Friday, December 1, 2000

Friday, December 1, 2000, Berry Events Center, Marquette, Michigan

No game coverage was available

The Week in Review

Since there really isn’t anything else to talk about on the national scene let’s move right into the CCHA. The CCHA did moderately well in non-conference play last weekend. Of course Michigan and Michigan State gave the conference four non-conference wins, Nebraska-Omaha gave the conference two non-conference losses by dropping two to Merrimack. The losses by Nebraska are the most surprising of the non-conference scores as I thought the Mavericks were better than Merrimack, however, they have been struggling a little lately. Of course about the only teams in the CCHA that haven’t struggled through November are Michigan State, Western Michigan, and Miami; everyone else has had their ups and downs.

Speaking of Western Michigan they have the longest winning streak in the CCHA right now, along with Michigan State. The Bronco’s have not lost in their last ten games going 8-0-2 in that time. The Spartans have not lost in their last ten games going 9-0-1. Miami has been much better since they played the Wolverines early in the season. They have now won 6 straight games and are unbeaten in their last seven games. Alaska-Fairbanks continues to pick up points and is suddenly tied for sixth in the conference after taking three points last weekend against Bowling Green. Nebraska continues to have problems, but the real surprises are Lake Superior, Notre Dame, and Ferris. All of these teams continue to struggle and hold the bottom three positions in the conference.

Of course I’ve already mentioned Michigan and Michigan State, but I’ll say a little bit more about it here. For Michigan State of course it was a chance to solidify their position as the number one team in the country. They certainly did that as they beat Minnesota on Friday night and followed that with a win over Wisconsin on Sunday night. Michigan started the showcase with a win over Wisconsin on Thursday night and followed that up with a win over Minnesota on Saturday night. While the score in the Wisconsin game was close the game itself really wasn’t that close. Michigan was leading that game 3 to nothing going into the final five minutes of play when they made some defensive mistakes and allowed Wisconsin to make it look close. After a shaky start on Saturday night, after giving up an early lead, the Wolverines finished strong and pretty much beat up Minnesota. The Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks dropped two against Merrimack, the only blemish for the CCHA in non-conference play. Overall the CCHA went 4-2-0 against non-conference competition last weekend and that my friends is good. The conference record continues to improve against that non-conference competition and that will help the conference come NCAA tournament selection time.

Ohio State has already played the lone non-conference game for any team in the CCHA this week, blasting Findlay 10 to nothing on Tuesday night. While the win goes down for the CCHA it’s pretty obvious that Findlay is not quite ready to be playing teams from the major conferences; at least teams near the top of the conference.

Michigan didn’t pick up any players of the week for last weekends play and I’m not sure why. However, we did have a couple of players get named among the notable performers. The first was Josh Blackburn who stopped 64 of 67 shots on the weekend and allowed only one even strength goal in each game. The second was of course Mike Cammalleri who was involved in six of Michigan’s seven goals on the weekend. He got three goals and assisted on three others to lead the Wolverine scoring attack. One of those assists was on the game winner against Wisconsin and one of his goals was the game winner against Minnesota.

Michigan State has settled into first place in the conference, currently two points ahead of the second place Northern Michigan Wildcats. Northern did move into second place last weekend, one point ahead of Michigan and Western Michigan who are tied for third with twelve points. Some notes about these positions – Northern has played twelve conference games while Michigan and Michigan State have only played nine apiece. Western Michigan has only played seven so the Bronco’s have two games in hand on the Wolverines and Spartans, while the Wolverines and Spartans have three games in hand against Northern. Assuming that Western plays those two extra games and wins them they are really the first place team in the conference. Of course assuming that Michigan and Michigan State play their other three games to match Northern the Spartans are in second and the Wolverines are in third. Ohio State is only two points behind the Wolverines and has one game in hand. Again assuming that they win that one game they are tied with the Wolverines. The next five teams are just as tight and not that far behind the top teams with Notre Dame and Ferris dragging behind.

You can begin to see the nightmare scenario that I have feared since the start of the season. Assuming, for the time being that all of these top teams continue to win in relatively even numbers. Western wins the conference; Michigan State finishes second, the Wolverines third – tied with Ohio State. That’s bad enough, but then you recall that the CCHA receives only one automatic bid to the NCAA tournament this year and that will go to the tournament champion. Suddenly Michigan finds itself in the position of having to win the tournament to secure a bid to the tournament. If they don’t win the tournament then they have to wait for the NCAA to hand out at large bids. Assuming the tournament champion is someone other than the regular season champion the pre-season consensus was that the regular season champion would get an at large bid. In this scenario Michigan would be setting in Ann Arbor waiting for a second at large bid that could go to either Michigan or Ohio State. This all assumes that Michigan wins neither the tournament or the regular seasons and ends the season tied with the Buckeyes. At the start of the season most people, especially in the east, assumed the CCHA would get no more than two bids to the NCAA tournament. This is where the non-conference games come into play. The more wins against non-conference teams the CCHA has, especially against top notch competition like this past weekends College Hockey Showcase, the more likely it is that the CCHA will place a third team in the NCAA tournament. Four teams would be really unthinkable for just about any conference with only twelve teams making the tournament field. I go through this whole scenario for two reasons. First, it points out just how critical those two losses to Ferris and Alaska might prove at the end of the season and why I was so focused on them as must win games. Second, it shows just how tight a corner Michigan has painted themselves into. With those two losses against teams they really should have beaten, they no longer have the luxury of loosing games, especially in the conference. They play all the teams they need to beat to move into first place with the exception of one – that being the Bronco’s. They only play Western twice this year so they could tie them; that leaves the Wolverines looking for some help against Western from someone over the next three or so months. Now don’t take this wrong, I am not down on the team. I’m sure they will get the job done and be in the hunt at the end and I’m still looking for them to win the conference tournament so they don’t have to play the NCAA waiting game, but it’s not going to be easy. They have to play two solid nights of hockey every weekend and take care of their business and this will all sort itself out, but they must play Michigan hockey every weekend. Heck we are just going into December I have to do something so I play what if games, now you can play what if games with me.

Some interesting match ups this coming weekend in the CCHA. Starting at the bottom of the conference Lake Superior will tangle with Notre Dame. Who will take over the number ten spot in the conference or can one of them climb up to number nine or eight. Ohio State will try to stay in the top five as they meet Ferris for two games. Alaska-Fairbanks continues their sweep through the lower 48 with two games against Nebraska. With two wins they could be on the brink of a top five spot for themselves – how amazing is that? Michigan State should be a lock for two wins as they play Bowling Green this weekend, however, they play at Bowling Green – you never quite know how games down there are going to go. Now we get to the two big series in the conference this weekend. First, Miami plays Western this weekend, two of the hottest teams in the conference. Somebody is going to loose and if you’re a Michigan fan you want Miami to take at least one of these games. They are, however, playing at Western so things don’t look real good for the Redhawks. Finally, Michigan travels to Northern for their final two conference games of the first half. In my mind these are two critical games. The last two games of the half against a cluster team who sits one point ahead of the Wolverines in the standings. Michigan has to take care of business this weekend, both nights, if they want to keep pace in the conference and begin to make a move back toward the top spot. All right, I’ve beat that horse to death, let’s move on to the Wolverines.

Let’s start where we left off, the College Hockey Showcase. While Josh Langfeld didn’t pick up points this weekend he did play extremely hard causing all sorts of havoc on the ice, especially against Minnesota. That’s especially fitting since Josh is from Coon Rapids, Minnesota, the only Minnesota player on Michigan’s team. It was the senior from Minnesota who accepted the Mariucci-Renfrew Trophy after the win over Minnesota. This trophy goes to the winner of the showcase game between Michigan and Minnesota. Minnesota has just one out of state player on their team and coming from Minnesota Josh knows many of the players on the Gopher squad making this final visit home to Minnesota that much sweater for Josh. The game against Minnesota was also the first time the Wolverines have been out shot in a game this season, but they obviously took advantage of the scoring chances they had. Michigan also had an extremely good weekend on the penalty kill. While Michigan allowed Wisconsin just one power play goal in their opening game Thursday night, they held the Gophers to none (0 for 4) on Saturday night. This was against a team whose power play had been scoring at a 33.8% clip on the season. Having this kind of success on the penalty kill was especially encouraging given the fact that Michigan was missing one of their best defensemen (Huntzicker) and also played without Fraser and Gassoff. Bob was there, but didn’t really see much ice time.

Speaking of injuries, let’s get this out of the way. I missed some injury information last weekend, but I think I have it all this weekend. Trainor was out with an injury last weekend (that I knew), but Murray was also out with an injury. That’s two thirds of the fourth line so while the defense is playing thin; the line rotation was also affected last weekend. Earlier this week they were still listing Murray as questionable for this weekend, but it now appears that both Trainor and Murray will be ready to go this weekend at Northern. The other injury I missed last weekend was to freshman Dave Wyzgowski who has been out with a high ankle sprain. Wyzgowski will also miss this weekend as he tries to work through that injury. The knee injury to Brad Fraser looks like it will keep him out for another six to eight weeks, not so good. What’s even worse is that there is now uncertainty about the seriousness of Huntzicker’s knee injury. Last week everyone was talking about him being out about 6 weeks (just like Fraser). This week there is a chance that Huntzicker may be gone for the season, they just don’t know at this point. If he were lost for the season it would simply be tragic. After the work he went through to get back from that knee injury at the end of last season to be side lined for the rest of the season because of another knee injury would be terrible. He might also have trouble getting another season of eligibility from the NCAA as he is right on the bubble as far as games an athlete can play and still qualify for a medical red shirt. Time will tell with each of these issues. At the start of the season we were loaded with defensemen, Michigan even asked one to delay coming to Michigan for one year. Now we are playing with five and if one of them goes down we are really going to be hurting. Of course Gassoff should be seeing more playing time as he gets back into playing shape and we could always move a forward over to defense – but which one? I think that’s all of the injury news.

Looking ahead to the Great Lakes Invitational (GLI) Michigan could be down another three key players going into that tournament. Those losses could be to team USA and team Canada playing at the World Junior championships in Moscow from December 26 to January 5. Both Andy Hilbert and Mike Komisarek are possible members of team USA, while Mike Cammalleri is a possibility for team Canada. Hilbert is probably a lock for team USA (it would be his third straight World Junior tournament) and as good as he’s playing at Michigan I will not be surprised if Komisarek goes as well. After watching Cammalleri this year you would think he would be a lock for Canada. However, the way team Canada treated Comrie I just don’t know if he will be chosen or not (team Canada seems to shy away from picking players who play for colleges, no matter how good they are). Another possibility for team USA is incoming Michigan goaltender Jason Bacashihua.

Some final notes about this weekend’s games against Northern. Michigan is 4-3-2 in their games played in Marquette, with those two ties coming last year on Michigan’s trip up North. Michigan is unbeaten in their last five games against the Wildcats and has won six of the last ten. Northern last beat Michigan in October of 1998 in Ann Arbor. Senior Mark Kosick leads all active Wolverines with 10 points (3-7-10) in nine games against the Wildcats, this weekend would be a great time for Mark to add to those scoring totals. Michigan played two solid games last weekend and they need to do the same this weekend. We need to finish the first half conference schedule with wins – that’s all there is to it. The Wolverines have put themselves into a bit of a box and they need to win their way out of it. There is a lot at stake this weekend with regard to the conference race so I expect Michigan to bring the heat, injury riddled team or not. The loss of all these players does seem to have the entire team playing better defense, that team effort must continue. I expect two Michigan wins this weekend and we will know in about four days if my expectations are met. Until Friday, C-ya.