[Bill Rapai]

I don't know man. I literally don't know about Sunday's game, which was not televised. I also do not know about the Friday game, during which Michigan gave back all of their defensive gains over the past month and then some. It sounds like that continued Sunday:

Glad we got those D issues ironed out

RT @umichhockey: 19:02 1st |Racine makes a great save as 2 OSU players broke into the zone all alone

— Yost Built (@YostBuilt) March 6, 2016

After giving up a 2-on-0 breakaway a minute into the game, Michigan fell down 5-1, tied the game up, had a go-ahead goal waved off, and then lost in OT. I did not see this game, but I've seen this game.

What I did see on Friday was the same kind of stomach-churning frustration on one end and joyous awesome goal-scoring on the other end I imagine Sunday was. The reason people started watching hockey in the first place is so they could see the kind of tic-tac-toe goals the CCM line bangs in with regularity; the reason they got really angry and burned down the White House in 1812 is an inability to adjust to forechecking.

Michigan looks really really talented and not too bright, same story as always post-Mel. This year they've put together one of the best lines in Red Berenson history and it's keeping them above water. Except when it doesn't. Since Berenson is almost certainly retiring there's not much to do at this point but get to the tournament and hope things bounce the right way. Change is coming either way.

But at least they gave themselves enough breathing room. We can put away the RPI calculators and fancy graphs. Per College Hockey News, Michigan is 100% in the field and highly unlikely to end up outside the 7-10 range. At that point your seeding is unimportant. We'll be hoping the ping-pong balls come up in the right way to send Michigan to Cincinnati, where a 20% capacity crowd will provide an advantage to nobody. That means Michigan wants to get bracketed with whichever NCHC team ends up third or fourth, but it's impossible to figure out how to do that.

Michigan really just wants to go three periods without having Mad Max break out.

Speaking of "not televised." You know, I'm not as down on Big Ten hockey as everybody else seems to be. It was necessary for the growth of the sport to go from two Western conferences to three. Does Arizona State exist today if it's looking at two absolutely full conferences and the prospect of a long and lonely road as an independent? I doubt it.

But I do kind of expect that a game on Sunday between blood rivals is on TV. The only basketball game between 4 and 7:30 was on CBS. To not even have a streaming option is ridiculous.

Hockey is, or at least can be, a revenue sport. It should be treated as such. I see zero evidence the Big Ten is doing this. The BTN didn't bother televising a nonconference series against BU even though they certainly could have bought rights to televise an NESN broadcast of the Friday game; Saturday wasn't televised by anyone at all.

On the next coach. The fact that Berenson is retiring after this year has entered worst-kept secret territory. It is very like Red to not tell anyone publicly, but you can expect this weekend's Penn State series to be Red's last at Yost. His legacy is such that someone's going to put his name on something important; I'm not going to handle it in a random bullet point.

No, this bullet is for looking towards the next guy. Since Michael Spath is more or less the entirety of the Michigan hockey beat he's the only person with a list of candidates, which is in some order:

• Michigan assistant Brian Wiseman
• Michigan Tech head coach Mel Pearson
• Providence head coach Nate Leaman
• U18 NTDP head coach Danton Cole
• Springfield Falcons head coach Ron Rolston

Spath's been issuing lists for a couple months now and there isn't a ton of commonality between them except for the obvious guys connected to Red. I get the feeling that nobody really knows because Red keeps his own counsel and Michigan just imported a new athletic director. The names other than Pearson and Wiseman on that list are probably educated guesses.

Set aside Pearson for a moment. I would be fine with Leaman, who turned Union into an excellent program and then turned around and did it again at Providence. Providence is in the running for a one seed this year; they are they defending national champs. I'm listening.

He would be in for some major culture shock, though: he's one of those guys importing 20 and 21 year old freshmen. Michigan doesn't recruit like that and will not recruit like that through the next, oh, three or four recruiting classes since those are all but wrapped up already. I'm pretty sure he'd be able to cope with extremely talented younger guys, but you never know. And would he be able to recruit going forward?

The other guys on the list are all major risks. Wiseman has never been a head coach and is a current assistant on a team that can't find its ass in two tries on defense. (It's in the net.) Danton Cole is a Spartan whose only college job was a dismal three-year run at UAH. Rolston does have about a decade of college coaching under his belt plus a long spell with the NTDP and a couple years as the Sabres' head coach; he hasn't been in college for a decade.

A couple of those guys might be good if you end up moving to fallback options. But then there's Mel.

I was going to put a vertical line on the chart when Mel left for Tech and then I realized it was already more or less there. It's the blue uptick and red downtick in 2012. Pearson got Tech in the tourney for the first time since 1981 last year. This year the Huskies won their first conference title since 1976. (I realize this WCHA is not the old WCHA but when you're Tech hockey any hardware is a miracle.) They've currently scrapped their way onto the bubble again. Pearson immediately made Tech much better and now that it's his program they're at a level they haven been at since Pearson was playing in Houghton.

Yes, he's a bit older than is ideal at 57. On the other hand, Red was 57 in 1997. He won a national title the year before and the year after. Michigan has the raw tools to win a national title every year; there need be no building phase. Even if Pearson does retire at around 65, you get almost a decade out of him. That decade is immediately productive. He is obviously a top-level coach who was a linchpin of Michigan's success under Red.

This isn't hiring Brady Hoke; it's more like hiring Harbaugh, insofar as hiring anyone other than Harbaugh is like hiring Harbaugh. Knowing the culture is an asset; it just can't be the only asset. Pearson was clearly a major reason Berenson succeeded and is currently in the midst of the most impressive rebuild job in college hockey.

Hire Mel Pearson.