quinn hughes

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]

[JD Scott]

Hockey's season went out with a whimper as they were swept at the hands of Minnesota in the first round of the Big Ten tournament. That's disappointing but not particularly surprising for anyone who watched most of Michigan's season.

What went wrong? Michigan's various problems follow.

Age

Michigan was one of the youngest teams in the country, and the bottom of the age standings are pretty ugly:

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ND and Denver are in the top 16 of the pairwise. Otherwise this is a list of the teams that generally recruit the best across college hockey and are struggling in the new over-30 NCAA. Not one of Minnesota, Michigan, BC, BU, or Wisconsin is in position for an at-large bid. It should be noted that 50-52 are Quinnipiac, Providence, and Harvard, who are all set for at-large bids, but even those teams in close proximity by rank are almost a half-year older than Michigan and the rest of the "we recruit the NTDP" class.

Under Pearson they've moved to taking more overagers, but those guys are all underclassmen. Michigan is in the process of having some 23 and 24 year olds; they are not there yet. At some point Michigan's going to be a mix of older players and high-level NHL prospects. Currently they are young and had 1.5 high-level prospects. Speaking of:

Talent level

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Norris was M's only PPG scorer and missed half the year [Bill Rapai]

As discussed in the previous post about Michigan's gap year, this year's freshman class had zero drafted players for the first time in probably 20 years. Michigan found a good fourth line as Moyle and Van Whye emerged midseason; that line then became their de facto second line because nobody else was doing anything. Compounding matters was the previous class, which was Hughes and Norris (woot woot!) plus Mike Pastujov, whose star fell precipitously after his commitment, and then whatever Mel could scrape up. That turned out to be Becker and Raabe, two guys who have chipped in but aren't scoring line players at this point in their career.

So when Norris goes out midseason, they have zero underclassman forwards capable of playing on a scoring line. This is untenable for a program that is constantly getting raided by the NHL—you aren't getting Cooper Marody back for a senior year.

Michigan did have some guys: Lockwood put up 31 points in 36 games; Slaker and Pastujov put up 25 and 24. It's not a coincidence that two of the three top scorers were older draftees. There just weren't enough of them. Michigan has always been more talented than all of its opponents, which is how they make up the perpetual age gap. This year they weren't. Opposing goaltenders put up a .914; Michigan was 41st in shooting percentage. Even more telling: Michigan's power play conversion rate nearly halved from 19% (average-ish) to 10% (national worst) when Norris went out.

[After THE JUMP: woe! fie and woe!]

Quinn Hughes carries the puck up ice against Minnesota
A defenseman who draws this much attention opens up ice for the rest of the offense [Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Tuesday’s loss to Notre Dame wasn’t the final nail in the coffin for Michigan’s tournament chances, but things aren’t super great when a college hockey site’s models have to be consulted to make sure the pre-comma clause isn’t mathematically impossible. Conference tournament games are treated like regular season games as far as Pairwise is concerned, and while that leaves a little room for Michigan to bolster its resume, we can get an idea how much that will matter (read: do they need to win the tournament outright) thanks to the excellent charts at College Hockey Ranked. Michigan has four remaining regular-season contests, and the most likely outcome (28.0%) derived from four straight wins is the #19 Pairwise spot. The top 16 teams get into the tournament; Michigan has a 3.6% chance of finishing the regular season #16, 0.7% chance of finishing #15, and 0.1% chance of finishing #14. In other words, it’s exceeding unlikely they’ll play their way into a position to be heartbroken by some other team that’s out of it winning their conference tournament and stealing a bid (and even that assumes Michigan wins some but not all of their conference tournament games.)

With just six points separating the teams in second (Michigan) and sixth (Michigan State) place in the conference standings and four conference games left to play, projecting Michigan’s Big Ten Tournament opponent is an exercise in futility. We do have four games from earlier this season that could help us in analyzing how Michigan might be able to go about sweeping Ohio State and Wisconsin, their next two opponents, so we’ll turn to those for insight. Sweeping two opponents consecutively will be a big task for a team that went over three months between sweeps, but we can look at a few smaller components of quality play that make it possible. It’s not entirely unlike when my ten-month-old is in his high chair and flings himself forward to grab something I definitely didn’t think he could reach on the table and I’m like, hey, that would have been fine if I ripped it into pieces but as it stands you shoving it into your mouth whole just makes me look like a shitty dad. I mean, it’s not entirely like that but it’s not entirely unlike that, either.

[Hit THE JUMP for GIFs and such]

Garrett Van Wyhe skates against Michigan State in the Great Lakes Invitational

Takeaways from Michigan's split with the nation's fourth-ranked team

Quinn Hughes edges

From Wedgewood Park's outdoor rink to Yost, the places and people that shaped the game and personality of Michigan's most recent top-ten pick

Jared Wangler was gunned down by a comically one-dimensional villain in the cold open to this post

yes! yuussss. YESSSSSS. yuuuuus. 

"so here's the thing about this monkey... he's really good at stocks"

ESPN lives! For basketball at least! Moe Wagner has a bad day! Poole is on NBA draft radars! Please, Vancouver, give me one more year of Quinn Hughes, I beg you!

fullbacks are discussed. hog maps are linked. a penguin is explained. departures are unofficial. cornerbacks are good at cornerbackery. a seal is befriended, but not by the penguin.