3/25/2022 – Michigan 5, American International 3 – 30-9-1  

3/27/2022 – Michigan 7, Quinnipiac 4 – 31-9-1, Frozen Four

The NCAA Hockey Tournament is one of the more absurd exercises on earth, distilling a sport that is highly random and variable on a game-to-game level into exactly that: a series of single games where everything is on the line. In terms of setting out to crown the "best" team, it falls far short of that aim, generally recognizing champions who were more lucky than good, although every team in the tournament is good. It's just that each game often hinges on a whim, a lightning bolt moment of chance decided by the margin of a few inches. We saw that twice this weekend in games Michigan was not involved in. Western Michigan defeated Northeastern after the puck crossed the goal line by the tiniest of margins before being swatted out by goaltender Devon Levi: 

Devon Levi turns the puck over behind the Northeastern goal, and Luke Grainger makes him pay with the overtime winning goal.@WMUHockey advances to the regional final. pic.twitter.com/YgJLJsxdTV

— J.D. Burke (@JDylanBurke) March 25, 2022

Denver and Duluth were playing an incredibly intense game on Saturday that was decided by a bounce for the ages off the end boards, slingshotting back off Duluth's goalie Ryan Fanti, and laying free for the taking of Carter Savoie in the crease: 

Goal No 22 for Carter Savoie & the Pios are up. pic.twitter.com/6X1iP11Ioe

— Denver Hockey (@DU_Hockey) March 26, 2022

Just like that, #5 Minnesota-Duluth had their terrific season ended because of an unlucky bounce. 

The NHL has set up their playoff structure so that the teams play four rounds of best four-out-of-seven series to determine a champion. It is not perfect, and sometimes randomness still reigns supreme, but that structure is designed to weed out as much of the inherent randomness to hockey as possible. The NCAA Tournament does the exact opposite, reducing games to dice rolls, where one mistake or one bad bounce can end a season and render the preceding forty games of work meaningless. To win the NCAA Tournament is the equivalent of an NHL team winning the first game of each of the four series they play in the playoffs, something that hasn't happened since 2013. 

Michigan has felt the cruel knife of the NCAA Tournament before. A catastrophic collapse against Colorado College in 2005 ended the season of a 30-7-3 Michigan team that had dominated the CCHA in the regular season. A stunning shutout at the hands of Air Force in the first round eliminated a one seed Michigan team back in 2009. A controversial no-goal call in OT against Miami (OH) in 2010 cost Michigan a chance to play in the Frozen Four in Detroit. And a loss to Cornell in OT of the first round as the second overall seed ended Michigan's 2012 season and the career of Shawn Hunwick.

[David Wilcomes]

The Wolverines rode into this tournament as the top overall seed with their dream team roster and the best chance to end the national title drought in fourteen years. I picked Michigan to advance out of the regional, as did David, and all of College Hockey News' experts. They had a favorable draw and were playing good hockey. But in the back of your head you knew there was a chance that disaster could strike. This is the NCAA Tournament, it's happened before, it could happen again. 

It didn't happen this weekend, but it felt like it could. Michigan fans got visions of 2005 amid a disastrous third period that saw Quinnipiac score three times in ten minutes to trim the seemingly insurmountable lead to one goal. Everything this team had worked for over the course of 40 games dangled in the balance, as Michigan clung to a rope for dear life, feeling angry Bobcats nipping at their toes. The dark clouds converged... and then they abated. A lifeline emerged from the Quinnipiac coaching staff and Michigan climbed that rope to safety as Michael Pastujov hit the empty net from just outside the faceoff circle.

It was not pretty, but it doesn't have to be. In this insane tournament that haunts college hockey fanbases each March, you get no style points for winning in a non-heart attack-inducing manner. You do whatever it takes to move on to the next round, because your season is on the line every game, and in every second of every game. In an event where a bad bounce can ruin your season, you never, ever take NCAA Tournament wins for granted. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More narrative & HockeyBullets]

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[David Wilcomes]

I wrote a few weeks back about the role energy level plays in the sport of hockey after Michigan raised its compete level to finally overcome Notre Dame in the B1G Tournament semifinals. We got another glimpse of that on Sunday. I said at that time that hockey functions like tennis, where it's not humanly possible to play at 100% effort level throughout an entire game. You will lose all your energy twenty minutes in if you try to go pedal to the metal the whole game. Hockey games seesaw back and forth, and often times it is the bad bounces or the fluky mistakes that give a team the trigger they need to pick their energy level up to a new gear.

Think of it like a shot of espresso. One team is in command, controlling the pace, and the opposition is beaten down. Then boom, something sudden and surprising happens in favor of the trailing team, they get a goal, and just like a shot of espresso, they're awake, alive, and fired up. The energy level reaches a new degree and the other team, previously in total command of the game, is dazed and caught flatfooted. 

I've seen that scenario play out many times before in hockey, and it's typically the formula for any time a team chokes a third period multi-goal lead away. You cannot let the door get propped ajar because the trailing team will whip out a crowbar and blow that bad boy right off its hinges. And the crowbar is energy level. Skating a little bit faster, hitting a little harder, playing with a sense of confidence and energy. Winning puck battles, securing positions in front of the net, playing in an elevated manner that catches the opponent by surprise and takes a few minutes to adjust to. 

[David Wilcomes]

In Sunday's game, the door being propped ajar was the second goal. Michigan entered the third period up 4-0 and could afford to give up one goal without the dynamics of the game meaningfully changing. Which is what happened. Quinnipiac scored a goal with just under 16 minutes to go in the third period to make it 4-1, but nothing much changed. For the next five minutes, Michigan locked the game down, playing excellent defense in the center ice area. They set up their neutral zone trap, cut off entries at the blue line, and chipped it down the ice with ease. It was the same defensive clinic that salted away 25 minutes of game time last weekend against Minnesota, the last 16 minutes of game time a week before that against Notre Dame, and the entire final twenty minutes against Ohio State back in late February. They were in cruise control. 

Then the moment where everything changed happens. With around 11 minutes to play in the game, Ethan Edwards skated out from behind his net and prepared to make a very routine first pass to facilitate the zone exit while Quinnipiac was in a change. He had Nick Blankenburg to his right as the easy outlet when the Bobcat forechecker Ethan de Jong zoomed up on him. As he went to make the pass, for whatever reason, the puck began to roll on him. Realizing it was sliding away from his reach, he squatted down to regain possession as de Jong bore down on him. Either due to an improper center of gravity or poor ice under his feet (or both), Edwards keeled over and lost total possession. de Jong picked it up, cut out wide, and hit Wyatt Bongiovanni back door for the goal. 4-2. 

That was the moment when the script flipped. For the next seven minutes, Quinnipiac's energy level soared to 120%, reaching a point it had not hit in that game. They played with their hair on fire for every shift and Michigan was dazed, panting just trying to keep up. It's in these moments that the structural and schematic parts of hockey coaching go out the window. It doesn't matter what you draw up or how you teach the guys to defend if they're getting badly outworked and outcompeted. Not to mention that when you are getting outworked, your fundamentals tend to break down in the name of trying to keep up with the opposition. That's what happened on the third QPac goal, with Michigan chasing the Bobcats around the ice like Wile E. Coyotte after roadrunner and sure enough, the Wolverines got an anvil dropped on them when Desi Burgart scored to make it 4-3. 

[David Wilcomes]

The energy level sea change didn't stop there. Quinnipiac just kept hammering Michigan, only slightly undercut by when the Bobcats went on a PP a minute later and their putrid power play calmed things down a bit. But when the game resumed at 5v5, it was like the Bobcats were on a power play. In those situations when your skaters are getting spanked by the opposition, you hope your goaltender can stand strong. Erik Portillo did for Michigan, keeping the lead, and then the lifeline came in the form of the empty net. Just seconds after Rand Pecknold pulled Dylan St. Cyr, a good defensive stick from Thomas Bordeleau turned QPac over and then a good pass from the sophomore center sent Michael Pastujov free for the empty netter. 

After that point, the game was not the same. Just as the second goal had sent Quinnipiac's energy level soaring, the empty netter hit their energy level like a ton of bricks. They lost the emotional edge they had had and the game slipped out of their fingers. By the time Nolan Moyle collected his second goal of the game on an empty netter, that was all she wrote for the Bobcats. Tight hockey games hinge on one bad pass here, one bad bounce there, and those moments are also the triggers that reverse the energy level. Ethan Edwards giveth, Rand Pecknold giveth back. Energy level is far from static, and Michigan had just enough gas in the tank to sneak their way out of Allentown victorious. Do whatever it takes. 

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[David Wilcomes]

HockeyBullets 

Don't ask me much about the AIC game. I put this in the QPac preview Sunday morning, but the AIC game is mostly irrelevant and please spare me from the discourse about how that game portends anything for the Frozen Four. Michigan led the entire game, were lapping AIC in shot attempts when the game was close, salted away 27 minutes of game time with a three goal lead, and then won by two. That was not a competitive game, with Michigan being vastly better in every phase and it is not applicable to any games moving forward. 

Three cheers for Michigan's program guys. I was watching Sunday's contest with a friend of mine and after Michigan's fourth line produced their second goal of the first period to put the Wolverines up 2-0, I reminded him that the Red Wings' famed Grind Line was notorious for scoring big goals in key playoff situations. Darren McCarty scored the Cup-clinching goal in Game 4 of the 1997 Stanley Cup Final, Kris Draper scored the OT winner to complete the comeback in Game 2 of the 1998 Stanley Cup Final, and McCarty scored a hat trick in Game 1 of the 2002 Western Finals against Colorado. Michigan's fourth line put on one of those performances on Sunday evening. 

An energetic shift right out of the gate with a little help from Owen Power helped Nolan Moyle get a greasy goal, and then Luke Hughes' silky edges helped create this incredible pass and goal for Jimmy Lambert on the backdoor: 

Jimmy Lambert wins the draw back to Luke Hughes and buries it to make it 2-0 Michigan pic.twitter.com/CbxkoFJ5Qd

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) March 27, 2022

Garrett Van Wyhe would pick up a short-handed goal later (discussed in another point) and Moyle had the second empty-netter that officially reduced Quinnipiac's win probability to 0% in the game. You can legitimately make the case that they were Michigan's best line in this game and it's hard not to feel extremely happy for this group of guys. Those three came to Michigan in the 2018 recruiting class, one of two mostly barren recruiting classes that filled the gulf between Norris/Quinn and Beniers/Power/Brisson/Johnson/Bordeleau, and they saw a couple lean years their first two seasons at Michigan. They were members of teams that actually relied upon them to score consistently (yikes!) and also had two chances to play in the NCAA Tournament wiped out by COVID (2020 and 2021). After four years, they finally played in their first NCAA Tournament games and now get to take Michigan to the Frozen Four. Pretty neat. 

Special teams matter! There's been a push in recent years by the hockey analytics crowd to center the discussion of the sport around 5v5 play and I get why: most of the game gets played at that strength. Just ask Quinnipiac and St. Cloud, who played a game on Friday night where not a single penalty was called. That said, I think sometimes the push to only examine 5v5 play ignores how important special teams can be, and how they can tip the scales of games (and sometimes series). Sunday was the encapsulation of that in a nutshell, as Michigan's vastly superior special teams performance was the difference. First of all, it's hard for me to respect that whole "90% PK" thing that Quinnipiac was boasting about when they let this happen: 

Tic-Tac-Toe, it's 3-0 pic.twitter.com/BPtBTIWbkO

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) March 27, 2022

That pass from Brisson to Bordeleau in the slot is a direct pass to the most dangerous area on the ice and it should be priority #1 of any penalty kill to take that away. You'd think that a PK that was supposed to be as good as QPac's would know to block that lane off and not leave it wide open. Michigan got another PPG in garbage time from Brendan Brisson, but I'm less interested in that, although it's very funny that Michigan went 2/2 against the nation's second-best penalty kill. 

The Quinnipiac power play was arguably more egregious. First of all, they let this short-handed goal happen, which, at the time, felt like the dagger late in the second period:

Nick Blankenburg to Garrett Van Wyhe - a short-handed goal and Michigan leads 4-0! pic.twitter.com/8Mz4BYhxer

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) March 27, 2022

The Bobcat at the point slides down the wall, quickly runs into trouble and turns it over, and then the speed of Michigan pays its dividends. Blankenburg outskates the Quinnipiac backcheckers, and the Bobcats do a very poor job of handling the situation. No one takes GVW charging the net, and they allow him to clean up the rebound for an easy goal. But beyond giving up a backbreaking shorty, Quinnipiac's PP didn't look remotely threatening in three tries. As I mentioned in the narrative, the two minutes of PP time they got was honestly the least dominant stretch of the frenetic seven minutes where they pounced on Michigan in terms of generating quality looks. In all you had Michigan go 2/2 on the PP, QPac go 0/3, and the Wolverines finish +3 in goal differential on special teams. Ballgame right there. 

[David Wilcomes]

Let's talk about that decision to pull the goaltender. Game theory at MGoBlog is back, folks! We debated this on the podcast but this will be a more elongated version of my take. For starters, it was too early. The reason I say so is because Quinnipiac had control of the game already. In the preceding 30 or so seconds before the decision was made, the following events happened: 

• Quinnipiac enters the zone after a Michigan change, Wolverines more or less turtle and put five guys in front of their own net and hope the shot is blocked, putting little pressure on the perimeter (also known as the MSU school of defending). Portillo makes a save and covers for a whistle. 
• Quinnipiac wins an OZone draw, de Jong goes below the goal line and attempts a cross-seam pass to Mendel on the backdoor that Michigan doesn't cut off, and Portillo makes a huge save. 
• Michigan wins the draw but can't clear, QPac gets a point shot that Portillo snags and then covers up. 

All of that takes place in the Michigan zone. Quinnipiac has the puck almost non-stop, getting solid looks at Portillo, and pressing the issue. They don't need the extra skater at this point, the way they have Michigan on their heels. Pulling the goalie suddenly gives Michigan an opportunity to pick up their energy level (knowing that a chance to end the game is within reach and not, say, a couple minutes away) and changes the dynamic of the game in the moment.

Moreover, pulling the goalie at any point in the game was going to be inherently risky for Quinnipiac because of Michigan's speed. We saw it plenty of times early in the game, where QPac would press, get a little overextended, and create an opportunity for Michigan to hit back with speed. That created breakaways/rush chances for Samoskevich, GVW, and a few others. When you pull the empty net, you make it so that if Michigan can just break out of the zone with possession once, they're going to toast you in the neutral zone and put the game away.

To me, they should've ridden at 5v5 for a couple more minutes to see if they couldn't get the goal without doing it (it seemed like there was a real chance the way they were throttling Michigan) and then if it ticks down between two minutes and ninety seconds, you roll the dice. But I don't like rolling the dice that early when you only need one goal. Two goals, yes, do it then. But one goal, with the feel of that game, no way. 

[David Wilcomes]

Defense? Defense. This was not Michigan's best defensive game, plain and simple. They got off to a slow start defensively and while part of that was trying to pick up the pace to coax Quinnipiac into playing a high event game, Michigan made a lot of mistakes. A bad pinch from Owen Power created a 3v1 the other way that Portillo made a big save on and there were several times that Michigan allowed 3v3 or 2v2 rushes coming their way to turn into odd-man situations as their defense toppled like a Jenga tower. In real time I thought they were odd-man situations and then on re-watch I noticed many were not and instead were just comically poor defense. The Wolverines' zone entry denial defense in the first period was especially poor as well.

To their credit, the second period and really, the first half of the third period up until the Edwards debacle was much stronger. I'm actually not as concerned as some who are penning the "CAN THIS MICHIGAN TEAM CLOSE SOMEONE OUT?" takes because the answer (if you have watched this team for more than just this past weekend) is yes. We saw them do it with ease against OSU and Notre Dame, and let's be frank, with ease against Minnesota too. Yes the Gophers scored two late but those were on the PK with the empty net, and the second was so late that the game was already over. At 5v5, Michigan was totally suffocating, something they were beginning to do in this one until the Edwards turnover gave QPac a chance to pick up their energy. Michigan will definitely need to be defensively crisper from start to finish in Boston, but as I laid out in the narrative, the third period was more about an energy level imbalance than a fundamental schematic breakdown. 

[David Wilcomes]

The defense pairings need to be reconfigured. I've got no problem with Truscott-Hughes. That one has been fine all year long. But many of the worries I was privately voicing to people the last few weeks about Edwards-Blankenburg came true over the weekend. The reason I don't like it is that the two are very similar in their strengths and weaknesses. They're copies of each other, not complements. Both like to zoom up the ice with their smooth skating, both like to skate it out of the zone, both like to take chances, and both are undersized with some defensive issues. That came true in the third period when both got viciously ragdolled repeatedly by a more physical QPac team. Edwards is beaten in a board battle twice on the first goal and they were getting knocked down to the ice over and over again. You can have one member of the pair being a little light and easy to push around, but not both guys. 

Beyond that, though, no one is the defensive conscience of this pair. After Edwards is pushed around on the first goal, he doesn't get back to the netfront, leaving only Blankenburg to try and fend off two Bobcats screening Portillo. On the second goal, after the nasty Edwards turnover, Blankenburg does next to nothing to stop the pass that leads to the goal. On the third goal, the faceoff is won back but Edwards and Blankenburg can't get it out because both are knocked over by aggressive forechecking. They give the puck away, and then Edwards (and Luke Morgan) do nothing of note to stop the pass through the crease to the tap-in. That pairing was a -3 at 5v5 in the third period. I think you've gotta go back to Power-Blankenburg and Edwards-Pehrson for the Frozen Four to balance out the size issue. 

Time to tip our cap to Erik Portillo. Our large Swedish son was money for Michigan in this game and he deserves all the praise in the world. Yeah he gave up four goals, but two were severely screened and two were tap-ins after his defense left him out to dry. Not his fault the defenders couldn't take away a high danger pass or clear the netfront adequately! On every other look QPac got that he had even a small chance to stop, he stopped it. If I have one gripe, though, it isn't about Portillo choosing to play the puck. We've litigated that plenty, it's who he is. Rather, it's the seemingly lackadaisical manner in which he retreats to the crease after playing it. If you're coming out to play the puck, you better get back to the crease as fast as possible and he lollygags his way back waaaaaay too much. In the case of Sunday, instead of retreating, Portillo stops to back his rear-end into the QPac player passing by. I can't say I'd ever seen a goalie get an interference call for sticking the booty out before, but you see something new everyday. 

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National championship game preview? [Madeline Hinkley]

Recapping the rest of the tournament 

Michigan is off to the Frozen Four in Boston, where they will be participating in an all-western slate of competitors, ironically for an event taking place in the easternmost big city in America. The other competitors will be Denver, Minnesota, and Minnesota State. It's hard not to love this slate of teams and matchups as a college hockey fan, getting Michigan vs. Denver, a battle of two of college hockey's most storied programs in one semifinal (akin to a USC-Alabama CFP game, for those who need it interpreted into college football terms), and Minnesota vs. Minnesota State, an in-state rivalry and a rematch of last year's tournament, in the other semifinal. Here's how those other three teams got here: 

- Loveland Regional: We got the big ticket matchup of Duluth-Denver after the Bulldogs' Ryan Fanti pitched a shutout over Michigan Tech and Denver escaped a scrappy Massachusetts-Lowell team on a crazy deflection goal by Cameron Wright. The main event matchup was the most fun regional final of the weekend because it actually had fans in the building. Denver owned the first period but it ended 1-1 after the Pioneers got bad goaltending and Duluth got great goaltending. The game evened out more over the last forty minutes and then was decided by the wild bounce off the end boards that I clipped at the start of this piece. 

- Albany Regional: Minnesota State nearly blew a big lead of their own in the first round against Harvard, but held on to a 4-3 win. Notre Dame defeated North Dakota in OT after one of the stranger scenes I can remember unfolded about a potential Irish game-winner at the end of regulation that required a 15-minute review due to inconsistency in the clocks timing the game (read about that here). It was declared no-goal, but the Irish finished it off in OT anyway. The Minnesota State-Notre Dame game was exactly the ugliness you expect when two low-event teams meet in playoff hockey, a 1-0 win for the Mavs, allowing them to return to the Frozen Four. 

- Worcester Regional: WMU needed overtime to overcome Devon Levi and Northeastern, using the other goal clipped at the start of this piece to eke it out shortly after the extra session began. The win was WMU's first tourney win in program history, despite having existed for 49 years. Minnesota and UMass battled in the game of the weekend, with the Gophers overcoming a 3-1 deficit to win 4-3 in OT. Minnesota then toppled WMU on Sunday by a final score of 2-0. Star forwards Ben Meyers and Matthew Knies keyed the Minnesota victories, and they were helped out by a controversial review that nullified what was expected to be Western's game tying goal in the second period. 

I'm not going to give a preview of Denver here because I'm planning to do a piece or two on the Pioneers before next Thursday, but they are an offensive team (#1 in the NCAA in scoring offense) with occasionally leaky goaltending and are laden with NHL talent. Should be a fun one in Boston.