The Michigan Hockeycast 1.9: Right in the Quinns
Therapists: MGoHockey Correspondent David Nasternak and Anthony "Don't blame the goalies" Ciatti.
This Podcast Has a Sponsor: Michigan Law Grad Jonathan Paul is the guy with the C you want skating next to the ref and pleading your case. He's also a good guy to sit next to at the hockey games.
---------------------------------
1. The Wisconsin Series
starts at 0:50
Not a great weekend! Trying to use these exclamations to hide our disappointment! Michigan was blindsided by a nice Wisconsin curveball on Friday and could not recover. Strauss Mann got another start and struggled for two periods before owning the third. Michigan gave up a breakaway goal after a man came out of the penalty box in overtime for the second straight game.
On Saturday, Michigan played much better but some less than timely defensive lapses and a bad game from Lavigne put Michigan in a situation where they would have to outscore Wisconsin, and they almost did. Another overtime loss, and another game ending that only NCAA hockey can provide. Michigan somehow gave up two overtime goals on Saturday! Positives: Mike Pastujov was the player of the weekend, Michigan mostly played very good defense on Saturday.
2. Big Ten Tournament First Round/Minnesota Preview
starts at 32:12
We touch on Michigan's season. They finished below .500. Briefly talk about the first round B10 matchups and get in-depth with Michigan-Minnesota. Season series favored Michigan aside from the final scores, seems to be a favorable matchup. David and Anthony give their predictions for the weekend. Spoiler alert: it involves watching a Canucks game next week.
If that last line is too dark I am fine with changing it
MUSIC
- "NHL on ESPN Theme"
- "NHL on Sportsnet Theme"
- "Ice Hockey (NES) theme"
THE USUAL LINKS
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
- General podcast feed link
- Direct download link (right-click/save as)
There are no fun parts of this.
It's kind of nuts that if we had swept the weekend, we would have finished 2nd in the Big Ten and instead we got swept on the weekend and finished 2nd to last in the Big Ten. 2nd place in the Big Ten would have made a disappointing season feel much better.
Didn't even need a sweep. Just 4 points.
Ugh, good point. Even just 2 points would have at least given us home ice advantage in the B1G tournament. It's just crazy that spots 2-6 in the standings were only separated by a single game's points or less. For context, last year only spots 4 and 5 were within 3 points of each other and there were 17 points between spot 2 and 6.
bring back Red...
Stop. We made the Frozen Four last season.
One small point: Not that it makes it a whole lot better, but the guy who scored the OT winner on Friday wasn't the guy in the box. He just snuck behind the defense b/c Wisconsin needed 3 points to still have a shot at hosting this weekend. The penalty ended just before the guy scored, but it wasn't the dude that was in the box. (Also, I didn't notice this, but apparently Wisconsin was pulling their goalie right when the guy got the breakaway. Again, because they needed 3 points.)
They have to play Mann the rest of the way. I'm not convinced he's a ton better than Lavigne at this point, but if my season's on the line, I'm not playing the guy who's been yanked 3 times in the recent past and played awful on Saturday night. Mann's going to allow a couple of soft goals, but he's generally avoided the total stinkbombs that Lavigne has had. (Friday was the first time he's given up more than 3 in a game since early December. But he also had a career high in saves.)
Comments