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Saturday, December 4, 1999
Saturday, December 4, 1999, Yost Arena, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Tonight Michigan takes on the Falcons of Bowling Green for the second time in as many nights. The Wolverines got soundly thumped Friday night in Ohio and they must get a win tonight to split the weekend. While I did mention in last night’s article that neither of the teams in front of us in the CCHA are within our CCHA cluster, I didn’t mention that Bowling Green is. We simply cannot afford to get down two games to a team within our cluster. While Michigan ended the night with more shots on goal, Bowling Green ended up with more goals on the board. The Falcons also outplayed Michigan going down the stretch. Tonight we will see if Michigan can get back on track.
The unbelievable happened in the first period of tonight’s game. Michigan was coming off a loss, hadn’t won a CCHA game at home in three weeks, was playing the same team that whooped them the night before, and still they got out hustled and outplayed on their own ice. We kind of knew it was going to be a long night of nail biting when Jillson got whistled for a penalty just nine seconds into the game. Michigan would continue to make errors both large and small throughout the first period and really throughout the game. The second unbelievable thing of the first period was that Michigan had managed to keep Bowling Green off the scoreboard even with all of the mistakes (thanks in no small part to the playing of L.J. Scarpace in net). The first team to get a score in this game, again unbelievably, was Michigan. With about 2 ½ minutes to go in the period Kosick put Michigan on the board when he got the puck to the right of the GB goalie and lifted it over the goalies glove hand. Shouneyia picked up the assist and suddenly, out of no where, Michigan was up by one. About a minute later, as things started to settle down from the first score, Comrie comes up with a short-handed goal and now Michigan’s up by two. Ortmeyer got the puck to Comrie at the Falcon blue line and Mike took it from there. That ended the scoring in the first period, filled with unbelievable things. At the end of one Michigan led on the board by a score of 2 to nothing, but Bowling Green led in shots on goal by a 16 to 12 mark.
We thought things were going to go very badly in the second when just 30 seconds into the period Bowling Green got a goal to draw within one. How does Michigan allow such a thing to happen you ask? Is the word unbelievable getting a little over used in this article? There isn’t really too much more to say about this period. There were no more goals scored by either team and there were actually very few penalties in this period. The most exiting thing of the period was the 10-minute misconduct given to Comrie a little over three minutes into the period. He given misconduct call for diving of all things. At the same time Comrie picked up his misconduct a Bowling Green player was being called hooking – he hooked Comrie. In the referee’s opinion Comrie embellished his fall to the ice from the hooking and so gave Comrie the 10-minute misconduct. It still left Michigan on the power play, but we lost the services of Comrie for ten minutes in the second period. The second ended with Michigan still in the lead after two by a score of 2 to 1. Michigan did get closer in shots on goal, but Bowling Green still held the edge by a 23 to 22 count.
Bowling Green came out in the third period and was flying all over the place. They put much pressure on Michigan very early. With a bit of luck and some fantastic goal tending Michigan was able to hold them at bay and they finally started to apply some offensive pressure of their own. Finally, with almost half the period gone Michigan was able to get a little breathing room. Seconds after killing off a penalty Michigan got the puck to Jillson out on the right point where he fired off a slap shot. The shot glanced off a BG defender skate and squeezed inside the far post. This put Michigan up by a score of 3 to 1 with about half the period to go and breathing got a little easier. Of course I must take a moment to talk about the events leading up to this goal. I mentioned that Michigan was just coming out of a penalty kill when they scored this goal. Well that penalty was a big one in the third period and really got things stirred up for the rest of the night. There hadn’t been a single penalty in the period when Hilbert came slashing through the players right in front of the Bowling Green net. The only problem was that the Bowling Green goalie was in his way. Not one to be daunted by the appearance of the opposing teams goalie in his path Hilbert bowled him over. I was watching the puck at the time so I didn’t see if a BG player had pushed Hilbert or if he just skated over the BG goalie. What I did see was a goalie get crunched by a run away freight train. He went down hard and didn’t just spring right back up. Hilbert got the 2-minute charging call and about 2-½ minutes later Michigan got the extra goal. I didn’t think the BG coaching staff made a very good decision leaving their starting goalie in the game. From where I was sitting it didn’t look like he completely knew where he was after he got hit. I think Hilberts skates carved little H’s in his forehead and knocked him a little silly. Bowling Green did finally replace him after Michigan picked up their third goal, but it was to little, too late. After that of course the blood was running hot on the ice, but there was an amazingly (or is that unbelievably) small number of penalties called for the remainder of the game. However, those that were called generally involved the removal of that player from the game. In fact, after the Hilbert penalty there were a total of five more penalties called. In all but one instance the players were ejected from the game. The game ended with Michigan winning by a 3 to 1 score. Bowling Green did win the shots on goal battle by a 34 to 31 count.
Well Michigan got their split for the weekend and that is an extremely good thing. It was an ugly win, but it was a win. The shots on goal count was close and they won by two goals, but make no mistake it about it. There is only one reason won this game tonight and that reason is L.J. Scarpace. If it wasn’t for his goaltending heroics (and some times acrobatics) Bowling Green would have won this game going away. Michigan has a lot of problems right now and they had better figure out how to fix them quick. At the start of they year UM had a potent power play – right now it stinks. At the start of the year UM had a pretty good offense and it seemed to get better week by week – right now it stinks. At the start of the year UM had a darn good defense all things considered – right now it stinks. About the only thing that Michigan is going good right now is the penalty kill and that’s good because they are taking far to many penalties. I don’t say these things because I’m giving up on the Wolverines; I say these things out of concern. This is a very talented team, a team that is capable of playing at a far higher level than they currently are. They continue to make little mental errors. These mental errors cause give away’s that put your goaltender in bad positions or cause them to loose the puck when they are in scoring position. If it were a matter of a little error here and there it wouldn’t be such a big deal, but they make these errors all game long. With so many errors, over the course of the game, the opponent is eventually going to take advantage and get some scores. As we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks that is exactly what is happening. Michigan has only two games left in the first half of the season. These are CCHA games against the conferences newest team, the Mavericks of Nebraska-Omaha. They will be in Ann Arbor next weekend for a two game series to try and take their pound of flesh from the Michigan Wolverines. This is a scrappy team that Michigan had better take seriously. If they don’t it could be a long holiday break for Michigan. I know they have it in them to play better, here’s hoping they figure that out and come out blazing next week to go into Christmas with the sweet smell of victory rather than the sour odor of defeat. Until next week, C-ya!!
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