Hockey Regular Season Recap

How quickly the months fly by...I can't believe it's playoff time again already. Anyway, as we come through Michigan's bye week, and get ready for the weekend series with Nebraska-Omaha, which was taken not only to three games, but to three overtimes in the third game by Alaska, I thought it would be a good time to take a look back at the regular season just completed.

The season started out with UM ranked ninth in the polls, and a lot of questions to answer. Could the team overcome the graduation losses of seniors such as T.J. Hensick, and the early departures of stars Jack Johnson (aka JMFJ) and Andrew Cogliano? Could goalie Billy Sauer recover from his disastrous outing against North Dakota in the NCAA tournament that closed out the 2006-2007 season, or would the arrival of phenom Bryan Hogan have him looking over his shoulder? Almost from the get-go, there were encouraging signs about the answers to these questions.

Opening at the Ice Breaker Invitational in St. Paul, Minnesota, UM opened with a 4-3 overtime win over second-ranked Boston College. Although BC scored two late goals to force overtime, it then gave up a fluke goal in OT a BC defender trying to clear the puck inadvertently bounced it off a teammate into his own net. It's hard to really describe the play; all I can tell you is to go to the hockey team's section of mgoblue.com and click on the "more videos" tab of the "multimedia" section (they make it very hard to link to, so that is the best I can do). It was an early sign that perhaps this season Michigan would get its share of the bounces.

The following night, UM fell to Minnesota, 4-3. In the loss, Michigan displayed that it could skate with a team that has dominated them in recent years. It would be nearly two months before Michigan lost again.

The preseason questions began to be answered. Kevin Porter and Chad Kolarik picked up the scoring load, and it was almost immediately evident that this Michigan team was much more sound defensively than recent editions. The improvement on defense was mirrored by the improvement in the play of goalie Billy Sauer.

Although Red Berenson's plan to platoon his goalies was put on hold by Hogan's bout with mono, Sauer would have made it difficult in any event with the high level of his play.

The team roared through October and November, sweeping its first three CCHA series, along with a pair of games with Boston University (the sound of the Yost faithful chanting "Yip, Yip, Yip" every time BU forward Brandon Yip had the puck was something to behold), and games with Wisconsin and Minnesota at the College Hockey Showcase had the Wolverines flying.

UM suffered a letdown against Ohio State when the lowly Buckeyes came to town and scored a narrow 3-2 win. The second game of the series saw Bryan Hogan's first start in net for Michigan, and the Wolverines took revenge in game two, winning 4-2.

Despite being down 4 players who were at the World Junior Championships, Michigan shut down Providence (6-0), and Michigan Tech (1-0 in two overtimes) to win the Great Lakes Invitational for the first time in a decade. The dramatic win led to CCHA Player of the Month honors for Sauer, and sent Michigan into 2008 with an 18-2 record. After sweeps of Western Michigan and Notre Dame (featuring a dramatic Friday-night win at Yost keyed by a Louie Caporusso game-winner with 20 seconds left), Michigan was ranked no. 1 at 22-2. But then things went a bit sideways.

The following weekend saw MSU come to Yost, take an early 1-0 lead, and then lock down the game into an unwatchable sludge of clutching and grabbing. It was effective, though, as Michigan was shut out for the only time all season. The following night, MSU again took an early lead and tried to strangle all life out of Michigan, the crowd, and the viewing audience. With Michigan on life support, MSU let UM back into the game when Spartan defenseman Matt Schepke tried to swat the puck out of the air from in front of the MSU goal and somehow knocked it directly into his own goal.

The following weekend saw two disappointing ties at home against Northern Michigan, leading to the highly anticipated series against no. 1 Miami in Oxford, Ohio. The RedHawks showed off their new arena by giving up four goals to Michigan in the first period, and although they made a game of it (with help from the hapless referee, Matt Shegos), Michigan won, 4-2. The second game saw Michigan take a 5-3 lead in the third period, only to have Miami pull off an Arena Football-style play off the netting (which Shegos, of course, missed), leading to a 5-5 tie. The game also featured the classy Miami fans pounding on the glass so hard that the glass spider-webbed. Miami evidently spent so much on the arena that they lacked any spare panes of glass, so play continued.

Michigan wrapped up the season with a sweep of Lake Superior, a split against MSU (including a 5-2 win at a sold-out Joe Louis Arena), and a split against Ferris State.

So what to make of it all? There was the good (the 22-2 start was by far the best in Michigan history), the bad (Michigan was just 5-3-4 after that incredible start), and the ugly (defenseman Kevin Quick was kicked off the team in midseason for the proverbial "violation of team rules;" it subsequently came out that he had stolen his roommate's credit card and bought a few luxury items with it). A night after scoring all 4 of Michigan's goals against Lake Superior, Chad Kolarik pulled his hamstring in the Saturday rematch with the Lakers.

One definite bit of "good" was Kevin Porter being named the CCHA Player of the Month for February, to go along with the award he won for November. Although Porter tallied only four goals during the month, two came in the first game at Miami, and he had ten assists during the month, giving the Wolverines some badly-needed scoring balance.

As for this weekend, the Michigan Daily promises an update tomorrow about Kolarik (UPDATE: it's buried at the bottom of the story, but apparently Kolarik WILL be playing this weekend), and indicates that freshman defenseman Scooter Vaughan is likely out this weekend after breaking his jaw wrestling with a teammate off the ice(!). The leading candidate to replace him this weekend is Eric Elmbad, a walk-on sophomore who has never played in a game at Michigan. That said, Michigan swept the season series from the Mavericks in Omaha, which is always a tough place to play.

As usual, Brian at mgoblog has broken down the implications of the seeding for the NCAA tournament better than I ever could, so if you're wondering about that sort of thing, check it out. Personally, I don't really buy into the whole "we need the no. 1 or no. 2 overall seed to avoid playing in Madison" thing (historically, Michigan hockey never wins when they are the overall favorite), but I seem to be in the minority on that. Keep in mind that if you'd told almost anyone that Michigan would be worrying about things such as "number one overall seed" rather than "how many games do we have to win to clinch a spot in the NCAAs?" before the CCHA tourney even started, they'd have thought you were nuts.

So there you have it. I'm headed out on vacation this weekend so I'll have a Saturday morning recap of Friday night's game, and then it all depends on whether the internets work down on the Gulf Coast (and more importantly, in my hotel room).

Go Blue!