3/11/2023 – Michigan 7, Ohio State 3 – 23-11-3 (9-7-3-5 B1G) 

In the first game of the second half of the season, Michigan played Ohio State at Yost and got plastered. The Buckeyes throttled Michigan in a way that no team that no team in the past half-decade has, completely overwhelming the Wolverines and crushing them with shot after shot directed on Erik Portillo. Michigan actually scored the first goal of the game and went into intermission tied, but the shots on goal for the period were 23-7 Ohio State. In the second, OSU scored five times, two at 5v5, two on the PP, and one shorthanded. The shots on goal in that period were 22-9. Through forty minutes, the Buckeyes led by four and were on pace for 68 shots on goal. They backed off in the third with a commanding lead but still tacked on one more goal. For the game, shot attempts were 79-49 for the Scarlet and Gray. It was the kind of performance Michigan puts up against a bottom feeder like Lindenwood, not something that happens to Michigan, a top 5-10 team in the country wire-to-wire this year. 

The overriding thought after that game among Michigan Hockey observers was "what the hell just happened?". As I wrote after the weekend, Michigan had gotten put in a pressure cooker. Ohio State ran a hyper aggressive offensive zone forecheck, all three forwards deep in the zone either pressuring the puck or providing support on any potential rims, with the defensemen hard pinching at the point/down the walls to keep it going. Against a Michigan team with lighter defensemen who prefer to skate the puck out of the zone and play with it on their stick, Ohio State had a matchup advantage by taking away time and space to do so. They forced Michigan's defensemen to make decisions in a split second and wanted to make them play a way they are unfamiliar with, quick passing and chips up the boards vs. controlled possession breakouts by one guy. 

The Wolverines came back the next night after that first meeting and generally handled it better, but they were still wobbly, allowing a goal right off the jump that was very similar to the goals they were allowing in buckets the night before, with a defenseman turning it over under pressure. When the teams met again in Columbus, Michigan put up a similar performance to game #2, handling it alright, but still seeing the ice tilted against them in a shootout loss. During the wacky outdoor game in Cleveland, Michigan handled OSU better than they had all season for the first 30-35 minutes, playing a very even game, but things spiraled and a series of mistakes (mostly on special teams!) let it get away from 'em. 

I described Ohio State in the preview last week as a "riddle (Michigan) has struggled to solve", but the reality is that Michigan had slowly been putting together the pieces to solve that riddle. With each passing game against the Bucks, Brandon Naurato's team was becoming more familiar, more comfortable with playing the kind of game that you need to break down Ohio State's system and open the floodgates open. We saw that in the outdoor game, but much of the analysis from it was obscured by the goofiness of an outdoor game, the poor ice conditions, strange camera angles, and then the team's ultimate meltdown in the third period. Under the surface, the clues were there. This weekend the Michigan team pulled out their magnifying glass, pipe, trench coat, and sluethin' hat and solved the damn riddle. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Clips of team growth]

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It started from the first shift of the game. Ohio State dumped the puck into the Michigan zone right off the opening faceoff and rolled into the same offensive zone forecheck structure they had used all season long against the Wolverines. Keaton Pehrson retrieves the dump-in, looks up to make the first pass, and sees this: 

All three Buckeye forwards are deep, F1 about to apply immediate on-puck pressure, F2 stationed up the wall to take away the potential pass/rim to Brindley, and F3 lurking to cover Fantilli as the outlet option in the slot. You've got a defenseman already in the zone as well on the far wall, ready to pinch down hard if the pass goes D-to-D to Luke Hughes in the corner and confront Rutger McGroarty there as well. 

Pehrson struggles at first, doing what we'd seen Michigan's defense do in the past, waiting a little too long to decide, allowing pressure to arrive, and ceding possession. OSU takes it and rims it around to the far wall and that's where we see what Michigan has learned: 

Rutger McGroarty engages the OSU D on the pinch and whacks the puck off the boards so that it kicks out where Luke Hughes is waiting. With a bit of space for Luke to operate via Rutger getting it off the wall, Hughes swerves around Ohio State's Jake Wise, and thanks to the mobility of the Michigan D, they've broken the press and been awarded a 3v2 rush the other way.  There's an added bonus too: due to the aggressive pinch by the defense, one of the two Buckeyes back defending the rush is not a D. It's a F who had to rotate up and provide support to the pinching D. Now Michigan is in an advantageous position and how does it finish? 

Brindley puts Michigan on the board 24 seconds into the game! pic.twitter.com/v37FeG7hK6

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) March 11, 2023

A Gavin Brindley rip, bar-down. Just like that, Michigan has a 1-0 lead in the blink of an eye. 

That sequence was a microcosm of what the entire first 12 or so minutes were, a Michigan team that had no problem with an Ohio State offensive zone forecheck system that had crushed them like an elephant napping on your chest just a couple months earlier. Where Michigan players were previously trying to play Superman and skate through traffic, this time they were making quick, deliberate passes to teammates, evading Buckeye sticks and facilitating clean breakouts. Most of the time these passes amounted to threading the needle in tight windows, but as I said on the HockeyCast yesterday, Michigan's team proved themselves to be elite at walking a tightrope in this game. This extended into the neutral zone too, where Ohio State was just as well-drilled and disciplined as before, but suddenly Michigan's players were firing passes right into tight windows and not making the mistakes they once did. Example: 

First a very savvy decision by Brindley to curl back and shield the puck before passing across, rather then heading forward into a cluttered zone. Secondly, the diagonal pass from Seamus Casey to Adam Fantilli is the example of threading the needle, but it worked perfectly, right between a pair of Buckeyes that sets up a clean zone entry. Those were the passes Michigan was hitting with precision in the first half, which probably drove Steve Rohlik crazy but sometimes a team has practiced a lot and is in a groove, like a shooter who can't miss or a pitcher who is untouchable on a given day. By the time Michigan was ahead 3-0, Ohio State's identity had been ripped out of them and their forecheck was no longer so aggressive. The broken presses were leading to gobs of looks the other way and Rohlik called it off. Pucks were being dumped in but now the D were not waiting to pinch hard to facilitate the cycle, but rather, playing in the parking lot. Watch this: 

OSU carries the puck in and all three forwards still are going deep, but the D are not creeping in, seeing blood in the water. Rather they're oscillating at the blue line, ready to retreat at first sight. One more: 

Puck dumped in, Fs go deep, Michigan gains possession and the Ds are conceding a clean breakout by falling back. Based on this change, if the Wolverines could beat the Buckeye forecheckers down low (which was often, given the way the team was playing and the numbers advantage), Ohio State was now letting Michigan get the puck out clean. It was a curious decision given that the team was down 3-0 and generally speaking, playing an aggressive OZ forecheck is meant to facilitate scoring not goal prevention and ya know, they needed to score some goals. But it was an indicator of how shaken the team was, the thing that had always worked against Michigan was no longer working. When you knock a team off their game and they begin to resort to illogical strategic decisions as a backup plan, you know you're winning the game. And Michigan did. 

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The story of this game wasn't just that Michigan figured out how to solve Ohio State's systems and frazzled them in the process, they also turned the tables on the Buckeyes. Michigan ramped up their OZ FC pressure early on, giving the Bucks a little taste of their own medicine. Not long after the opening goal, Michigan nearly got another when Gavin Brindley got a look all alone in front of the net created off a very similar play to so many chances Ohio State had created against Michigan early on: 

Michigan dumps it in during a change so they don't have proper D support on the forecheck, but the speed and aggression that F1 and F2 come with proves they don't need the D support. Brindley as F1 goes behind the net to flush the puck-carrier out, taking away time and with his outlet taken by McGroarty, he runs out of options and fumbles the puck. Fantilli onto the ice helps intercept it, McGroarty has a great stick-lift to win possession and he fires a laser to Brindley in front, who has been left all alone by a discombobulated Ohio State defense. 

If you only saw the first matchup between these two teams and were also completely colorblind, you would almost certainly assume that that play I clipped above was Ohio State pressuring Michigan and not the other way around. The Wolverines were the ones coughing up pucks and ceding high-danger chances routinely early on in this season series, allowing the opponent free entries the other way. This time, it was Ohio State. The tables were turned and it appears Michigan's hardwork and film study that was required to perfect their breakouts taught them a little something about how to blitz the opposition too. 

With the tables completely turned on the Buckeyes, Michigan controlled the game at 5v5. Shot attempts were closer at even strength (73-67) but the quality of chance was lopsided towards Michigan. They controlled transitional play, worked Ohio State off the cycle in the offensive zone, and defended very well, taking away a lot of the high danger areas. The result was Michigan outscoring OSU 5-0 at 5v5. Playing with a man down was a weakness we'll talk about later, but most of the game is played at 5v5 and the Wolverines pummeled Ohio State there. That's why they're moving on to the B1G Tournament Championship Game and all it took was a good bit of study and a healthy dose of retribution.  

 

[Bill Rapai]

Hockey Bullets

- Michigan's defense driving offense: I didn't talk as much in the narrative section above about Michigan's play once in the offensive zone, but it was all about the defenseman pushing things high to low by breaking a second sort of press up high. Here's an example: 

Ethan Edwards is faced with pressure up high, dances around it, cuts down the wing and behind the net, and stays down there once the puck goes back up high. Seamus Casey feeds it down low and that's where Edwards nearly sets up Dylan Duke for a tap-in in front. This sort of thing was happening all the time in that first period, and continued later on. Ohio State's pressure high in the defensive zone was sliced right through by Michigan's mobile defense wiggling around it and then once that press was broken, Michigan would typically have numbers down low.

When you combine this with their puck-moving from the points, showcased in the Samoskevich tap-in goal from the pass by Pehrson, and the transitional play of the defensemen on breakouts, it was an offense that was driven from the back-end forward. Given that Michigan has the talent of an Ethan Edwards, Luke Hughes, and Seamus Casey, this shouldn't be too surprising, but it was the key to their success. I'd look for it to be the case moving forward in the final games of the season, because it's a major edge the team holds over much of their competition nationally. 

- Penalty kill.....: This was a bad weekend for Michigan's PK and it is the biggest weakness on the team right now besides the goaltending fiasco. It's down to 77.1%, 50th out of 61 teams nationally after allowing the Buckeyes to go 2/3 in this game. They've allowed a PPG in six straight games and have killed just 16 of 25 PPs over that span, a PK% of 64%. That is not nearly good enough and though I don't think the structure has the fundamental problems of the eyesore PK that was Mel Pearson's first season (2017-18), the players are executing very poorly. Take a look at the first PPG they allowed on Saturday: 

🚨 Goal for Jake Wise - his ninth PPG of the year - in the second period. Assists to Treloar and McWard.#GoBucks @wisey871 @travistre19 @Mcward_Cole12 pic.twitter.com/aSUwngkdeN

— Ohio State Men's Hockey (@OhioStateMHKY) March 12, 2023

I said it on the HockeyCast, but what is the point of putting PKers on the ice if they are going to do absolutely nothing to obstruct puck movement? This is a tic-tac-toe that goes straight through multiple Michigan penalty killers and it's the sort of thing I talked about last week in the 5v5 defense discussion, that Michigan's players let themselves get passed through far too easily. They are not using their bodies and sticks to take away passes well enough at all, and that issue manifests most prominently on the penalty kill. This is more technical coaching than structural but it's still glaring. I don't know if there's time to fix it during the season but if Brandon Naurato is retained as coach, it has to improve moving forward. 

[Bill Rapai]

- About that Ohio State challenge: There was discussion on both the MGoPod and the HockeyCast about Ohio State's decision to challenge the Samoskevich goal for goaltender interference and I think David's hypothesis was correct, that Steve Rohlik was planning to call timeout anyway and challenged for the hell of it. However, this brings us to a broader point that I argued for, which is that under the current system of college hockey rules, there is no incentive to burn your freebie challenge on anything that isn't a goal with a good chance of being overturned OR on a potential five minute major call.

As this space has argued, major penalties are a huge deal in terms of win probability, transforming 12% of regulation into a PP for one team, that they then can score as many times as possible on. Any PP with a pulse should expect to score at least one goal on such an advantage and it comes with the additional benefit that in most cases, it also results in a game misconduct penalty that ejects the offending player, short-handing the opposition for the remainder of the contest. It is a massive benefit and under the way the rule is constructed, where coaches can challenge any hit for a major and suffer no consequences other than losing a (largely) meaningless timeout for being wrong, I don't think you should ever throw away that challenge for nothing, which Steve Rohlik did. 

The two scenarios where it should be used is a hit that looks like a likely major or a goal you've got a good chance of disallowing, like when Naurato challenged offsides to get the first OSU goal disallowed. Those are the situations to use it and it should never be on a timeout, unless there are a few minutes left in the game. Even if Rohlik believed that his team needed to be settled down after falling behind 3-0, does that pep talk outweigh a 1+ goal swing that comes from a successful major/goal challenge? No. Not in a million years. So long as the NCAA grants you a free challenge that doesn't bring about a penalty for being wrong, that challenge needs to be saved for the right circumstance. 

[Bill Rapai]

- Portillo improving?: There has been some discussion in Michigan hockey circles about improvement from Erik Portillo over the last few weeks. He had a low goals against total when the Irish came to town at the end of February and though he's allowed 5, 4, and 3 goals in the last three games, very few were on him. Is he finding his game now, just when Michigan needs him to? I'm not totally sold but he has been more solid recently. The SV% doesn't reflect it, but again, the defense has not been kind to him over the last few weeks as a whole. The number of gigantic rebounds coming off non-threatening shots has been reduced, I will admit, but it is still an issue I could see striking.

The first Ohio State goal that was disallowed by the offsides was an example of this, a harmless shot into Portillo's mid section that pops out for a juicy rebound, eventually getting knocked behind him and then nudged into the net by a Buckeye attacker. Portillo can't give up a big rebound on a shot like that and needs to try to get back to his posts a little bit quicker. It's not as much of a mess as it was previously, but the structure and technical side of his game is lacking and it will remain in the back of my head as a ticking time bomb that could hurt this team in a big spot until the season is over. 

 

Bracketology, One Week Out 

After a bit of a snafu with the CHN Pairwise Probability Matrix, we have access to the updated *correct* probabilities, shown below: 

We're down to 15 teams that could realistically make it in as an at-large, which are the only ones I showed here. Minnesota and QPac are jostling for 1/2, while Denver is almost certain to be #3. Those three are still locked into 1 seeds, while Michigan remains on the national 4/5 fringe between the 1 and 2 line, though leaning strongly towards being the fourth 1 seed. If Michigan is not a 1 seed, it will be because BU has jumped them. Thus, if you want Michigan to be a 1, cheer for Providence over BU on Friday night in the Hockey East Tournament. Harvard remains a potential pairing in the Michigan regional, one I like, so my advice on the rooting guide is to cheer for BU to lose early and for Harvard to win the ECAC Tournament. 

It remains very likely that Michigan is in Manchester, NH, and Denver is in Allentown, PA, with mandated 2 seed Penn State. PSU is finishing in the national 7-8 window and it would be a humongous hassle to jump them over three teams to put them with Michigan if the Wolverines are the fourth 1 seed. Also, since Allentown is closer to Denver than Manchester and Denver is above Michigan in the seed order (not to mention possible regional mates BU/Harvard/Cornell are all northeast teams), that's how I see it falling into place. 

[Patrick Barron]

There's some ambiguity about who the other two teams in the region will be, contrary to what was portrayed on the MGoPodcast when the CHN matrix was incorrect and lying to us. Minnesota State has an interesting U-shaped distribution where they can be either national 11-12 or national 14-15 but not 13. If Michigan stays on the one line, it doesn't appear likely they will be a matchup with the Maize & Blue in round one. If Michigan is national 5 (two seed in the regional), then they could get the Mavs in the 2/3 game in that regional. But if they're a 1 seed in the Manchester regional, the pairings are more likely to be Cornell (34%), Western Michigan (31%), Alaska (15%), and Merrimack (10%).

Cornell is a good team with leaky goaltending in a conference I'm perennially skeptical of. WMU is a good team but one Michigan beat twice in October, a time when the Wolverines team was much more inexperienced than they are now. WMU is only in this position because they bombed out of the NCHC Tournament, getting swept by a bad Colorado College team at home. Alaska is the team you most want to get in the tournament, a lovable underdog story but a team that is definitely not good, gaming the PWR system to concoct a possible tourney berth by playing a lot of bad teams and banking wins. Finally, Merrimack is a decent team in a bad Hockey East. They could be as high as 10 if they win the event in Boston this weekend and could be out of the NCAAs entirely if they lose to UMass-Lowell in the semis. I'm agnostic on the thought of playing them. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Among all these teams, I'm not sure there's a "great" matchup beyond Alaska. WMU, Cornell, Merrimack, even Minnesota State or Michigan Tech in a 2/3, they're all good teams. Michigan is better than all of them, but that doesn't mean they couldn't beat the Wolverines in a single hockey game. Anyone can. I don't think there're a ton of obvious rooting interests this weekend, beyond cheering for Harvard and against Boston U. If you want to win a national championship, you gotta beat good teams. 

One last storyline to follow for the weekend, not directly Michigan-related but still interesting, is the possible bid-stealers. It appears extremely unlikely that Colgate is winning the ECAC title and with the B1G and Atlantic Hockey finals not having possible bid-stealers, there could only be up to three automatic qualifiers who come from outside the top 15. The most immediate is #27 Northern Michigan, who simply has to win one game against Minnesota State to get in (34% chance of doing so). Beyond that, both Providence and UMass-Lowell are outside the top 20 but have plausible paths to winning the Hockey East (12% and 14%). In the NCHC, North Dakota is staring at similar odds (14%), but the Hawks been playing better as of late. A good guess is one of these scenarios comes to pass, but you can't rule out two or zero either. Not a secure weekend to be someone like Alaska, but thankfully Michigan isn't in that boat. 

Note: The selection show is this Sunday. Last year it was at 6:30 PM on ESPNU but I have not seen a time given yet. The B1G Tournament Championship Game is Saturday at 8:00 PM on BTN and I will have a preview up on Friday.