kyle connor

Turner waving goodbye to MSU [Patrick Barron]

Baker back? Interesting roster development for basketball after last night's Toledo game:

We’ll see what happens,” said Baker on if he would apply for a sixth-year.“Potentially.”

“Absolutely,” he said on if he would come back to Michigan. “If I got it, I’m back here.”

Baker played a total of 18 minutes as a freshman; bizarrely these all came in late February or later. Usually this would not be grounds for a redshirt, but who knows these days. The NCAA is in its Security Guard Meme phase. It could happen.

Grimace dot emoji. Sam Vecenie's latest Big Board has Jett Howard 20th and Kobe Bufkin 24th. Hunter Dickinson is 83. No commentary on any of them, so nothing to quote. But maaan this thing where the NBA grabs Michigan players before they have their AA-type season is getting old.

The guy who did the thing, nope. DJ Turner ran a 4.27 40 at the NFL combine, which is sort of impressive:

The Athletic had a piece on guys who rose and fell based on said combine and DJ Turner did not come up at all. I mean… I think… he's a corner? Right? One Michigan player did show up:

A lot of tight ends had big days, including Darnell Washington, who put on a show that will only help fans of his game build a case for his value and potential as a receiver. Sam LaPorta is an all-around football player that does a lot of things well and had a great day of testing. And even a prospect like Luke Schoonmaker continues to become more interesting because he’s a tight end who has shown he plays in-line and his testing numbers hinted there might be more to tap into as a receiver.

And fair enough:

Ben Herbert hive grows ever stronger. Rivals has a piece on Turner and Mazi Smith moving up in draft evaluators' eyes. If Smith blows it out of the water at pro day—which is likely—he'll move up further.

[After THE JUMP: CJ Stroud and words: never again.]

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]

[Sherman/MGoBlog]

Yesterday I was thumbing through a notebook I use for interview prep and found a projected line chart I wrote last summer for the 2015-16 hockey season. It had Tyler Motte, JT Compher, and Alex Kile on the first line; I had Kyle Connor on the second. I chortled under my breath and moved on. It was only in doing research for this piece that I rediscovered how long- two months(!)- the lines were arranged as such. It's easy to forget that Michigan started their season without Connor, Compher, and Motte together, with the trio we'll affectionately remember as the CCM line not seeing game action until the beginning of December.

Connor, Compher, and Motte launched a four-month-long assault on the Big Ten and the Michigan record books that produced numbers that will be tough to come across in the near future. They also produced the kind of moments that become seared into your sports consciousness; sports memories tend to be grounded in moments, not the chronology of events. I still remember walking up State Street after some game during the 2007-08 season and marveling at Kolarik and Porter the whole way back. I don't remember which game, but I remember exactly what it felt like to be a witness to something special. I liked Michigan hockey before 2007-08, but the credit for why I care enough to want to break down every goal scored over the course of every season falls squarely on Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik's shoulders.

That feeling was back this year. For the first time in at least eight season we weren't just watching great players play, we were watching players play perfectly off of each other and accomplish things that caused that voice in the back of your mind to pick up decibels until it's practically screaming at you, reminding you that this is something to hold on to, something that doesn't happen every season.

The numbers give context to the memories: Connor led the nation in scoring and goals, Compher finished second in scoring nationally and led the country in assists, and Motte finished fourth in scoring nationally. Motte scored a goal in 12 straight games, a Berenson-era record; Connor ended the season with a 27-game point streak, another Berenson-era record. Connor scored more goals than any other freshman in Michigan history while finishing second in all-time freshman points. Compher had the second most assists of any junior in Michigan history. Compher, Connor, and Motte were three of the top 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker, which is just the third time in the award's history that one school has placed three players in the top 10. (Michigan also did it in 1994, when Steve Shields, Brian Wiseman, and David Oliver were finalists.)

Michigan's roster next year will look different, and it's not just because it's missing two guys (and possibly a third) who scored in droves. The way they played together is what set the CCM line apart. It's something that you don't see in hockey very often these days; creativity and communication can create beautiful plays, but the system a player is a part of has to allow the player to take some liberties for that to transpire. Michigan's system is well suited for that, and the results speak volumes not just about the system but about the way the abilities of three players blended to create a scoring threat that was nearly unstoppable.

Igor Larionov wrote a piece for The Players' Tribune that I've seen passed around NHL circles again recently, and the crux of his argument is that players are told to over-simplify their game at too early an age in order to eliminate risk. In his mind, this stifles creativity and leaves only a handful of players in the NHL who think the game three or four moves ahead and then act on those suppositions. In his words:

Our philosophy was about puck control, improvisation, and constant movement. Now, the game is all about “north-south,” chip-and-chase. We moved side-to-side and swooped around the ice looking for open spaces. A backward pass was just as good as a forward pass. You didn’t have to see your linemate. You could smell him. Honestly, we probably could have played blind.

Michigan had three boundlessly creative players on the same line. Connor's accuracy and quick release made him the perfect finisher, always open thanks to his linemates' ability to maintain possession and positioning near the net. Compher had some of the finest olfaction of any Michigan skater I've seen, seemingly throwing the puck around blindly only to put it precisely on the tape of his teammate's stick. Motte could turn and lift a puck from a sharp angle in such a way that the puck seemed to explode off his blade; he was the perfect netfront presence.

With a few exceptions, these three showed that you can be responsible defensively while also being creative offensively, and in the process they crafted moments that transcended box scores. To borrow from Red Berenson by way of Dickie Moore, you can't buy that kind of fun.

[After THE JUMP: I empty out my "CCM line" gif folder]