michigan tech

I had not initially planned to do a Hockey Weekly this week because we had one last week and there isn't much new news to report on-ice. The team bulldozed the Wisconsin Badgers this past weekend, as expected, and now coast into their bye week in first place in the B1G standings, sending their four Olympians off to China. Unfortunately, the reason I decided to write this piece is two elements related to the program that have come out in the past week, one being a FOIA request made public pertaining to the murky WMU GLI cancelation, and the other being an MLive article detailing an ongoing investigation into the program. This will be a shorter piece than normal, as I'll quickly share a few takes on the Wisconsin weekend before then talking (briefly) about both of those off-ice matters: 

Badger Revenge 

On-ice, the Michigan Wolverines swiftly took care of business this weekend against a bad Wisconsin team. It was sweet revenge for the worst loss Michigan has suffered this season, when they lost to the Badgers at home back on October 29. Neither game was particularly close, 5-1 and 6-2 victories, though the second game had a wild flurry in the second period that temporarily made it interesting. Here's a few HockeyBullets from the weekend: 

- Ethan Edwards, continued. Last week I discussed the terrific play of Ethan Edwards, who has been coming on strong. This weekend he had the highlight reel moment of his season thus far: 

What a solo effort by Ethan Edwards! pic.twitter.com/Ub4xArJppy

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 30, 2022

Edwards continues to grow as the season rolls around and now it's showtime for him. With Owen Power out of the lineup attending a Team Canada Olympic camp in Switzerland, Edwards was bumped up to the top defensive pairing with captain Nick Blankenburg. That's a lot of responsibility for a freshman, because that pair will draw top assignments over the two weekends of games during the Olympics. Edwards seems up to the task, though, and I'm excited to watch him in this final month of the regular season. 

- Speaking of Edwards, the defense scores a lot of goals. The Saturday game saw the team's defensemen score 3/6 goals that Michigan scored and the team now has two defensemen with double digit goals in under thirty games played (Luke Hughes has 10 and Nick Blankenburg has 11). Add in Owen Power with 3 and Ethan Edwards now with 2 and, and that's a lot of goal scoring to come from your blue line. But scoring goals is not the only way that the back end contributes to the offense for Michigan. They are a central component of driving offensive play whether or not they're the ones who actually put the puck in the net, either by facilitating breakouts or controlled entries, joining the rush, or pinching down in the offensive zone to aid the cycle. That large role they play is why they get the goals, which often come on plays looking like this: 

Just filthy Luke Hughes pic.twitter.com/Uq3xplDPgt

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 30, 2022

Mobility is key for Michigan's blue line. An old-time(y) defenseman with skating issues isn't making the play that Luke Hughes makes. The goals Michigan's defensemen score look like that because skating are their big assets. The team has a stable of smooth skating defensemen who are comfortable moving up and joining the play, which is why they play a big role in the offense, and then sometimes they get rewarded with having the goals attributed to themselves alone. The Michigan Colorado Wolverines Avalanche, basically. 

- A nice weekend for the non-Olympic guys. It was decently reassuring that, in the last weekend of games before the Olympics, Michigan got some solid offensive contributions from players who will not be heading to China. After all, they are the players who will be leaned upon to deliver Michigan victories against MSU and OSU in a couple weeks. The first goal I really liked from that crew is this one: 

Phil has got us FIRED up! pic.twitter.com/RtSb3qmbic

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 30, 2022

Keaton Pehrson brings the puck down the wall and below the goal line before losing possession. 5th year senior Michael Pastujov gets involved in the ensuing puck battle, winning it and shielding possession of the puck to move it to the forehand, then delivering a good pass to a high danger area. There, Philippe LaPointe sees the open ice, moves to it, and receives the feed to wire it by the goalie. Beautiful play all around from three guys who will be in the lineup next time we see the team at Yost. 

Another goal I liked was this one by Mackie Samoskevich: 

Mackie Samoskevich is having himself a night! First three-point game since Nov. 20 pic.twitter.com/i9fd22nLMP

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) January 29, 2022

Edwards leads the entry, puck bounces around to Beecher on the far side, who slides down the wall and makes a nice pass to Samoskevich in the slot, who rips it by the netminder. Beecher, Samoskevich, and Edwards are all drafted players, but none are going to the Olympics, making them exactly the kinds of folks that will need to step up. This goal showcases how much skill will still be on the roster even when you subtract Beniers, Brisson, Power and Johnson. 

- Erik Portillo, still good. Thanks to this weekend's performance (three goals against in two games), he's now up to a .953 SV% and a 1.54 GAA in nine games since Christmas. Michigan is 7-0-2 in those games and he's allowed two or fewer goals in eight of the nine games. Pretty good! 

[AFTER THE JUMP: one more take, and some off-ice deliberation]

In the time of thumb-twiddling. Hey guys. Whole bunch of nothing going on. The Daily has you covered about the nothing going on with a timeline of events leading to the shutdown and what the implications are for various sports including men's and women's basketball.

Also there was the now-obligatory open letter asking to play:

The source of Hubaker’s frustration, though, was a sense that the MDHHS directive was poorly aimed.

“It’s foolish to think that the variant isn’t gonna be around in two weeks and it’s probably gonna be a bigger deal,” Hubaker told The Daily. “Because we’re the only sector of the community that’s being shut down right now. And we’re, in my opinion, the safest and have the strictest guidelines of anyone else in the community.

“So if we had it, the community definitely has it. And we’re worried, a lot of us are worried … and we’ve heard this two-week period thrown around a lot before and we’re worried that this isn’t gonna be a two-week thing.”

I completely understand the frustration since Michigan athletics will still be on pause when Michigan re-opens restaurants on February 1st, but the problem there is the latter. Fears about the pause extending past 14 days are probably unfounded. After that long anyone who has the B117 variant will have had enough incubation time for a test to show it, and further transmission is going to come from the community.

Some people were holding out hope that the MDHHS memo that caused the shutdown said "up to" 14 days and that things could get going faster, but it doesn't look like that's the case. MSU has rescheduled MBB games against Iowa and Nebraska for February 2nd and 3rd and has a game against PSU February 9th; previously they were scheduled to play Michigan February 6th.

Also off: a 1-vs-2 wrestling dual meet against Iowa.

I am still baffled that nobody from the Federal government on down didn't impose a mandatory quarantine. Nicholas Stoll in the Daily:

Currently, the U.K. is on the CDC’s list of countries with high-risk travelers, and travel from the U.K. to the United States is prohibited — with a few exceptions. Included within those exceptions are F-1 student visas and U.S. citizens returning to the states, one of which the U-M athlete almost certainly fell under.

Now, I’m not saying people should not be able to return home to the U.S. or that a student should not be able to visit their family in the U.K. and then come back. That’s not what inherently caused the B.1.1.7 outbreak in the athletic department. Instead, it’s the inability to enforce quarantining on individuals.

The CDC requires a negative COVID-19 test result one-to-three days prior to traveling back to the U.S., and although that is a good procedure, it is the only enforceable step and not impervious to the transmission of the virus, as proven by the U-M athlete. The CDC recommends a 14-day quarantine, but at every level, it has no power to actually enforce it.

What are we doing dot gif.

[After THE JUMP: achievement unlocked: Not Tennessee.]

[Coller/MGoBlog]

Most old posts are embarrassing. My takeaway in reading through old work for research purposes is usually some stupid line that I wish I had framed a different way or a dumb joke that I forgot I made and spend the rest of the day regretting. Occasionally, though, I’ll read something that makes me feel exactly what I was feeling when I wrote it.

When I dug through old Goal-by-Goal Analyses featuring Michigan Tech I came across the mini-column I wrote at the bottom of this year’s Great Lakes Invitational post and felt the still-too-familiar raging bewilderment that marked much of the 2016-17 Michigan hockey season. The piece ended with boiled-over frustration about Michigan’s offense and their inability to get the puck in the zone; there’s a mention of how badly Michigan was out-attempted, but the Corsi hamblasting from Tech wasn’t unusual enough to garner anything more than an unfeeling, fleeting mention.

furthest right column is Tech’s Corsi For %

That’s Warner Bros. DC movie-level destruction; that’s also reflective of how difficult to stomach the 2016-17 Wolverines could be. If Mel Pearson’s Michigan Tech teams are any evidence, however, Michigan fans are in for a rebalancing in their squad’s putrid possession numbers. College Hockey News has some advanced stats available from 2013-14 on, including Corsi. Remember that Corsi is every shot attempted: shots on goal, shots that missed the net, blocked shots. (There’s a more complete primer at the bottomr of the post.) The general idea behind this is that a team has to have the puck to shoot it, so Corsi is a puck-possession proxy.

thanks, Seth

Generally speaking, Pearson’s teams were good against very good teams and great against bad teams, at least in terms of possession. You can see from the trend line that they did exactly what you’d want a team to do against teams outside the PairWise top 16; the trendline drops below 50% on the doorstep of teams that would make the tournament.

[After THE JUMP: looking for surprises in Tech’s possession numbers]