Somewhat Informed Hockey Bits Comment Count

Brian

zach[1]

Nagelvoort rides to the rescue

Due to some recording snafus I ended up catching only the final two periods of Friday's game and the third period Saturday, along with the overtimes. Also, the feed FCS picked up looked like an internet stream and it was really hard to figure out who anyone other than Kevin Lohan was even though the announcers tried their damndest to keep us informed. (Seriously, they were great.) I didn't actually see any goals until the Motte winner on Saturday, though I saw replays of some of them. Not enough to write a column, but here are various bullets:

That was probably a good UNH team. The Wildcats were 20-12-7 last year, 13-8-6 in Hockey East, reaching the second round of the NCAA tournament. They lost a couple of their better forwards but returned the vast bulk of their scoring—10 of their top 12—and both goalies. They opened with a solid win over Clarkson in the Icebreaker and then lost 3-2 to Minnesota. By the end of the year that's going to be another quality scalp for Pairwise purposes. Michigan's done a lot of work in just two weeks here.

So far so good for Nagelvoort. Man, when Racine went down with what was obviously a groin issue that I'd be lasts a month or maybe longer (he's definitely out this weekend, and not practicing), dark thoughts flitted through my head. Nagelvoort comes out, my former goalie buddy remarks on how enormous his pads are, and he proceeds to shut UNH out through a rampant third period in which they outshoot Michigan 14-2, with one of those stops an impressive recovery on a penalty shot.

The next night he holds UNH to two goals through an entire game and overtime. Four games in Michigan's save percentage is .937 as a team and Nagelvoort is at .949. Massive sample size disclaimers are of course warranted. It's still the best possible start you could have hoped for minus the Racine injury. Hopefully it keeps up.

Power play: extant. Michigan's 6 of their first 16, a 38% strike rate, and that feels like a sustainable thing since Michigan's been going up against good teams and has been setting up in the zone for extended periods of time. The puck movement is night and day from last year, when their single idea was "get the puck to Trouba." It's too early for me to tell you much else—I get my mind around hockey things slowly.

Recovery. Michigan scrambled their lines for the first time this year after they got pinned in their zone for disturbingly long stretches of the third period on Friday night. They ended up getting outshot nearly 2 to 1 and that was a fair reflection of the play on the ice, if aided by buckets of penalties—UNH had eight power plays. The next night the script flipped and Michigan was better in the last 25 minutes.

Buddies. Michigan's line scramble affected almost everyone but did leave two forward pairs joined: Copp/DeBlois and Motte/Compher.  I expect those pairings are untouchable with the success the former has had since its formation at midseason last year—Copp also leads the team in points with 6—and the success the latter's had since their NTDP days. Motte and Compher have already connected on a number of plays that show great understanding of each other and seem like they're more than the sum of their parts when they're on the ice together.

The defense is about what we expected. Bennett is far more aggressive with his puck rushes, Clare's slow speed of thought on the ice gets Michigan trapped in their own zone too often, and Serville continues to make scary mistakes. The freshmen have been a pleasant surprise, especially Lohan, who I figured would mostly ride the bench but has been in the way of a lot of scoring plays. Judgments here are still extremely tentative—ask me again after the upcoming four-game homestand.

Michigan's going to need to get some more playmaking from these guys. Successful passes to set up rushes have been lacking. Four games in the defensemen have four points between them, all of them assists, three of them Clare's.

Nieves stands out. Nieves had the proverbial jump over the weekend; on Friday his line was the primary one generating chances in the final two periods. The shuffle put him with Guptill and Hyman and while they didn't score the line got Guptill seven shots. That is a good guy to get shots; Nieves seems to be emerging. Di Giuseppe, too, seems to be more active this year.

Comments

mgoblue99

October 22nd, 2013 at 4:25 PM ^

Glad to see some coverage of the hockey team.  Hopefully they can continue their strong play this weekend.  Even though UMass-Lowell and BU are no longer top-10 teams, they're good opponents, and wins over both of those teams would be huge come tournament selection time, as I imagine both will be "teams under consideration."  Hopefully the Yost crowd shows up this weekend; no football game to use as an excuse.

enlightenedbum

October 22nd, 2013 at 4:57 PM ^

For what it's worth, Naglevoort looked really solid in the exhibition game too.  So that's about two full games for him now where it seems like you can trust that guy to be at least competent, and possibly better than that.

gwkrlghl

October 22nd, 2013 at 5:40 PM ^

Nagelvoort has been surprisingly composed back there in net. A lot of times when you see a new goalie in net, they kind of flail and overreact to pucks and you can tell they're flying by the seat of their pants. Nagelvoort has been solid back there, he looks like a multi-year starter already (small sample size caveat again) but to play that composed on the road was impressive

goblueram

October 22nd, 2013 at 5:07 PM ^

I was going to say the same thing, with the rule changes this year in the NHL those definitely wouldn't be allowed.  

Also, I've always thought it is crazy for tenders to not wear the plastic neck protector that hangs from the mask.  I certainly don't skate without one.  

Sac Fly

October 22nd, 2013 at 5:22 PM ^

With so much uncertainty around the blueline coming into this year and with a major size advantage at forward, Michigan isn't running the 3-2 High anymore.

Instead of trying to run the power play from the blueline, they have brought the third forward down and run it low from the half boards.

That takes away some of the quarterback responsibilities from the defensemen and gives it to a forward, which JT Compher and Tyler Motte have done a great job handling so far.

gwkrlghl

October 22nd, 2013 at 5:37 PM ^

I'd agree on Nieves. It was hard to tell what was happening on the FCS feed but you heard Nieves name a lot and he was flying through the zone, making those small 'good' plays it seemed like. Looks a lot more confident and determined with his skating this year

I do also think the early returns on this team are pretty great. Defense has made me nervous at times (and we did give up a zillion odd man rushes and breakways to UNH) but all-in-all it looks like youthful talent, not a bad corps. Powerplay too has been promising as was Nagelvoort. And when you consider what games we just played, it looks even better

  • vs #4 BC
  • @ RIT's homecoming game in front of 10,500+
  • @ #13 UNH twice

And we're 3-0-1. I think we've done about as well as any of us could've possibly hoped for to this point.

enlightenedbum

October 22nd, 2013 at 6:00 PM ^

I couldn't watch this weekend, but the guy besides Compher I was most impressed by against BC was Zach Hyman, who was absolutely flying around and doing all kinds of great stuff.  Did that continue against UNH?  I have an out of proportion love of speedy obnoxious third line centers (probably because of Kris Draper), so would very much enjoy that development.

Adam Schnepp

October 23rd, 2013 at 1:25 PM ^

The penalty kill has also been very good. Michigan has allowed 3 goals over 23 short-handed situations for a conversion percentage of 13%. UNH was 0-8 on Friday and 1-4 on Saturday; 1-12 over a weekend series isn't bad.