If you had money on Michigan Hockey being the lone team to lose to Ohio State among Hockey, Men's Basketball, and Women's Basketball last weekend, especially when the OSU team they were playing was by far the worst of the three opponents, come collect your prize. Alas, that's what happened, as Michigan procured an annoying split with the Buckeyes and now emerge from the weekend 12-8 on the season and #7 in the country. With (likely) just five games left in the regular season, we're now into the last bits of hockey before the postseason. There isn't a ton of new information to talk about, so this will be a shorter Hockey Weekly than usual, but here's a quick recap of OSU, a check in on the B1G, and a preview of Arizona State: 

Ohio State Recapped 

Michigan's weekend split featured two games that were actually more similar than you may think. While one was a 3-2 defeat and the other was a 6-0 victory, the one constant theme that remained was the Buckeyes doing almost nothing offensively to create good chances. OSU got 37 total shots across the two games and I struggle to remember any that constituted actual scoring chances that could hypothetically lead to goals. How did they score? Pretty much puck luck BS. The first goal on Friday saw the puck take a big hop off the end boards and jump between Erik Portillo's legs, leading to an empty-net goal for Gustav Westlund. The second goal still confuses me thanks to the lack of high-quality replays on BTN+'s magnificent coverage, but it seems like it took a bizarre bounce and found its way over Portillo's right shoulder at a slower rate of speed than he was expecting. And the third goal was a seeing-eye shot through traffic that wiggled into the back of the net. Incredibly frustrating. 

The bigger difference between the two games was rooted in Michigan's ability to play dominant offense. In the Friday game the Wolverines were kept to the perimeter for the most part, scoring one goal on the rare busted play, but even their first goal came from the outside on a laser shot by Kent Johnson: 

Kent Johnson with his 7th tally of the season - Owen Power and Matty Beniers with the ?s pic.twitter.com/Fs00kWQhYs

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) February 19, 2021

OSU did a fine job keeping Michigan out of high-danger areas on Friday and the Wolverines seemed lethargic as a whole, not willing to flash the speed or physicality needed to penetrate. The passing and general offensive structure was too predictable, and with Tommy Napier still having the ability to string together a strong start, the Buckeyes were able to keep Michigan off the board for the final 15 minutes and emerge with the win. I'm not sure Michigan was clearly better, but it was a game that also spoke to the randomness that any individual hockey game can have. 

Saturday saw 20 minutes of the same lethargic, boring offense from Michigan before the levee broke in the second period and it was a string of successive goals. Thomas Bordeleau and Brendan Brisson hooked up for a second straight weekend to put the Wolverines on the board: 

Thomas Bordeleau and Brendan Brisson making some magic, Michael Pastujov with the secondary assist pic.twitter.com/Gc61TBa8yE

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) February 20, 2021

Dakota Raabe notched a PPG (yes, you read that correctly), and then Jack Becker and Bordeleau scored to make it 4-0 Michigan after 40 minutes. The third period wasn't as lopsided on the scoresheet but the play wasn't any different, as Michigan continued to take it to Ohio State and we got a highlight reel goal from Bordeleau to cap off his three point night: 

Sweet dangles - look at Thomas Bordeleau! pic.twitter.com/QjxzFecvGK

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) February 21, 2021

It was an exclamation point on a Saturday night drubbing to conclude a rather annoying split. But as I will get into in the next two sections, it probably doesn't matter that Michigan dropped the Friday game. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: B1G Standings Update and Arizona State]

Checking in on the B1G Race 

​Old friend JLF still has the Gophers on top of the league [Patrick Barron]

The first reason it probably doesn't matter is because Michigan is locked into either the third or fourth spot in the B1G, but probably the third slot. The game 2 loss to Wisconsin a week ago closed off any opportunity of moving up into the top two slots, and Notre Dame struggling against Wisconsin last weekend continues to leave Michigan with the inside track to the 3 seed for the B1G Tourney, making the OSU loss pretty low in importance. Speaking of which, here are the standings with 2.5 weeks left in the season: 

1.) Minnesota - 19-5, 2.25 PPG, +49 

2.) Wisconsin - 15-8-1, 2.05 PPG, +29 

3.) Michigan - 12-8, 1.61 PPG, +33

4.) Notre Dame - 10-12-2, 1.45 PPG, -4

5.) Penn State - 9-9, 1.25 PPG, -9 

6.) Ohio State - 6-15-1, 0.95 PPG, -36 

7.) Michigan State - 7-13-2, 0.83 PPG, -27 

In the home stretch there's really only three races to watch: the battle for #1, the battle for #3, and the battle for #6. Starting with the race for the regular season title, Minnesota holds a 4 point edge on Wisconsin with only a few games to go. The Badgers are still slated to play four more games, two against Ohio State and two against Michigan State. Given the records of those teams, Wisconsin is heavily favored to win out. Minnesota only has two games left, both against Michigan thanks to Penn State's COVID debacle. The Nittany Lions have had a massive outbreak within the program that has now wiped out three straight weekends of games and there are murmurs that they may just quit the remainder of the season (TBD on that, though). Going off of points per game, if Wisconsin were to sweep their last four, they would just need Michigan and Minnesota to split to win the league regular season crown. However, we don't know if PPG/PTS% is how they're awarding the championship, as our own David Nasternak has heard speculation that it may be off of winning percentage instead. It would be nice to know the rules before the season ends, but this is college hockey so it's all a little bit of CalvinBall. 

Meanwhile the race for #3 pits Michigan against Notre Dame. The Irish play MSU this weekend and then are slated to face PSU the weekend after, but again it's unclear if the Lions will be ready to play by then. Michigan of course has three conference games left, two against Minnesota and one against Michigan State. Finishing 2-1 may be enough for the Wolverines to lock down that third spot, but it's so hard to spell out these scenarios when you don't know which games are happening, nor how the final standings are even being determined. Lastly, at the bottom of the standings the Buckeyes have now gained a leg up on the Spartans, thanks to their win on Friday. MSU's got a brutal ending of ND/Wisconsin/Michigan, while OSU has just two games left, against difficult Wisconsin. It's anyone's guess who gets the bottom here, but since I'm not optimistic that MSU wins any games the rest of the way, I think they have to be favored to finish 7th and OSU thus 6th. 

National Implications and ASU 

Thomas Bordeleau will probably get to do more scoring this weekend, if November was any indication [James Coller]

Michigan moved down to #7 in both the poll and the CHN Power 16, which isn't much of a fall for losing a game to a terrible Ohio State team, and it is the other reason why I mentioned that last weekend's games probably were not all that important in the end. Since the NCAA is doing a "selection committee" type decision-making process for seeding the field as opposed to PairWise, the eye test and the reputation of a team matter a lot, and that's one area where Michigan excels. Despite the good-but-not-spectacular 12-8 record, Michigan's +33 goal differential and 3-1 record against the top five Wisconsin Badgers probably is already enough to get the Wolverines in the tournament, unless they absolutely collapse down the stretch. The kinds of pundits who vote in the poll/formulate the Power 16 are the same kind of people who are likely to be on the selection committee- since Michigan continues to do well in those former rankings, I continue to see a strong resume for Michigan in the latter. 

So as we look towards this weekend's series against Arizona State, it feels incredibly meaningless. Sure, if Michigan loses to an ASU team that's generally been overmatched against the B1G that'll hurt their resume, but it's a series with no implications on the B1G chase (a chase that is mostly decided from Michigan's standpoint anyway). And moreover, the Pundits have already proclaimed Michigan as a tournament team. Beating Arizona State will do nothing to help Michigan's tournament case and they can probably still stomach a split, even if there's no reason for that to happen. 

As for ASU, Michigan bludgeoned the Ice Devils back in November when assessments of the team were giddy and hype was pouring out of our ears. Those games ended 8-1 and 3-0 and were never competitive. Since then it's mostly been more of that from Arizona State, as they currently sit at 6-14-2 with a -35 goal differential. They're not very good. But, ASU did manage to beat Notre Dame twice and Wisconsin twice to constitute four of their six wins, so they can cause a little havoc. As we saw in the first matchup, the Ice Devils will struggle to compete athletically with Michigan and in that way it will probably be a replay of what we saw last week with OSU. When ASU faced Minnesota and Wisconsin a few weeks ago they lost those four games a combined 29-4 (!). Against top talent they've simply had issues keeping up and so the expectation for Michigan should be an easy sweep. But as was the case last weekend against OSU, puck luck sometimes gets in the way.