hockey refereeing is bad

This weekend, Michigan Hockey completed the first half of their 2021-22 season following a pair of feisty games in Columbus. Friday's game saw the shorthanded Wolverines pull out a 5-2 victory, while Saturday was competitive until the wheels came off in a disastrous third period en route to a 6-1 defeat. With that, Michigan gets 2.5 weeks off before competing in the carcass of the Great Lakes Invitational in late December, representing the midway point of the campaign. Michigan has played 20 of their 36 scheduled regular season games, so this is more or less halfway. What have we learned? What can we expect going forward? 

Where things stand

Considering the history of Michigan stumbling through the first half of the season like a drunken sailor under Mel Pearson, going 14-6 (really 13-4-3 considering PairWise counts all OT games as functionally ties) is not bad. Though it remains a tad early to really care about national PWR, Michigan is #2 in that, which puts them in line for a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Wolverines also hold 1st place in the B1G, but only narrowly. Standings: 

The Maize & Blue are a nose ahead of the Maroon & Gold at the holiday break in terms of point percentage. The conference standings are a bit all over the place. Penn State has been horrendous in conference but cleaned up against a largely easy non-conference slate (although they did get a big win over North Dakota!) and thus maintains a positive goal differential. Notre Dame, who have been firmly mediocre in the conference, have the second best goal differential. Minnesota and Ohio State seem close to identical right now in terms of in-league record, but the Gophers' performances in the non-conference indicate they're much more of a national threat than the Buckeyes. Wisconsin is just really bad, while MSU has clawed back to the "respectability" category they were in a few years back. 

Looking at the national numbers, PWR likes the B1G a good bit. Notre Dame and Minnesota are solid tourney teams, while OSU is on the bubble in, and PSU and MSU are on the bubble out. Wisconsin is irrelevant, and as stated previously, Michigan is a top seed. Given all of this, it's hard not to like where Michigan is, but also still feel a little empty about where things could have been. The team's performances against Minnesota, Western Michigan, and Ohio State are all understandable given the quality of those teams and the circumstances of the games, but three contests in particular stand out as the kind of efforts Michigan needs to eliminate in the second half: the two against Notre Dame and the one loss to Wisconsin. 

Any way you slice it, that loss to Wisconsin was ugly. The Badgers are a terrible hockey team who are scoring a stunningly low 1.83 goals per game (!), yet Michigan allowed that Wisconsin team to put up four on them. The game itself was extremely annoying, with Michigan winning the possession battle 63.5%-36.5%, yet sloppy mistakes and lackadaisical play doomed the Wolverines to lose a game that is unacceptable to lose. Hockey is random, yes, but that loss was not random or the result of poor puck luck. It was completely avoidable. Simply flipping that result and giving Michigan an extra three points would put the Wolverines in a much more secure position atop the league. They cannot afford those sorts of letdown games in the second half if they want to emerge as regular season champions. 

Similarly, the two Notre Dame meltdowns are tough to swallow. Michigan led both games 2-0 and lost both games in OT, the first of which they were lucky to even get to OT. Notre Dame is a good team, but Michigan had them right where they wanted them and then fell asleep defensively. The concentration, effort level and consistency, especially with the fundamentals, just has not been good enough this season, and will need to be fixed moving forward.