josh norris

Josh Norris is one of the NHL's top breakout players in 2021-22 [James Coller]

It's offseason content time and with few current Michigan athletes to talk about, I thought it would be a good idea to check in on some from the past. We did this exercise as a HockeyCast episode last year and this time I decided to do it in written form. We're going to check in on the Michigan Hockey alumni from the past who are competing in the NHL to see how they're doing. I've structured it based on what category of player they fit into and at the end I'll also shoutout a few guys who are still playing in the minor leagues: 

 

The Studs 

These are the players who are considered high end, All-Star caliber. They are one of the three or so best players on their given teams and are getting paid premium money in the NHL: 

Quinn Hughes, D, Vancouver Canucks: Hughes had a bounceback season, setting career highs in points and assists with an 8-60-68 line. The point total ended up being a franchise record for points in a single season by a defenseman, and he finished the season tied for 6th in points by a defenseman league-wide. Hughes is a premier puckrushing defenseman who sacrifices a good bit of defense to produce an offensive output that few other blueliners can match. He signed a contract extension in the fall that will last for six years and total $47.1 M. At only 22 years old, it feels very likely that he will be worth that deal. Hughes is a building block for a Canucks organization that is looking to re-tool and return to contention. 

Dylan Larkin, C, Detroit Red Wings: Larkin is another player who had a career year, riding the wave of higher offensive outputs across the NHL to score a 31-38-69 line in just 71 games. Though none of those three totals were technically career highs, on a per-game basis, his goals and points clip were career bests. At age 25, this is about Larkin's peak, a very good 1.5C, not the ideal first line center on a championship team, but also a well above average second line center. He is entering the final year of his contract, at $6.1 M per season. The Red Wings, who have made Larkin their captain, have an interesting decision to make about how he fits in with future pieces who are substantially younger like Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider. 

Josh Norris, C, Ottawa Senators: Norris had one of those seasons where you look at his numbers and say "Josh Norris scored 35 goals??!??". In fairness, you could say that about many players in the NHL with the way scoring was up, but regardless, the third season in the league was the charm for Norris. He used his excellent shot to become a power play demon, racking up 16 PPGs, which was good for third-best in the NHL (!), tied with superstar snipers like Auston Matthews and Steven Stamkos (!!). Moreover, Norris did this in just 66 games. Having just turned 23, Norris is an important piece of the Senators' young core as they look to return to the playoff picture. He is a restricted free agent this summer and will be in line for a healthy extension and considerable pay raise. 

[Patrick Barron]

Zach Werenski, D, Columbus Blue Jackets: Werenski didn't have massive totals in the counting stats that some of these other players did, but he is still a high-end puckrushing defenseman that a lot of teams would love to have. Werenski put up 48 points in 68 games on the middling Blue Jackets, the highest scoring defenseman on that team by a country mile. He also has his defensive deficiencies, but he drives play and can create offensively at a superb level that makes it well worth it. Werenski is locked up in Columbus (sounds like Hell to me) for the long-term, as next year begins his monster six-year extension that will pay him $9.58 M per season (!!), making him one of the highest paid defensemen in the NHL. 

Kyle Connor, LW, Winnipeg Jets: Connor had a year a lot like Norris, hitting a goal total that is somewhat shocking when looked at with a bird's eye view. Connor shoveled in 47 goals (!!) and 46 assists for 93 points (!). He finished tied for 5th in the NHL in goals and 13th in points, a staggeringly productive campaign, even on a Winnipeg team that fell far short of expectations. The Jets are likely to make some degree of substantial changes in the offseason but Connor feels like one of the only untouchable pieces on the roster. He continues to do most of his damage off the rush and on the power play, while playing very little defense, but when you score at the level he did, it doesn't really matter. At age 25, this is Connor at his peak. He is signed for four more seasons at a very respectable $7.14 M per year. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: More alums in decreasing order of importance]

As close as the series itself [James Coller]

Friday, November 23, 2018

#14 Michigan 1, Wisconsin 1 (2OT, W)

1st period

No scoring

2nd period

Messner goal

UM 0 UW 1 EV 3:01 Assists: Zirbel

Hughes pinches and blows a tire, which allows Zirbel to pick up the loose puck. He has Messner streaking ahead to his left, which is the easy play here. Michigan's in a fairly good situation themselves, though, as they're able to get two defenders back; Lockwood is pictured in the bottom right corner of the frame, and Cecconi got even deeper after seeing his defense partner fall.

m uw fri 1-1.png

Cecconi plays off, I'm guessing as a way of keeping himself in position to rotate to the weakside winger if Messner passes to his left. Instead, Messner throws a shot on net. Lavigne stops it, and though he allows a rebound it's at least in the best possible position: to the side, almost on the red line.

m uw fri 1-2.png

Lockwood turns and glides and watches Messner get deeper than him while Cecconi lets Messner cross his face to get to the position below, so this is a defensive miscue by both of the defenders. I put this more on the winger than the defenseman, though, because the defenseman's typically going to take the front of the net to cut off a backdoor feed, which Cecconi does here. Messner gets his own rebound and flips it high on a shot Lavigne shouldn't have had to face to begin with.

m uw fri 1-3.png

[The guys who could key a step forward for the offense get on the board after THE JUMP]

Quinn Hughes edges
[James Coller]

The red carpet entrance and the spotlight and the microphone pack on his back and the reporters in front of him at the interview table and the handshakes, the endless stream of handshakes, were a month behind Quinn Hughes. The tension of the NHL Draft, with its imposing stage, megascreens, and work area for teams on the covered floor of the rink an amalgamation of a concert and an unwieldy TED talk, ended for Hughes soon after it began, with the Vancouver Canucks selecting him seventh overall. And so, in the midst of Hughes’ Infinite Hockey Summer, the most extraordinary thing about a typical summer day spent at his family’s home in the typical Detroit suburb of Plymouth was its ordinariness. At least, that’s how it started.

**************

The best thing about the baseball field in the Hughes’ neighborhood was that it was only a baseball field for part of the year. The rest of the time it was an outdoor rink, one fashioned the crudest way possible: flood it, freeze it, use it while it lasts. Quinn and his brothers—Jack, currently on the US National Team Development Program roster and likely to go first overall in next year’s draft, and Luke, currently playing for the renowned Little Caesars program and a Michigan commit— used to walk to the rink, shovel, and play until they couldn’t feel their feet. Frozen feet didn’t deter them, though; the only thing that could stop them from playing was when their mother, Ellen, came down to the rink to force them home to warm up.

Flooded baseball fields were soon passed over in favor of a set of flooded tennis courts in a park they found in Toronto’s Etobicoke neighborhood. The family had bounced around due to Quinn’s father’s coaching career; Jim spent two seasons as an assistant for the IHL’s Orlando Solar Bears; two years as an assistant for the NHL’s Boston Bruins; then three seasons, the last as head coach, with the AHL’s Manchester Monarchs before moving to Toronto for a spot as an assistant coach of the AHL’s Toronto Marlies (2006-2009) and then as the Director of Player Development for the Toronto Maple Leafs (2009-2015). The extended stay in Toronto gave them time to find hidden gems like Wedgewood Park’s tennis courts, which didn’t have boards (lining the rink with shoes worked as a substitute) but did have pipes and thus higher quality ice.

Quinn and his brothers spent every possible moment on the outdoor rink at Wedgewood. Ellen would bring hot chocolate and pizza down for the boys, whose biggest disappointment in life, as it was at the baseball diamond, was when they had to leave the ice. Things were slightly different at Wedgewood, though, as there were two things beyond parents that could force them off the rink: the lights getting shut off (this year it’s at 10 PM, but Ellen says it was usually around midnight when the boys were playing) or the makeshift Zamboni—a John Deere tractor when not working its seasonal job— showing up to resurface the ice. “Like at 2 o’clock they’d come and you’d get off for like five minutes,” Hughes says. “It sucked. It was brutal, because then you got cold again.”

The rink was built across three tennis courts, which left plenty of room for Hughes to take on the neighborhood. “It’d be like me and my brothers and two or three other guys against 25, 30 kids and it’d be really fun,” he says. He also made sure there was quality competition to compete against. “They would have a Friday night game, like a 7 o’clock game, and Quinn would say ‘Can I fit as many kids as I can in the car?’” Ellen remembers. “Whoever was willing to go, because not all of them were willing to go, and after their game we’d drop them off at the outdoor rink until the lights got shut off.”

[After THE JUMP: How a kid from Toronto with deep ties to Boston ended up in Ann Arbor, and why he stayed]