2022-23 penn state series #2

1/27/2023 – Michigan 7, Penn State 3 – 16-9-1, 5-6 Big Ten
1/28/2023 – Michigan 5, Penn State 4 – 16-9-1, 6-6 Big Ten

Once, during my long tenure in the student section, I had a mad, fleeting thought. I was pretty sure I was standing next to Cam Fowler, then a 17-year-old kid committed to Notre Dame, later a top-15 NHL draft pick and long-term NHL defenseman. Fowler would never make it to South Bend, instead defecting to the OHL, but at the time he was rooting for his team, with his phone out, chortling in a way that drove me insane.

Michigan had a goal disallowed. Later in the game a Notre Dame player scored on the clearest kicking motion I have ever seen; the replay review was inconclusive, apparently because the kick had come from far enough out that the overhead camera did not catch it. Yost roared in outrage, and Fowler chortled and typed out something on his phone. The urge to grab Fowler's phone and hurl it onto the ice rose up unbidden inside of me. The higher portions of the mind immediately dismissed such a course of action, but the combination of Yost Ice Arena and a clear injustice had the rink poised on the precipice of madness.

This was a fairly common occurrence throughout the 90s.

Things changed. Dave Brandon's renovations took out more seats and mate them shiny metal instead of Yost's old black menace. The students were almost entirely removed from the glass. The section shrunk. Smartphones came in; fewer students were antisocial weirdos; piped-in music frequently drowned out episodes when the shadow of old Yost threatened to come back in. Yost is still a great venue for hockey, but it is not Old Yost. The malevolence is largely gone.

But, hey, if you take away a goal to make it 2-1 with a bullshit review that disallows a goal and gives Michigan a five-minute major penalty on an incident that occurred almost a minute before the actual goal, well, turns out the old dog can still get up and bark.

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Back in the day, Yost had a reputation. It still has a reputation, yes. But the reason we have this insane tournament system today is directly traceable to the years Yost hosted back-to-back regionals in which they beat one-seeds to reach the Frozen Four. This happens all the time, yes. But those two regionals felt like the building picking up the team and morphing the team into avenging gods, the kinds of gods with eyepatches and scars and deep interpersonal loathings that can only be settled at the end of the world.

This is not a rational thought. Home ice in hockey is not really a determining factor. But that feeling was so widespread that the powers that be in college hockey opted for antiseptic, empty neutral site regionals in the worst tournament in sports instead of give Yost another crack ever again. Madness of a different sort. At this distant remove it feels silly.

Do not tell the powers that be this, but two days after Michigan 5, Penn State 4 it does not feel silly. Here is what happened: Penn State scored two goals in the first 90 seconds and put up 20 shots in the first period. Michigan managed to scratch and claw back into the game, somewhat. With about 10 minutes left in the second period, they score a power-play goal. PSU asks for a review, Edwards gets called for a major for contact to the head as a PSU player suddenly spins around with his head at chest height, and they wipe a goal off the board despite the puck not only leaving the offensive zone but going all the way down to the opposite boards.

This may in fact be the way college hockey wants to officiate itself but what it is not is anything resembling justice. Michigan eats a goal on the five-minute power play, and then Adam Fantilli and Luke Hughes get very very angry, as angry as Yost appears to be.

For a period and a half they enact Ragnarok on a team with a 3-0 lead. Hughes torments Penn State defenders en route to four goals and—probably more impressively—11 shots. PSU, the kings of shooting from anywhere and everywhere, end up with fewer shots in the second and third periods than they had in the first. Despite being shorthanded, and getting more short handed in the third period when Seamus Casey leaves the ice, they run over Penn State. Dylan Duke gets a partial breakaway goal to tie it, and in the stands I am more or less content to take a win and a tie from the series.

[Bill Rapai]

Luke Hughes is not, and fires a top-shelf wrister to go up 5-4 with ten minutes left. All of this madness took under a period of hockey. By the time it's time for Penn State to pull their goalie, Michigan bottles up the Nittany Lions for a minute and a half; they only get an extra attacker on with 30 seconds left in the game.

[Rapai]

Sit, exhale, and oh yes. That's what it was like. That's what it used to be. Wings of fury. Get me a cigarette. I don't even smoke.

[After THE JUMP: broken officiating, pairwise, adversity checklist]