he's unleashing a bomb of a shot from the top of Michigan's umbrella power play on the second unit. He also got in on the "destroy a Buckeye" party.

This is outside the obvious candidates of Palushaj and Caporusso; I have to confess that I've never been that impressed with Caporusso's talents* but anyone who puts up the points he does is doing something right. I guess I like my short guys to have sick Hensick/Comrie dangle.

*(As in, I never put him in that elite Cammalleri-Hensick-Comrie tier of midgets who score like 1.5 PPG as underclassmen.)

GOALIE WAR. I still lean Sauer. Though he gave up three goals on Friday not one of them was anything approaching soft and IIRC all of them were basically unsaveable. Hogan was pretty good Saturday but gave up a soft goal for the second consecutive appearance.

Chant of the Week. At some point Scooter Vaughn took a penalty, and the student section started chanting "racist, racist" at the ref. A+++++++++++ will chant again.

Etc.: As always, Yost Built has content for you.