Friday, October 23, 2015
Union 5, Michigan 5- OT
1st period
No scoring
2nd period
Union 1 UM 0 02:04 EV Dufour unassisted
Boo Nieves has the puck along the boards and carries to the blue line. As he turns to his right he’s bumped and starts to lose his balance.
Just as Nieves regains his balance the defender who was in the middle of the screenshot above steps up and strips the puck. This is a perfectly timed steal to the point that I don’t think there’s anything Nieves can do to prevent it.
Union’s Mark Dufour barrels through the neutral zone, but there are two Michigan defenders who are able to close and semi-impede his progress. Still, the screenshot below is one of the first moments where it becomes obvious that Union is a step ahead and going to be able to get a shot off; that shot, though, is going to come from Dufour as there isn’t anyone else remotely close.
Racine stays at the top of the crease too long. As Dufour cuts he’s given access to too much of the nearside net because Racine doesn’t slide and drop soon enough. Dufour is able to backhand one in to open the scoring.
[After THE JUMP: BELLYFLOP GOAL]
Union 1 UM 1 14:14 EV Kile (2) from De Jong (1) & Compher (2)
JT Compher wins the draw, but not in the traditional wins-and-knocks-it-back-to-a-waiting-teammate sense. He pokes the puck ahead and swims around the opposing center and then gathers and skates it up toward the blue line, where he dishes to a pinching De Jong.
Compher drew two defenders the wrong direction, but he defender nearest the boards in the screenshot above is able to stop and redirect and stay with De Jong. Because nothing about this play is conventional, De Jong loses an edge and passes to the front of the net from his knees. Kile reads it and tips the puck past Alex Sakellaropoulo.
Union 2 UM 1 17:32 SH Scarfo from Foo & Henry
Michigan is on the powerplay and in the midst of a line chance. Union is moving the puck around at the top of their own zone when Henry notices Foo waving his stick; he’s behind two of the defenders, and the one who’s in front isn’t in position to take away the massive passing lane.
There’s no defensive help here. Racine is staring down the barrel of a shorthanded 2-on-0, which usually results in…
…a pass to a linemate with chance on a wide-open net. Scarfo’s shot just has to be lifted a bit to avoid Racine’s outstretched pad, and it is.
Union 3 UM 1 19:46 EV Dufour from Taylor & Sakellaropoulos
Union chips the puck out of their zone, and it settles near center ice. Dufour picks it up and carries into Michigan’s zone, where there are defenders waiting for him.
You can see in the screenshot below that Dufour is starting to load up the weight on his inside leg to shoot. There’s a defenseman in front of him, and he’s a half second late reading this. Once he does, though, he pulls his skates together to try and block the shot.
The shot gets through and beats Racine before he can get his glove up. The exasperated backwards snap of his head after the goal went in makes me think he doesn’t place too much blame on the defense for this one.
3rd period
Union 3 UM 2 01:23 EV Motte (2) from Compher (2)
Compher wins the draw and again gets around the opposing center. The video is grainy enough that I can’t tell whether he feathers a pass to Motte or whether the puck rolls to him off the draw; it’s a non-issue, as Comher’s in position to retrieve and distribute whether he actually did or not.
The play develops so quickly that you’re basically testing the skill of a skater who knows he has the puck on his stick and needs to lift it versus a goaltender who who’s fighting against a schema used to this play going to the corner and suddenly needing to go into his butterfly against a guy who’s a couple feet away. tl;dr: the skater has the upper hand.
Union 3 UM 3 04:57 PPG Selman (1) from Connor (2) & Werenski (2)
Kyle Connor carries through the neutral zone with a ton of speed and gains the zone by himself. He draws the attention of two defenders, but that doesn’t bother him. He lets the puck glide ahead and splits the pair as if it isn’t an insanely difficult thing to execute that requires a great deal of skill and timing.
Connor has Selman in position to receive a netfront pass; he’s fronting his defender. Connor passes off his backhand while the defender engages and turns Selman, but the pass still connects.
About here, at the top of the crease and with a defender trying unsuccessfully to shove him over, is where Selman is able to jam the puck past Sakellaropoulo. Hard to tell from this angle but it would seem that Sakellaropoulo couldn’t close the five hole.
Union 3 UM 4 09:21 EV Marody (2) from Werenski (3)
Marody wins a faceoff cleanly, sweeping the puck back to Werenski (who’s out of the frame) at the point.
Werenski sees a lane open to the side of the net and pulls out one of Nick Lidstrom’s tricks, a shot off the end boards that functions as a pass.
Marody reads the bounce of the puck and stops locking up the defender with his stick, instead swinging it behind and gathering the loose puck.
He could shoot but makes the intelligent play and keeps the puck; the goalie has the nearside post locked down very well.
Instead, Marody uses his momentum (and the goalie’s lack of) to his advantage, skating around the butterflyed netminder and snapping the puck up and over on the far side. Union’s other netfront defenders (this isn’t counting the one who’s been trying to check Marody but can’t) are so preoccupied with making sure there’s no pass available or easy rebound opportunity that they allow Marody to walk around the goalie. Holding and circling in front results in a beautiful goal when it’s executed well, and Marody does it justice.
Union 4 UM 4 10:24 EV Pontarelli from Taylor
Michigan wins a battle along the boards with Nieves digging out the puck. He passes to Selman; everything about the screencap below screams “safe.” Jeff Taylor, however, blows up the pass. Like a zone-ninja defensive back, he reads and breaks on the puck without Selman knowing he’s coming (his back is turned, so that’s fairly excusable).
Taylor slashes at the pass and deflects it. At this point Michael Pontarelli, who was above the faceoff circle and near the wall in the screencap above, has skated into the high slot and without hesitating snaps a shot toward the net.
Cutler Martin’s the lone defender in the slot, and though he tries to block the shot it’s released so quickly he isn’t able to alter it and it’s behind Racine before he can really react.
Union 5 UM 4 14:32 EV Ammirato from Pontarelli & Henry
Union gets the puck deep into the Michigan zone, which pulls M’s forwards and defensemen down as well. This opens up a pass to Henry at the blue line.
Henry uses the Lidstrom trick that Werenski used earlier in the game and puts a shot into the boards that’s effectively a pass that bypasses traffic. Pontarelli picks it up to Racine’s right and somehow gets a pass through the defense to Ammirato, who’s behind him.
Racine butterflys and takes away the nearside, which is reasonable considering he’s got a guy with the puck on his doorstep. The problem is that Ammirato isn’t too deep to shoot farside, and that’s how he beats Racine.
Union 5 UM 5 19:30 EV Selman (1) from Compher (3) & Nieves (1)
Nieves has the puck below the faceoff circle and passes to Compher, who looks at the defender nearest him as if he’s going to take the puck to the net before skating up to the top of the zone. Take a look at the angle of the two highest defenders. The one in the faceoff circle is lower enough relative to the other that Compher decides he has enough room to try and turn toward the slot.
The defender in the faceoff circle recovers enough to deter Compher from actually skating into the slot, but not enough to prevent him from taking a wrister. Also, note that the path to the front of the net is clogged in a good way.
If you’re trying to create a goal with under a minute to go, you can’t ask for much more than two screeners and the defense playing the perimeter or high in the zone. Selman gets his stick parallel to the ice and redirects Compher’s shot past Sakellaropoulo.
Overtime
No scoring
Saturday, October 24, 2015
RPI 2, UM 5
1st period
RPI 0 UM 1 02:40 EV Warren (1) from Marody (2) & Martin (2)
Michigan has the puck in the offensive zone when Martin decides to put a long shot into the boards. It doesn’t ricochet to a teammate like multiple shots in the Union game did; RPI gathers but Michigan’s forechecking hard and Marody hacks the puck away and regains possession for the Wolverines.
Marody threads a pass to the bottom of the faceoff circle that’s intended for Warren, though Calderone lunges at it as well.
Calerone’s lunge pays off, as it draws the attention of one of the netfront defenders and creates a momentary screen that makes it really tough for Kasdorf to track the puck.
2nd period
RPI 0 UM 2 00:28 EV Motte (3) from Kile (1)
RPI is attempting a breakout through the neutral zone when Werenski pins his man to the boards, allowing Kile to step in front and steal the puck. He sees Motte turning up the middle of the zone and passes ahead for him.
Motte approaches the offensive zone and walks into what is essentially a wall of defenders. Usually this situation would favor the team with three players clustered together. Usually.
Each of the defenders labeled above has a lane, and their spacing is going to allow Motte to gain zone entry. He splits the first pair of defenders as they converge and is now in a one-on-one matchup with the defender at the top of the faceoff circle. That’s not to say that their spacing is bad; defender #3 is cutting across the zone to make up lost ground, defender #2 is in position to stop Motte, and defender #1 had to worry about the Michigan player near the bench and read him before closing on Motte.
Here’s where Motte begins to fall…
…and here’s where he shoots. He’s somehow able to flick the puck off the end of his blade and get it past the goalie’s outstretched leg pad and inside the farside post.
RPI 1 UM 2 5:03 EV Schroeder from Fulton & Reno
RPI enters Michigan’s defensive zone on a 3-on-2 that’s pretty well defended. Fulton sees that the trailer is open and passes through the slot.
His pass misses and ends up in the corner, where Schroeder rims it around the boards to a wide open Fulton.
Fulon passes to Reno in the (very) high slot. Martin sees the pass and massive amount of open ice and decides to slide as an attempt at blocking the shot. The problem with that can be seen in the screen cap below, when the defender who was supposed to have the middle gets hemmed in by a sprawled-out Martin.
The accidental pick suddenly becomes the death knell of this play. Reno gets the shot through and Nagelvoort gives up a rebound the falls directly in front of him, where Fulton is unchecked. He should have been covered by Martin, who made a valiant effort to stop anything bad from happening and is about to get burned.
Fulton gets a free attempt at jamming the puck in, but Nagelvoort’s in position to stop it. The shot ricochets off his leg pad and to his right, where Schroeder’s in position to finish. Cecconi makes a mistake and seems to be more focused on the jam attempt than the skater behind him, which leads to Schroder having an unimpeded clean-up attempt on an empty net.
RPI 1 UM 3 15:11 EV Calderone (2) from Cecconi (1)
Marody does an excellent job on the forecheck, harassing the skater with the puck until he just bails on it and snaps it off the boards to the top of the zone.
Cecconi’s in perfect position to play it at the blue line. He deftly sweeps the puck back into the zone, connecting with a very open Calderone in the faceoff circle.
Calderone immediately spins and shoots, beating Kasdorf glove-side.
3rd period
RPI 2 UM 3 12:27 PPG Wood from Liljergen & Prapavessis
RPI is working to cycle the puck low. Warren has just fallen over and is getting back up when Liljergen passes to Wood below the red line.
Liljergen falls as he passes, and as he’s hitting the ice Warren gets tangled up with him and tumbles end over end.
The apparently-not-a-tripping trip leaves Warren decommissioned, and Wood wisely feigns a pass up the boards to freeze the nearest defender, all the while leaving himself a clear path to the front of the net.
He comes in untouched and lifts a shot over Nagelvoort’s shoulder.
RPI 2 UM 4 17:04 EV Warren (2) from Calderone (1) & Marody (3)
Calderone carries the puck up the wall when he has the puck stripped by the defender behind him.
He’s able to recover, but he’s immediately plastered into the boards by the defender who was at the top of the faceoff circle in the screencap above.
He again recovers the puck and circles under the blue line, throwing a shot into traffic in front of the net.
Warren is setting a perfect screen and gets his stick on the puck, redirecting it past a helpless Kasdorf.
RPI 2 UM 5 18:26 EN Motte (4) from Selman (4) & Connor (3)
Motte does a nice job of taking away the passing lane, forcing RPI to attempt a saucer pass over the stick that fails. The puck ends up bouncing to the boards.
Connor picks the puck up off the boards and passes up to Selman, who’s cutting toward the boards and in better position to start a breakout.
Well, he was for a second. Selman ends up getting blown up, but he’s still able to pass ahead for Motte. With no one in front of him, Motte’s able to carry in for an easy empty netter.
Who are these guys? I don’t think we really know yet. There are some striking similarities to the last three years (especially as far as defensive breakdowns are concerned), but I’m not ready to say that I know exactly where the ceiling is for these guys. I think it’s safe to assume this is still a team that’s going to be reliant on outscoring the opposition, but despite the difference in level of competition I think this series was a good example of how muddy the waters are; maybe they’ll win a bunch of games 6-5, maybe they’ll win 4-3.
What is becoming clear is that the Big Ten isn’t even a raging tire fire, it’s more of a pile of leftover ashes from a bonfire with maybe a log or two that could still bear flames. That makes two non-conference series increasingly important to Michigan’s success. Robert Morris comes to town this weekend; they’re ranked ninth (!) in the way-too-early- PairWise and are the fourth team in the “others receiving votes” category in USCHO’s latest poll (so essentially 24th). Looming disconcertingly larger is a road series at the end of November with Boston University; they’re ranked a surprising 24th in PairWise but eight in the USCHO poll. If you’ve been following the program the last few seasons you know why an early season nonconference road series being critical to the success of a season makes me (and probably you) very, very nervous.