ESSENTIALS

OVERVIEW

Michigan arrives in their second straight Frozen Four tonight, also their third appearance in the event in five NCAA Tournaments. The team has been cursed in this round since winning their last national title in 1998, losing in the first Frozen Four game in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2018, and 2022, with only 2011 as a positive to show in the semis. This year's team doesn't care about that history though, they're ready to win the national title and end the quarter-century drought. Step one is knocking off Quinnipiac tonight, in a meeting of two #1 seeds. QPac was the 2nd overall seed while Michigan was 3rd, so the Bobcats will be the "home team". They are also slightly favored in the KRACH ratings, though DraftKings' moneyline has Michigan favored. This should be a good and close game. 

[David Wilcomes]

THE US

The last time we saw Michigan, they were in the Midwest Regional in Allentown, PA. After steamrolling Colgate in the opening round 11-1, they got locked in a tight battle with B1G rival PSU. Michigan controlled the balance of play for the entirety of that game, but struggled to get anything by Nittany Lion goaltender Liam Souliere, who was playing one of the games of his life. After surrendering a goal while on the penalty kill, Michigan found themselves in a 1-0 hole entering the third, eventually scoring on the PP to tie it at 1, sending the game into OT. It took less than a minute for Michigan's Mackie Samoskevich to vanquish the program's OT demons on a wrist shot that was ripped by Souliere, sending Michigan to the Frozen Four in walk-off fashion. 

The Wolverine team that arrives in Tampa tonight is a hot one, having won six games in a row and 14 of 19 since dating back to early January. They won the B1G Tournament title over Minnesota and are playing with a lot of confidence. Old pitfalls from earlier in the season, including discipline and wobbly goaltending, have been shored up in the past few weeks leading up to tonight. They boast elite talents all over the lineup in Adam Fantilli, Luke Hughes, and Samoskevich, and will bring a youthful swagger with them to the ice tonight. It should be fun. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Get to know the Bobcats]

[David Wilcomes]

THE THEM: PERSONNEL 

Quinnipiac's lineup is headlined by their young top forward line, which has done immense damage offensively this season. Jacob Quillan centers Collin Graf and Zach Lipkin, a pair of sophomores with the freshman Lipkin on a line that's stuck together the majority of the season. Graf's 56 points ranks third in the country and earned him a top 10 finish for the Hobey Baker, the team's top offensive player. His linemates haven't been too shabby, with Lipkin scoring 39 points and Quillan scoring 34. This is the line that I assume will get the advantageous offensive zone starts from coach Rand Pecknold and it's at the top of the scouting report in terms of 5v5 offense. 

Their second line is the one likely to get the defensive zone starts and shifts against Adam Fantilli, if you made me guess. That would be the matchup line of Skyler Brind'Amour centering Ethan de Jong and Desi Burgart. These guys contrast the youth of the top line with experience, SBA being a senior and de Jong/Burgart being grad students. Brind'Amour, son of Rod, is the NCAA version of the things Rod could do at the NHL level, intangibles, faceoffs, defense, hard work, etc. This group isn't one you have to worry too much about offensively at 5v5, with 15 of their 35 cumulative goals coming on the PP, but that's because they will be asked to neutralize top competition primarily. I should note that de Jong and SBA have played together the whole year pretty much, while Burgart was added to the line against Ohio State, though I expect he'll stay there for tonight. 

Their bottom six is pretty interchangeable, with a new-look line of Victor Czerneckianair (how's that name for fun?) centering the Christophes, Christophe Fillion and Christophe Tellier. They scored two of the three QPac goals against OSU after being put together by Pecknold, with Fillion having played a decent bit next to Brind'Amour this season. Given their success in the regional, I assume they're sticking together for the Frozen Four. I don't have too many notes on that line or the last one, Michael Lombardi and Joey Cipollone on the wings of TJ Friedmann. These guys will get their regularly scheduled shifts but they do not include any of the team's top six scorers. Lombardi and Friedmann (who is erroneously listed as a D on CHN) do each have double digit goals, doing almost all of that damage at even strength, but most of the scoring for the team is done in the top six. 

[David Wilcomes]

Jake Johnson and the star Zach Metsa are the top pair for Quinnipiac, having spent the whole season together tilting the ice on the competition. Metsa was the most impressive player to me when I was watching the Bobcats, a rock solid defensive player with a great sense of when to step up in the neutral zone to intercept passes and cut off opposing regroups. Metsa has 33 points in 38 games, getting lots of work on the PP too, the main puck-mover on the back end for the Bobcats. My assumption is they will join the Brind'Amour line in opposing the Fantilli line, drawing on their wealth of experience as two fifth year players to put up the best effort to stop the overwhelming talent of Michigan's young forwards. 

The other pairs have shuffled some, but they were playing Jacob Nordqvist with Iivari Rasanen in the regional, a junior and a senior together as a more offensively minded group, while the third pair shuffled between three D against OSU, with Rand Pecknold using the extra skater to dress a 7th D. Those three were Jayden Lee, Charles-Alexis Legault, and CJ McGee. Legault delivered a huge hit against OSU which was notable for a not terribly crunching QPac team, while Lee is, along with Metsa and Norqvist, one of three 5'9" defensemen that the Bobcats are slated to dress for this game. Something to keep in mind. 

[David Wilcomes]

THE THEM: STYLE

Quinnipiac is a team that played a weak schedule this season and completely dominated it, putting up cartoonish numbers against the 42nd-ranked strength of schedule. With no SOS adjustment, this team looks like the 1977 Montreal Canadiens of college hockey, appearing to be in a league of their own statistically. They are scoring 3.9 goals per game, top five in the country, and allowing just 1.5 goals against per game, best in the nation by a full 0.4. They are top ten in shots for per game and allow the third-fewest shots against per game. Again, they look like a juggernaut that you might as well not even attempt to play if you don't peel back the layers. 

But let's do so. Quinnipiac plays in the ECAC, a conference clogged by godawful teams that occupy about 40% of its standings table. 15 of QPac's 39 games this season came against conference opponents who rank in the bottom 20 of all teams nationally per KRACH. Toss in a non-conference that was also rather weak, with teams like Long Island, Holy Cross, and Sacred Heart, and that's 4 more games, meaning that half of QPac's schedule consisted of teams in the bottom 20. For comparison, Michigan has played just 4 games all season against teams in this range. That doesn't even get into teams in the 30-40 range, as QPac played 9 games against teams in that range, while Michigan's lone opponent there was Colgate. Thus, in total, you're looking at roughly 10 games that Quinnipiac played against anyone who is better than Wisconsin. Wisconsin, you may recall, was the worst B1G team by a wide margin. 

So it's two totally different worlds in comparing Michigan to QPac statistically, one team was playing in a historically great college hockey conference, the other in a very poor league. Still, the Bobcats have done well against the good teams on their schedule too, and we shouldn't ignore that. They played two solid teams in the regional in Merrimack and Ohio State and won by a 9-1 aggregate score. QPac was the much better team in the game against Merimack but then the tussle with the Buckeyes proves a bit instructive. Quinnipiac fell down 1-0 early, got gifted a tying goal by Jakub Dobeš and then scored another off a mad scramble, and then began parking the bus. The Bobcats are incredibly sound in their fundamental defense and they are not afraid to put the clamps on early. Take a look at this: 

Quinnipiac is in a 1-3-1 neutral zone forecheck, among the trappiest of all neutral zone traps, with a line of guys to defend the blue line and choke off possession entries, with an extra man back to defend as well. They were rolling this even earlier than the screenshot, with a significant amount of time to go in the game and protecting only a one-goal advantage. A lot of teams would consider this too early to go that conservative with only a one-goal lead. Quinnipiac had no issue doing so because they run it so well. After taking a the one-goal lead on OSU in the first period, QPac more or less deactivated their offense. The Bobcats still got some chances here and there but in the shot and shot-attempted counts, they were getting caved in. Or were they? 

I'd say no. Quinnipiac is incredibly well coached defensively. Ohio State had tons of offensive zone time and tons of shot attempts, but very little constituting a "quality" scoring chance. Why? QPac didn't play a ton of man defense in-zone against Ohio State, trading pressure for a system that chokes all opposing offense in the high-danger areas. You will rarely see a QPac defender leave the theoretical column stretching from one faceoff dot to the other. That center of the defensive zone area will be clogged with gold sweaters. Unless there's a loose puck to retrieve, they aren't going to chase you out to perimeter. You're free to cycle and hold the zone all you want, QPac won't pressure, but they won't let you get anything good either. That's the shell they are fine sitting in and why you don't want to fall behind to this team. 

Offensively, the OSU game was a tough one to watch because that game was almost never tied, with one team leading nearly the entire way. However, based on what I did see, I do expect QPac to pressure some in the offensive zone, sending forecheckers deep, but they probably won't overextend themselves. Against a Buckeye team that thrives on turning teams over and getting rush chances the other way, QPac allowed minimal odd-man rushes, Joe Dunlap's breakaway (which led to the goal) being the only one I can remember. Against most teams on their schedule, the Bobcats are able to gobble up their opposition because they are far better. But against more talented teams, Rand Pecknold knows an old rule of college hockey: when you have a team possessing just two drafted skaters, and neither of them were drafted highly, you have to be meticulously well coached and have to learn how to slow the game down and trap when you face teams with B1G or NCHC talent. 

[David Wilcomes]

SPECIAL TEAMS

Michigan saw both sides of the special teams sword in their game against PSU, allowing a goal against on special teams but scoring the equalizer on the PP. It remains the case that Michigan is strong with the man-advantage (23.8%, 11th) and not great on the penalty kill (77.3%, 50th). I don't think this PK is close to 2018's disastrous unit that doomed Michigan in the Frozen Four... that PK felt like the opponent was going to score nearly every time they got a chance. This one isn't so bad, but it is an area to watch and I wouldn't be surprised if they allowed a PPG tonight and given how tight the margins are likely to be, I wouldn't be surprised if that goal was ultimately fatal. 

Quinnipiac comes in 5th in the country on the kill at 86.1%, a number I almost expected to be better because of the weak schedule and how dominant they are at 5v5 defense. On the PP, the Pollsters are firing at 22.8%, 15th nationally. Similarly, adjusting for strength of schedule, that isn't too impressive. Michigan has the edge on the PP, QPac the edge on the PK, overall it's probably a wash. Schematically, I saw QPac running a standard 1-3-1 PP alignment against the Buckeyes, Metsa at the point, Brind'Amour at the netfront, de Jong the bumper with Lipkin and Graf as your wings. SBA and de Jong are the main weapons on the PP besides Graf, with those three players combining for 22 PPGs, more than half the team's total. Brind'Amour and de Jong are also the top forward tandem on the PK. 

[David Wilcomes]

GOALIES 

Quinnipiac boasts one of the better goalies in the country over the past two seasons, Quebecois netminder Yaniv Perets. He finished 2nd in SV% nationally last season with a .939. This season he was 2nd nationally with a .932. Pretty good! But let's hold our horses just a bit. Perets is very good, no doubt, but given both the eye test and some of the numbers, he's probably not elite and the defense does a lot of heavy lifting there. In college hockey, .940-.950 SV% clips are not crazy on great defensive teams if you also have an elite goalie. Cale Morris at Notre Dame did it back in 2017-18 with a .944. The fact that Perets is not putting up those kinds of numbers despite facing barely 20 shots per game and only 7.65 high danger chances against per 60 (all situations, per InStat via EPRinkside ($)), an astonishingly low number, speaks to the most likely summary on him: he's a good but not elite goalie whose numbers are juiced by the team in front of him. Nothing wrong with that! But almost certainly not the best goalie in the country and probably not top three (Ryan Bischel, Devon Levi, and Blake Pietila are all ahead of him for me, probably Kaiden Mbereko too). 

The hardest thing that Perets has to do is see the puck well through traffic. He doesn't face hardly any odd-man rushes and because of QPac's defensive style, there are often a lot of bodies in the slot. Positioning himself to get a sightline on the puck and then squeezing it when it arrives is the main task that Perets is faced with and I thought he did that well against the Buckeyes. If you aren't doing anything to puncture Quinnipiac's defensive structure, Perets likely won't be giving up any goals. 

As for Erik Portillo, we've covered him quite a bit. He's had an up-and-down season but has been locked in recently, with a .931 SV% over his last four games dating back to the B1G semifinals. Portillo rose to the occasion against Penn State, making several crucial saves that were essential to win that game. There are still some wobbles and one change he seems to have made is coming out exceptionally far when faced with a shooter 1-on-1, which could have adverse effects overall, but right now it's working. The confidence is back and Michigan needs that Portillo to give them two more great games this weekend. 

[David Wilcomes]

KEYS

Score the first goal. Quinnipiac is the sort of team where the answer to the question "who scores the first goal?" drastically changes the feel of the game. As I mentioned, they will not hesitate to start going into a defensive shell early with a lead in an elimination game like this. If Michigan scores first, as they did in last year's meeting between the two teams in the NCAA Tournament, the game that ensues will favor the Wolverines. I said in our Frozen Four preview yesterday that I think the first goal (and best goalie) will win the game. It's pivotal. 

Figure out how to pierce the Quinnipiac defensive structure. This is the biggest question and could be considered an addendum to the first key, because this is discussing "how do we score the first goal?" I threw out a couple ideas on the HockeyCast, one of which being back-side action in the offensive zone to catch the QPac defenders puck-watching, another being a game plan of letting Fantilli or Rutger McGroarty take the puck into traffic to try and bully their way into the slot, hoping to create chaos and a favorable bounce. Winning positioning in front of the net will be another battle to watch, as Michigan can send a bigger forward into that area against the smaller QPac D. The team will need to try out several strategies because the one thing you can't do is cycle around the perimeter and shoot into bodies fruitlessly like Ohio State did. 

Don't take a five minute major. Obligatory. 

PREDICTIONS

Are stupid in a one game hockey playoff