This weekend, Michigan Hockey completed the first half of their 2021-22 season following a pair of feisty games in Columbus. Friday's game saw the shorthanded Wolverines pull out a 5-2 victory, while Saturday was competitive until the wheels came off in a disastrous third period en route to a 6-1 defeat. With that, Michigan gets 2.5 weeks off before competing in the carcass of the Great Lakes Invitational in late December, representing the midway point of the campaign. Michigan has played 20 of their 36 scheduled regular season games, so this is more or less halfway. What have we learned? What can we expect going forward? 

 

Where things stand

Considering the history of Michigan stumbling through the first half of the season like a drunken sailor under Mel Pearson, going 14-6 (really 13-4-3 considering PairWise counts all OT games as functionally ties) is not bad. Though it remains a tad early to really care about national PWR, Michigan is #2 in that, which puts them in line for a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Wolverines also hold 1st place in the B1G, but only narrowly. Standings: 

Team	Conf. Record	Conf. Pts %	Ovr. Record	GD
Michigan	7-3-0-2, 23 points	.639	13-4-3	+30
Minnesota	6-3-0-1, 19 points	.633	9-7-2	+12
Ohio St	6-4, 18 points	.600	9-6-1	+17
Notre Dame	4-3-2-1, 17 points	.567	9-3-5	+25
Michigan St	4-5-1, 14 points	.467	9-6-2	-1
Wisconsin	2-6-1-1, 9 points	.300	4-11-2	-25
Penn St	2-7-1, 8 points	.267	10-8-1	+13

The Maize & Blue are a nose ahead of the Maroon & Gold at the holiday break in terms of point percentage. The conference standings are a bit all over the place. Penn State has been horrendous in conference but cleaned up against a largely easy non-conference slate (although they did get a big win over North Dakota!) and thus maintains a positive goal differential. Notre Dame, who have been firmly mediocre in the conference, have the second best goal differential. Minnesota and Ohio State seem close to identical right now in terms of in-league record, but the Gophers' performance in the non-conference indicates they're much more of a national threat than the Buckeyes. Wisconsin is really bad, while MSU has clawed back to the "respectability" category they were in a few years back. 

Looking at the national numbers, PWR likes the B1G a good bit. Notre Dame and Minnesota are solid tourney teams, while OSU is on the bubble in, and PSU and MSU are on the bubble out. Wisconsin is irrelevant, and as stated previously, Michigan is a top seed. Given all of this, it's hard not to like where Michigan is, but also still feel a little empty about where things could have been. The team's performances against Minnesota, Western Michigan, and Ohio State are all understandable given the quality of those teams and the circumstances of the games, but three games in particular stand out as the kind of efforts Michigan needs to eliminate in the second half: the two against Notre Dame and the one loss to Wisconsin. 

Any way you slice it, that loss to Wisconsin was ugly. The Badgers are a terrible hockey team who are scoring a stunningly low 1.83 goals per game (!), yet Michigan allowed that Wisconsin team to put up four on them. The game itself was extremely annoying, with Michigan winning the possession battle 63.5%-36.5%, yet sloppy mistakes and lackadaisical play doomed the Wolverines to lose a game that is unacceptable to drop. Hockey is random, yes, but that loss was not random or the result of poor puck luck. It was completely avoidable. Simply flipping that result and giving Michigan an extra three points would put the Wolverines in a much more secure position atop the league. They cannot afford those sorts of letdown games in the second half if they want to emerge as regular season champions. 

Similarly, the two Notre Dame meltdowns are tough to swallow. Michigan led both games 2-0 and lost both games in OT, the first of which they were lucky to even get to OT. Notre Dame is a good team, but Michigan had them right where they wanted them and then fell asleep defensively. The concentration, effort level and consistency, especially with the fundamentals, just has not been good enough this season, and will need to be fixed moving forward. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More Hockey thoughts and a refereeing editorial]

 

Luke Hughes has been a big reason why Michigan is here [David Wilcomes]

How we got here

Despite those lapses and shoddy attention to detail, Michigan is here because they have much better players than every other team. We knew this already, as it was pretty much the most repeated line in the season preview. Michigan has the most talented team in the NCAA, with a disgusting amount of talent that arises to historic proportions. A lot of the time, it just shows out. The Wolverines still boast a top three offense, one scoring over four goals per game. The list of stars are immense, from Brendan Brisson to Thomas Bordeleau to Matty Beniers to Kent Johnson to Luke Hughes to Nick Blankenburg to Owen Power. Their power play is still firing at 28%, top five in the NCAA, and frequently, they do things that few other players in college hockey can do. Like this: 

Are you kidding me Brendan Brisson!? pic.twitter.com/4e4sxhSHcJ

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) October 16, 2021

Or like this: 

Brendan Brisson with the go-ahead goal from Thomas Bordeleau, Michigan 3, Minnesota State 2 pic.twitter.com/7vkV5Rv8mv

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) October 16, 2021

Erik Portillo has been quite good this season in net too, even if he has had a couple of rough outings the last two weeks that have dented his numbers (I would argue that those have been mostly more on the defense than on him). Portillo has often come to his team's rescue as the defense has broken down, which has gotten Michigan quite a few of the wins they have garnered. The talent is all here, but the areas to improve are too. 

For me that boils down to the team defense, which has to improve. The Wolverines have shone themselves capable of playing good team defense this season, doing so in Duluth at the IceBreaker Tournament, and again in night #2 against Minnesota, but too often it's been sloppy. Odd man rushes have been problems, but also in-zone turnovers and lack of awareness/missed assignments. Sometimes, it's been alarmingly from experienced veterans like Garrett Van Wyhe. The hope is that they have a tendency to merely become unfocused against lesser competition, but it's the key area of improvement necessary. Everything else, the talent, the offense, and the goaltending is there. But being only 19th best in goals against is below this team's potential. 

 

The 2019 GLI was the last of its kind [James Coller]

Let's talk about the "GLI" 

The second half of the season begins with the "Great Lakes Invitational", using quotation marks there because it's not the GLI anymore, merely a sad excuse for what was once a great hockey tradition in the state of Michigan. The real GLI was a four team tournament in Detroit with a trophy between Michigan/MSU/Michigan Tech and a fourth school of choice. That is now dead, having not been held in 2020 due to COVID and now being repurposed to simply be Michigan/MSU hosting each of the two other teams with no tournament or trophy involved. The tradition is deceased and we're carrying on the name despite the contents being completely different, much like how MTV is still called Music Television despite not showing music videos for years. 

The continued existence of the "GLI" merits discussion because I don't know what Michigan is getting out of being a participant, frankly. The two games are being held on Dec. 29/30, are not being included in season ticket packages, and are being broadcast on BTN+, which is a long way of saying no one will be watching. Due to the dates, the event falls smack dab in the middle of the World Junior Championships, which has always been the case (and has always screwed Michigan to some extent), but the disadvantage it conveys to Michigan alone has exploded this season because of how Mel Pearson has chosen to build his roster. The Wolverines will be without Beniers, Mackie Samoskevich, Hughes, Power, Kent Johnson, and possibly Jacob Truscott. Meanwhile, MSU/Tech/Western will be missing no one. 

That might not be as bad if their two opponents weren't good. But as it stands, Western and Tech are two legit tourney teams. We saw the Broncos in October, and they gave Michigan all the Wolverines can handle. Now Michigan has to play them again but without five of their top nine scorers, including two of their best three defensemen? The good news is that PWR isn't going to dock you too much for losing to a really good team (it's definitely conceivable Michigan could still win one or both games!), but it escapes me why Michigan is playing these games in the first place. If it were still the true GLI, then I get the desire to continue a decades-long tradition, but it isn't.

Minnesota is a team who also stands to lose several key players to the WJC and they have not scheduled any games during the tournament. Boston U and Boston College have scheduled lesser ECAC/Atlantic Hockey teams during that window. Nothing is making Michigan play excellent opponents with one hand tied behind their back, and to me, if Mel is going to continue to build his teams through high-end NHL talent, he should commit to not scheduling any games during the WJC. Period. There's no tradition to honor here anymore, as the GLI organizers have abandoned the central premise of the tourney. As a hockey fan, I'm sad that it's gone, but it is gone, and Michigan is going to gain very little out of playing these sham "GLI" games in late December. 

 

Michigan heads to Minneapolis in the second half [James Coller]

Looking ahead 

After concluding the "GLI" and getting their roster back intact, Michigan begins the second half of their schedule, which is road-heavy in terms of where the high leverage games are. That might seem bad, until you realize the Wolverines have been far better on the road this season than at home. They do start at Yost, taking on UMass, the defending national champions and a very good team. That will be another intriguing test and a chance to further bolster the tourney resume. 

From there the B1G schedule gets into full swing and Michigan will see all the conference foes again. The marquee matchups are home against OSU (Feb. 18-19) and at Minnesota (Jan. 21-22) and Notre Dame (Feb. 25-26). But just as important will be the home series against MSU/PSU, as well as the road trip to Madison. Those three are games where Michigan realistically has to go 5-1 again to feel good about winning the conference regular season title. Obviously, any sweeps over the bigger dogs are titanic, while getting swept in regulation by any opponent is very bad news. 

Realistically, unless the Wolverines have a 2011 Red Sox style collapse down the stretch, they are already a lock for the NCAA Tournament and probably as a two seed at that. Notching regulation wins over Minnesota, OSU, Minnesota State, and Duluth, in addition to the very good record they've already accrued, ensure that much. Playing out this second half is really a matter of whether Michigan gets to hang a regular season banner, something they haven't done since 2015-16 and felt like the bare minimum for a team with this talent level. Winning such a title would also guarantee Michigan the #1 seed in the B1G Hockey Tournament, which provides for a first round bye and then the ability to host the semifinals and hypothetical finals at Yost. 

Referring to a piece I wrote a few weeks back, Mel Pearson's teams do get better in the second half of the season. Discounting the Norris-injury marred 2018-19 season, Pearson's other three teams have seen their regulation winning percentages jump by an average of 18% in the second half of the season. A jump that size in the second half would put Michigan on track to win >90% of its regulation games in the second half, something like 13 out of 14 games (assuming a couple OT contests). A clip that high would allow the Wolverines to sail to the B1G title, but is probably not realistic. Even a more muted improvement, like say, one that cuts down on the Wisconsin/ND style stinkers, would be enough to bring home the ring and banner. It remains true that if makes a Mel Second Half Jump, this team will be seemingly unstoppable by tourney time. 

 

Our culprits are in the background [James Coller]

A final note on the officiating 

I want to wrap this up by stewing on one of the hot topics of conversation in the Michigan Hockey fanbase recently, which is the refereeing. Michigan took another major penalty/game misconduct this weekend, their fifth in the last ten B1G games (!). As it sits currently, the Wolverines are the second-most penalized team in the NCAA, something that is extremely peculiar given the way Michigan plays. They are a speed and skill team without big bodies and they don't try to play outwardly physical. The notion that they are getting hit with infractions more than any other team doesn't make a lot of sense. Michigan has taken dumb/sloppy penalties, sure, but the bigger issue here is the game misconduct pattern. 

The major penalty/game misconduct calls make the least sense, because as constructed in the present, it is a complete farce of a rule. The fact of the matter is that as it is currently being enforced, the 5-minute misconduct rule is not serving its purpose, which was to protect players. It is supposed to stop the sort of goonery in hockey that was once policed by the Bob Proberts and Joe Kocurs of the world that has since been revealed to us to instill lasting cognitive damage in its victims. That quest is noble and there have been instances this season in Michigan games where it's being called correctly. When Duluth's Noah Cates deliberately hit Nick Blankenburg in the head with an elbow after Blankenburg had played the puck and was stationary, it was correctly assessed as a misconduct penalty, and Cates was tossed. That's the sort of stuff that the rule is in place to eliminate. 

But then why was this reviewed and then not deemed to be a misconduct penalty back when Michigan faced Wisconsin?: 

This wasn't called a penalty *after a video review* pic.twitter.com/2LevEu3SDE

— Chris Dilks (@ChrisDilks) October 30, 2021

There you have Garrett Van Wyhe fall to the ice and get cross-checked in the back of the head. They sat down, watched a player deliberately get hit in the head while he wasn't playing the puck, a play that's only explanation is an intent to injure, and decided that was all fine and dandy. That is a far, far more dangerous hit than Jay Keranen this weekend or Steve Holtz against Notre Dame in November, going for a standard hit and unintentionally making contact with a player already falling down, who goes into the boards. Either call the hit on GVW a major, or lay off the Keranen and Holtz calls, but it needs to be consistent.

And please spare me the waxing poetic about how the NCAA cares about player safety and has made the according rules changes. This rule is not protecting players or preventing them from sustaining lasting brain damage. All it's doing is subjecting us to a three minute horse-and-pony show where the referees enter a glass box and we attempt to discern what they will rule with the same accuracy of a blindfolded child playing pin the tail on the donkey. There is no rhyme or reason why some calls are majors and some are not, and we never get an explanation why, because that would require the NCAA to justify the actions of their referees, which is simply too much to ask of *checks notes* a multi-billionaire sports cartel.

Instead, unaccountable referees decide whether to disqualify a 20-year-old for the entire rest of the game and whether the opposing team gets a five minute power play, and we are supposed to sit back and respect their decision. Of course, this is assuming the paid streaming service we are forced to watch the games on even bothers to provide us with usable footage of a given hit. Malicious hits that do real damage to players get off scot free, while benign hits with no intent to injure alter games and prevent prime-age players from playing the game they love. An NHL fan who doesn't watch college hockey asked me if this iteration of the sport's refereeing is similar to the NHL, which is currently being litigated by the entire NHL community for being terrible, and I responded with "it's significantly worse". 

[Bryan Fuller]

College hockey as a product sucks, and if the NCAA or USA Hockey ever wants to understand why it holds niche sport status in the US, even as more NHL prospects play college hockey than ever before, they can begin by reading these last three paragraphs. 

Refereeing any sport nowadays, when the players and the pace of play move with breathtaking speed, is nearly impossible. My sympathy is with referees unequivocally because I know that I would never have the skills to even attempt it. I don't complain about refereeing often and I have often defended them in public since this company's founder gave me a platform to do so as a K-List Sports Media Guy. Expecting referees to get everything right is ridiculous, and I wrote after October's Michigan-Michigan State football game that our hope should simply be for the referees to get the obvious stuff right (something they did not do in that game). 

But misconduct calls are a different paradigm because they are not made at high speed. Referees get the benefit of instant replay and as much time as they need to break a play down. Under those circumstances, they should get the calls 100% correct, especially since the consequences for being assessed a game misconduct are so crushing in hockey. I don't know what clip referees are currently firing at for those calls, but it is not nearly high enough. Not when you get multiple minutes to get it right. It is unacceptable, plain and simple. 

Beyond the misconduct problems, we do need to talk about refereeing in general from Friday night, which segues more into the debate that the NHL has been having. As the league is mired in an attendance slump, stunned owners are trying to figure out how to make the game better and everyone is screaming for one solution: reorient your league so the best players succeed. In the past 30 years, the NBA tweaked its rule book so that the players who draw the most fouls are always some of the top players in the league. The NFL has more or less made it a federal crime to lay a finger on the QB if he doesn't hold the football, while also calling DPI so tightly that it has rendered playing cornerback damn near impossible. The result? Superstar QBs have smashed all previous records to become the singular faces of the league and passing attacks have lifted the product to new heights. 

Help the talented players out! [JD Scott]

Hockey meanwhile, insists on doing everything in its power to ensure that its star players get screwed by the rule book because star players drawing more penalties than a mediocre player wouldn't be fair to that mediocre player. Opponents are allowed to drape themselves on skilled, fast players like Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon with no fear of interference penalties, slowing them down and hindering their ability to flash the talent that makes them the best players on earth. We all look at this and say "okay then" and at the end of the season, pedestrian names like Shayne Gostisbehere lead the league in penalties drawn. 

I couldn't help but think about this during the first half, as I've watched Michigan's high talent pieces like Matty Beniers and Thomas Bordeleau wear defenders on their back like a cheap suit, frequently being ripped down from behind with no whistle coming. Michigan has taken more penalties than they've drawn and during a contest in November against Notre Dame, drew  *one* minor penalty in the entire 64 minute hockey game (while ND drew three), despite the constant clutching, grabbing, and holding. Promoting that kind of refereeing, one that rewards constant interference, always helps less skilled, more defensive teams and it reigns supreme across hockey. Unfortunately, Michigan is not a less skilled, more defensive team. 

To conclude this section, all I'll say is this: from a pure entertainment standpoint, it's awfully tiring to see Michigan's fast, exciting players (you know, the ones you pay money to buy tickets to see) get weighed down by ignored interference for 60 full minutes, only for Michigan to end up with one PP in the contest, while Michigan is tacked with a five minute major whenever they attempt to lay a hit along the boards following an unexplained and incomprehensible review. It doesn't make a lot of sense that a non-physical team like Michigan should be the second most penalized team in the NCAA, with most of that stemming from misconducts. But let's not act like this is the primary reason why Michigan is losing games.