Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback
Dan Rubin: Happy Tuesday to everyone, and happy Halloweek to all of you who are planning to head out on Saturday for some mold, spores and fungus. Quick shoutout to my wife for getting the kids in order for this week. It was fun to find out what my kids were wearing for last Saturday’s Trunk-or-Treat when they put it on for the first time.
Ghosts and goblins aside, I’m welcoming the ever-present shadow of western college hockey back to my Massachusetts-centric brain. Even if I’ve been obsessed with the Metrowest region because of my love, affection and affiliation with certain teams in the Waltham area, it’s always good to argue and banter with someone from the State of Hockey. This week, we’re debuting the next member of our tribe with Eric Vegoe and the Twin Cities.
So, yeah, consider me a little spooked that Minnesota’s voodoo doll for North Dakota did the trick last week when the Gophers swept a home series against their forever rivals. Given that they’d just fallen out of the USCHO D-I men’s poll after starting the season at No. 14, I’d started to think that folks finally started coming to reality on a team that struggled through last season. Instead, maybe this is the wake-up call that could reverberate through BOTH Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Eric — I know this was a pair of big ones for Minnesota fans. Is it reality, or did North Dakota wake up on Sunday and think it was all just a fever dream?
Eric Vegoe: Glad to be one of the western members of the USCHO tribe this season providing some perspective on what was a “wild west” weekend. The wins certainly were big ones for Brett Larson’s squad and I think North Dakota came home with some actual notes from the doctor after getting swept. Every team in college hockey starts off the year with unknowns regarding their experience coming back, newcomers trying to fit into a program and how tweaks to their system will work under pressure. The pressure the Gophers put on this past weekend wasn’t dreamed of, it was real and Dane Jackson saw his team wasn’t ready for it.
Starting the season against Bemidji State was a challenging series for the Fighting Hawks, but they didn’t trail much during that home and home. Next up was Bentley and the metrics showed that the Falcons were outgunned with an xG of 7.9 to 3 during the weekend. During the weekend at Mariucci in front of two sellout crowds, Minnesota played patiently and took advantage of rush chances given away to score five goals each night. The game film will certainly give Jackson some action items for his players and they’ll get a good chance to address them in their next check-up against Michigan State in Austin, Texas, for the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Game on Saturday.
Dan: Patience in a hockey game is a very interesting thing to watch because so many teams try to generate odd-man rushes and breakouts that come from quick passes and even quicker movements. I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that a team like Western Michigan, for example, is averaging 39.8 shots per game while allowing less than 23 while it retains greater possession of the puck. I’m not a huge fan of analytics like Corsi and stuff like that, but Western ranks near the top of the Corsi percentages in even strength packages — as does North Dakota and Denver.
A team like Bentley, on the other hand, has a lower Corsi percentage and is tied to a more shot-based discrepancy. Not to pick on an Atlantic Hockey America team in that regard, let alone THAT team, but I know the Falcons are at their best when they can push teams to the outer rim and force them to dump and chase. If an opponent isn’t giving up possession like that, it’s going to lower the percentages and juke those numbers in an opposite direction.
At least that’s what I’d like to think.
I do think that North Dakota is significantly better than the two losses indicate, and I’ll be interested to see what happens when Minnesota plays a Penn State team that was winless ahead of this weekend’s sweep over Canisius. We’ve seen that AHA teams are successful at forcing fast and high-powered teams into overtime or pressure situations because they can play freer in those environments, but I’m still curious about the concerns in Hockey Valley. The Nittany Lions lost major firepower from last year, but they conceptually remain similar to the teams from years past.
That means before we close the loop, it’s likely that we want to look at a pair of major league games in late October between two teams with something major to prove against one another.
(Don’t worry, Michigan fans, we’re getting there).
Eric: The concerns for Guy Gadowski aren’t an illusion and it’s ill fortune for Penn State that Minnesota is coming off a weekend sweep of a very good North Dakota team. After playing Michigan Tech, favorites to win the CCHA, and two of the NCHC’s best in Minnesota Duluth and the Fighting Hawks, the Gophers have the No. 1 ranked strength of schedule and might have found their path. Larson magically was able to retain key guys like Brodie Ziemer and LJ Mooney, summon a few additions in the portal in Evan Murr, Austin Burnevik and Tanner Henricks, and now maybe he’s transformed his team into playing patiently with the puck to show off their ‘gritty skill.’ The Gophers didn’t win last weekend due to the mysterious arts of corsi analytics, but by converting their Grade A chances for goals.
Guy Gadowsky, on the other hand, lost 64 percent of his scoring from another year ago and will be spending quite a bit of time teaching this fall. Penn State had a flashy group of forwards last year, but Gavin McKenna, Charlie Cerrato, Matt DiMarscio, Aiden Fink and JJ Wiebusch have all departed. Penn State retained defensemen Jackson Smith and Mac Gadowsky. Those two lead the Nittany Lions for time on ice so far and they’ll be counted on as students at the front of the class. The rivalry between these two on the ice has grown over the first 13 years, but we’ll have to wait and see how rowdy the classroom gets in Minneapolis for this matchup.
The top of the USCHO poll is heavily skewed to the gunslingers out west with eight of the top 10 from the Big Ten and NCHC, but what’s the Waltham worldview on Michigan as the top team with 49 of the 50 ballots and the Gophers starting the season ranked, disappearing from the poll and then magically back on the voters ballots?
Dan: My broadcast partner and I very briefly talked about Michigan before we went on the air on Saturday. It could be easily summarized with the following exchange:
“Boy, that Michigan team…”
“Yep.”
“Good.”
“Very.”
There weren’t really any words that anyone needed. Michigan’s win over Western Michigan on Friday sent Yost into a frenzy with a buzzer beater that I’ve only seen happen one other time in my life (shoutout Mercyhurst scoring to eliminate Bentley at the old JAR), but the quality of that game and the comeback from being down 1-0 in the second period told me everything that I needed to know about what happens when the roster is pressured. Scoring twice in the first 65 seconds of the third period to turn a one-goal deficit into a 2-1 lead meant that a message was received in the locker room, and I’m guessing it wasn’t one that required fire and brimstone. If I had to imagine, it probably went something like, “hey we’ve played well, Western is doing this and that, and we’re going to win by doing that and this.”
Then they did it.
I love when regular-season non-conference games are instant classics, but the undercurrent left us with our jaws agape at Michigan’s early season. Next to maybe Providence, which is 5-0-0 to start the season, I can’t picture an eastern team competing at that level — at least not yet. Give it some time, and someone will emerge, but the greater question is if anyone is on the level that currently exists with those juggernauts out west.
As we wrap up, that’s where we’ll probably leave it — who challenges the big boys right now? Anyone?
Eric: It’s been great going back and forth on TMQ. We do get to see Michigan State-Boston University and Providence-Minnesota Duluth yet this season, but the east-west matchups are rarer than getting a full sized candy bar on Halloween. We might be waiting until the NCAA tournament before the answer gets revealed.