Another Sweep

Another weekend, another sweep for the Michigan hockey team. If they aren't careful, people are going to start getting used to this again.

Friday night:
No real comments on the Friday night game, as it wasn't on TV. Sauer gave up 4, but by some accounts only one was a soft goal. Hensick had another 4 point night, yawn. Can we just give him the Hobey already? Porter, Naurato, Cogliano and Johnson all kept their hot streaks going as well.

Saturday night:
You'd like to see them beat WMU by more than what was essentially a 2-1 game, but I'm actually happy they had a game like that. We've been winning with offense for awhile now. It's nice to see the boys dig deep and grit out a win in a low-scoring game against a team that has the capability to put the puck in the net.

Sauer deserves a lot of credit for that win, as he made some outstanding saves, including one on a 3 on 1 that was the best save of his Michigan career. He followed that up by stopping the rebound as well.

What was lost in the excitement of that save, however, was what a piss poor play it was by Chris Summers to get things rolling. 3 guys breaking out of the zone, he and his partner are the two men back for us, and he sells out to try to make a huge hit and misses, hence the 3 on 1. I've been kind of disappointed in Summers so far this season. He's clearly talented, and maybe my expectations were too high, but I expected more. I've been hearing rumblings that they may move him up to forward and slide Cook back to defense. Which would make sense, because I thought Summers looked a lot better up front when he was filling in for Lebler. He can hit, and he's extremely fast. He might be a really good forechecker.

Rohlfs' goal was uber-impressive. He made 3 great plays before he put it in the net. The first was chipping it off the boards to get around the WMU player. He chipped it a little too far, so another Bronco had a great shot at getting to the puck. The second great play was that Rohlfs got there and hooked the WMU player's stick so he missed the puck. Rohlfs picked it up, and then made an absolute pro-caliber shot into the net. That was a highlight reel goal.

There were some great hits in that game. Ciraulo, Kampfer and Summers all had great hip checks that sent the Bronco player head over heels.

Pio had one of the worst calls of the season when he sent Naurato off for tripping. It was actually Kampfer and it was the most blatant penalty of the year. He took the WMU kid out Marchment-style, knee-to-knee. I probably wouldn't have booed too much if he had given him 5 and a game...I'm not sure how you get the wrong kid on a play like that.

MGoLinks
MGoBlue.com has put up their "Hensick for Hobey" page. I think it looks nice. The best part is the highlight reel on the left side of the page. There's some great stuff on there. TJ deserves that award. By the way, 57.8% on faceoffs? That's fantastic. To put it in perspective, the best player in the NHL with a good sample size is Yanic Perrault at 62%. Hensick's number would put him at like 8th place in the NHL. That's pretty outstanding, and I can't imagine there are too many players in college with a better percentage than that. Just one of those usually overlooked things that actually can make a huge difference in a game.

Mgoblog has a nice piece about how stupid the PWR system is. At least the PWR didn't vote for Florida. Oh wait, we're not really allowed to complain about that anymore are we. Damn.