bill muckalt

[David Wilcomes]

Part I: Forwards

We're back for part two of the 2023-24 Let's Start Again Hockey series. I broke these pieces into two because they were running very long as one coherent one, so today we're back to cover defense, goaltending, and then coaching, as there's been change on that front too. 

 

Defense

Exit: Luke Hughes, Keaton Pehrson 

Maybe: Jay Keranen 

Additions: Marshall Warren, Tyler Duke 

We'll knock the exits out real quick. Luke Hughes signed in the NHL, as everyone knew he would. He scored his first NHL goal as an OT winner in the final game of the regular season for New Jersey and then re-appeared in round two of the playoffs when the Devils needed some scoring punch amid their losing effort against Carolina. Hughes ought to be one of the Calder favorites for Rookie of the Year if someone not named Connor Bedard wins it next season (depends on how much PP time he gets, I guess). Keaton Pehrson also announced his exit via the transfer portal, landing with a quality program in North Dakota. Good for him. 

So that's two players in the top four of this past season's defense exiting, but fear not, Michigan faithful, as this is still a very deep defensive corps. The star figures to be sophomore Seamus Casey, who is in line for big point totals with Hughes out of the picture and ceding him the PP1 slot. After a strong freshman year and the brilliant Frozen Four goal, I can't wait to see what Casey can do in year #2. His defense partner Ethan Edwards also returns, although I think they may be on separate pairs this year to balance out the stylistic similarities. Edwards didn't make a major jump as a sophomore in 2022-23 but is a talented, mobile puck-mover who isn't afraid to get physical (sometimes too physical) and is in line for top four minutes. 

[Bill Rapai]

Also in the top four should be the returning Jacob Truscott, who you'd think is the favorite to be captain of the 2023-24 squad as a senior. He's returning not just to Michigan, but from injury as well after having not played since late January. Though not confirmed, you have to think missing the Frozen Four was part of why Truscott spurned the Canucks one more year for a final run in the NCAA. Truscott is a left shot but played the right opposite Luke Hughes, so he could be a solid fit next to the LHD Edwards. 

The final player who you'd think will be in the top four is Boston College transfer Marshall Warren. Picked in the 6th round of the 2019 NHL Draft, Warren was a member of the famous 2018-19 USNTDP squad with Jack Hughes, Matt Boldy, Cole Caufield, Trevor Zegras, Alex Turcotte, Cam York, and Johnny Beecher. Yeah, Warren's been around. He logged four seasons for the Eagles and was their captain last year and as I remarked on the season ending HockeyCast, transferred to Michigan to play for a good program (had to re-up that zinger). I don't have a ton of scouting notes on Warren but that pedigree suggests a very solid player who should fit nicely in the top four and bring loads of veteran experience that matters in the big moments. His point totals don't suggest a majorly offensive piece, so as a LHD the best fit may be next to Casey on the top pair. 

The third pair got a big time pickup out of the portal from Ohio State's Tyler Duke, brother of Dylan, who completed the full Johnny Damon by switching between the two bitter rivals. Duke was supposed to be a mid-round pick in 2022 but like his brother, fell way down the board (in Tyler's case, out of the draft completely!). After 12 points in 40 games as a freshman at OSU, I doubt Duke's getting picked this summer, but maybe! Regardless, he flashed some moments and has talent, never thought he was a bad NCAA player or anything. Having played a full college season helps and I think he slides comfortably onto your third pair and you feel incredible about having him as your 5th defenseman. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More D, G, coaches]

We need to get more photos of this guy soon [David Wilcomes]

It's been a couple months since I last did a Hockey Weekly piece. The previous one checked in on the Mel saga, talked about the transfer portal, and then checked off a few odds and ends. Today's will be similar- we know how the Mel saga ended, so instead I will devote time to digging into new head coach Brandon Naurato before checking off some offseason topics including the non-conference schedule release, the NHL Draft, and the World Juniors. 

 

Hello: Brandon Naurato 

I wrote a little bit about Naurato on Sunday when he was announced as the interim head coach of Michigan Hockey and David and I discussed him on the HockeyCast yesterday. As a brief primer, I will quote what I wrote on Sunday here first: 

Naurato is a 37-year-old who has one year of experience as a coach at Michigan but glowing reviews. Michigan Hockey fans of the late 2000s may remember Naurato as a rather middling forward on the late 2000s juggernaut teams (including the 2008 Frozen Four squad), where he played 130 career games for the Wolverines, scoring 32 goals and 32 assists in his career. After that, Naurato bounced around the lower minor leagues before retiring from his playing career at age 27 in 2012. 

After retiring, Naurato became a skills specialist and hockey consultant in the Metro Detroit area (Naurato is a Livonia native), specializing in prospect development. He founded his own business, Naurato Consulting, and in the 2010s he worked with nearly every notable Michigan player who went to the NHL during the summers, from Connor to Copp to Hughes to Larkin to Werenski. His excellence as a development coach led the Red Wings to hire Nuarato in a player development capacity in both Detroit and Grand Rapids, with the AHL affiliate. Last fall, Michigan hired Naurato to join the staff as an assistant. 

That's the sort of information you can glean from the Michigan Hockey bio of Naurato, but let's try and dig a little deeper. As I said on the podcast, Mel's decision to hire Naurato seemed to come from asking his players "what did you do in the summer?" and they all replied "working with Brandon Naurato", after which he made the logical next step to bring the guy on board. He explained as much in this short video from around the time Naurato was hired: 

Little did he know, he was actually hiring his replacement. Connor Earegood of the Michigan Daily has a collection of good quotes from players last season citing Naurato as the reason they improved in different facets of the game and he wrote in his introductory column on Naurato that the youthful assistant's primary responsibility had been the power play. While there wasn't the sort of gigantic PP improvement like we saw with the PK when Kris Mayotte was on staff, Michigan did improve last year on the PP, from 23.7% (7th) to 26.8% (3rd). Coaching a PP with the talent Michigan had on it last season is kind of like teaching Clayton Kershaw how to pitch, but at least it's a point in Naurato's favor as a piece of evidence that he can coach team hockey.

[AFTER THE JUMP: digging into the paper trail] 

Previously: Part One, Part Two, Part Three

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[West Regional vs NoDak, 1998/Kalmbach via Bentley Historical Library]

The story is almost too perfect. You expect the details of a hockey story to flow from odd angles, to be all jagged edges and shoulders and elbows and yet this story is writerly and neat and almost formulaic. It follows the kind of structure script writers teach in their intro film classes: the protagonist runs through the gauntlet and passes a test that changes them, then uses their newly girded spirit to pass the ultimate test and reap a reward barely fathomable at the start of the journey. From humble beginnings, etc.

The necessity of icing an unusually high number of freshmen dampened expectations at the start of Michigan’s 1997-98 season, but there were enough upperclassmen remaining—Marty Turco, Bill Muckalt, Matt Herr, and Bobby Hayes, to name a few—to keep them from falling off precipitously. Yes, skating four freshmen defensemen was different, but close games can be won with a Hobey Baker finalist, Muckalt, leading the offense and one of the best goaltenders in the country, Turco, as the last line of defense.

And close games—one-goal games, to be precise—soon became Michigan’s calling card. Entering the NCAA Tournament, sixteen of their 42 contests had been one-goal games, including two of the games that got them to the GLI final and two of the games that got them to the CCHA Tournament final. The GLI and CCHA finals against Michigan State and Ohio State, respectively, left their mark. Both were losses and both snapped long streaks for the Wolverines, who had won two straight CCHA tournaments and nine straight Great Lakes Invitationals.

Those losses, however, ended up helping Michigan in their NCAA Tournament seeding. Not only were they placed at the West Regional, which happened to be held at Yost this season, but they were seeded third. This put them on the opposite side of the bracket from Michigan State, the one-seed and no. 1 overall team in the nation, and Ohio State, the no. 6 team in the country yet somehow the four-seed. Two teams they’d had a problem with all year, their two in-conference archrivals, were on a collision course.

That didn’t mean that Michigan’s road to the Frozen Four would be easy, though. North Dakota, the defending national champion and no. 2 team in the USCHO poll, was waiting in the wings. Michigan would have to fight the temptation to look ahead to that game and first dispatch six-seed Princeton, which made the Tournament by winning the ECAC and was listed last in USCHO poll’s “others receiving votes” section.

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Mel Pearson, assistant coach: Weird game. It just seemed like we were either looking ahead or...there was something going on in that game and we just didn’t have it and there was nothing going right for us. I think part of that was Princeton but I don’t think we respected them enough as a team. They worked hard and they didn’t give us anything and I think we just thought we were going to come in and throw down our sticks and they were going to fade away and we’d blow them out and go into the regional final but it didn’t work out that way.

Innocent play from the sidewall down near the zamboni. I can’t even remember who threw it at the net but somehow it hit a couple guys in front and went right between the goalie’s legs. We didn’t even have a player in front of the net. I think it went off of one of their players and went in the net. Once that goal went in it just seemed like, Okay, here we go. The crowd got into it a little bit. Princeton had played an absolute great road game. They didn’t let the crowd into it for the most part but once that goal went in we started to play better.

The thing I remember is it was just a weird goal, literally. One of our guys backhanded it towards the net, it hits one of their guys, a defenseman, goes off a skate between the goalie’s net and it’s in. It’s like, there’s nobody there. It’s one of the weirdest goals I’ve ever seen. Did we have anybody in front? I don’t think there was. It’s strange. It’s just like an act of the hockey gods.

[After THE JUMP: The hockey gods have a field day]