Friday Night Ice: Michigan Hockey vs. Bentley

Thanks. Who has the goals?

he made at least two appearances on the awesome new video scoreboard (which is awesome, by the way, except for the advertising).

We've played Niagara and Bentley.

it really is too soon to tell, 2 games into the real season both against teams that aren't very good.  At all.  But early returns are very postive.  If he can stay healthy, Hunwick is all you can ask for in a goaltender and then some.  Really, really impressive kid, all things considered.  With a goalie like that, all things are possible.  Had another several dandies tonight.  His rebounds are still nightmareish at times, but luckily...

The Michigan defensive corp is also very good, they're tying up opposing players, getting to loose pucks in front of the net first, to clear them, generally just doing a very nice job.  Pateryn, Bennett and Moffie are all about what you'd expect, while I think Clare has really taken a pretty big step forward in the off-season and Chiasson is pretty impressive early as well.  I would say Serville is probably the weak link as of now, not that he's bad, just not as good as the other 5, fom what I've seen.

The offense...  It took a while to score the first goal and a while to score the second and then another while to score the third, then the last 3 goals all came in the last 5 minutes of the game.  But I was never really worried that Michigan would't score.  49 shots, plenty of opportunities.  The Bentley net just had a force field around it for a while, not really their goalie, not really Michigan players making mistakes, I swear a saw a puck headed for the back of their open net abruptly change direction.  But it dissipated enough eventually, for Michigan to score 5 and they certainly could easily have had many more.  Scoring will be by committee this year, almost certainly, but if it's a committee of 15-20 goals each, rather than 10-15 goals each, that's a huge difference and is probably better than having one go-to guy.

Things, to this point have been quite good.  They're playing weak opponents, but they're playing like one would expect Michigan to play weak opponents, which is a good sign, since they were, quite honestly, expected to not be as good as Michigan of the last 20 years.  Right now, there are some very encouraging signs.  There are definitely some kinks to work out, offensively and defensively and most especially on special teams.  But it's early, they've had less than a week with coaches and this was their 4th game in about 6 days.  Several of the freshman have looked very, very good early, most obviously Guptill, Hyman and DiGiuseppe, I think T. Lynch has been quite good as well, he's on the 4th line right now and I'm not sure who he replaces on a higher line, but I want to see him get more ice time (Side note:  anybody know why Kevin Lynch was out both tonight and Monday's game against the NTDP?  He did play Tuesday...).  Chiasson isn't fantastic, but he has been solid.  Again it's early and it's been mostly weak competition, but the freshman look very, very solid.

Two more things I find very encouragaing.  1.  They are doing all of this without their best player, Jon Merrill, who is still serving his suspension.  Assuming he comes back as we remember, or hopefully even better, he will be a welcome boost even further.  2.  This is very Hoke-ish, but it FEELS more like Michigan hockey.  There was just this sense, that was there in 2008-2009, but not the last two years (ie.  Team that needed a Tiny Jesus to make it to the NCAA tournament and team that found success playing a non-traditional for Michigan defensive style and  riding mentioned Tiny Jesus to the NCAA Championship Game).  It's kind of hard to explain and some might consider me crazy, but the players seemed to buzz more, they were more "there".  I think I anecdotally described it previously by saying something like in 2008-2009, it seemed like Michigan always knew where the puck was.  It would get knocked off one player's stick trying to enter the offensive zone, a 2nd Michigan player would fly up, grab the puck, race off the ice, lose the puck, only the have a 3rd, Michigan player do the same thing, before a 4th Michigan player got the puck in and set up the offensive, without the opposing team ever really possesing the puck.  The last two years, it seemed more like Michigan was constantly looking around for the puck and unprepared for it almost.  Right now, Michigan doesn't have that as strongly as 2008-2009, but more strongly than the last two seasons.  If that develops more, watch out.

Coming into the season, I was hoping for, more than expecting a low NCAA berth as a low seed, to keep the streak alive before the team seems to come back more in force next year.  Even after just a few games, knowing the competition has been less than stellar, I can't help but revise that upward to a middling NCAA berth with the omnipresent hope that, on the back of Hunwick, this team could honestly put things together enough to win some games there. 

That was longer than I expected/wanted, but basically, yes, early returns are promising, the team should only get better and it might be time for the bold to start raising their expectations.