Michigan Splits with Miami



Excited Moffatt is excited. Photo: Bill Rapai


Michigan and Miami split the series at Yost this past weekend with the Wolverines winning Friday night's tilt by a 4-2 score and the RedHawks scoring three times in the final frame of Saturday's game to take the finale 4-3.

Miami got out to an early lead on Friday night when Cody Murphy scored a goal that was originally disallowed but awarded after video review. Racine came out behind the net to play the puck but Miami intercepted and centered. Murphy had an empty net to shoot at and it he put it in just before the net was knocked from its moorings.

Michigan answered on a power play later in the first period with Treais firing home a laser from the point. Treais added a second goal at 6:32 of the second period with a little snapper through a defenseman.

Miami knotted the game back up shorthanded when Michigan had a sloppy turnover behind the net trying to set up a breakout and Czarnik jammed it past Racine.

Mike Chiasson of all people scored the game-winner as he got deep into the offensive zone and kind of swung at a loose puck that Guptill had knocked free and chipped it into the net. He had a good laugh about that one after the game.

Guptill added some insurance with just over seven minutes left in regulation as he slammed home a loose puck after a shot by Trouba. Travis Lynch got down the ice to negate an icing and keep the play alive. He then got it back to Trouba for the shot.

Steve Racine made 30 saves in the victory to run his record to 3-0. I only saw what they showed in the highlight clip on MGoBlue, but even in that video he had 4 of 5 blockbuster saves. Trouba had a couple of turnovers in deep and Racine committed absolute larceny to keep the puck out of the net. The goals he allowed were both flukey, but as MGoBlog pointed out on Twitter, he stopped every shot that he was actually in the net for!

The power play wasn't great in the game, going 1 of 7 (14%) and giving up a shorthanded goal, but they did generate ten more shots on goal, and are pretty clearly a lot more dangerous than they were last year. If they keep firing away they're going to get goals.



Photo: Bill Rapai

 On Saturday, despite 31 saves from Jared Rutledge, the Wolverines were unable to hold on to a third period lead and fell 4-3. Miami scored three goals in a 2:41 span early in the third, captializing on an "and-one" situation where they scored on a delayed call and then scored on the ensuing power play.

There aren't highlights on MGoBlue, so I can't speak to what I saw, but from some of the accounts that I read, Rutledge actually played pretty well and just didn't get a lot of help. Coach Berenson was much more complimentary of his young netminder after this one, saying, "He gave us a chance."

Guptill, T. Lynch, and Sparks had the goals for the Wolverines, as Sparks, Lynch, and DeBlois continue to get it done on the "third line" or whatever it is that you want to consider them.

Treais and Trouba both had 4-game point streaks snapped on Saturday.

The Wolverines go on the road to Northern Michigan this weekend for a pair of games.

Other Stuff:
-The Wolverines were poor on faceoffs this weekend, including an awful 1-for-12 effort in their own end on Friday. Yikes.

-The goaltending position is still up in the air after the weekend, though Racine probably has an edge.

-The Winter Classic will likely be canceled on Thursday because the NHL is run by stupid people. This also means the games at Comerica will be called off and the GLI will move back to Joe Louis, which is lame. Hopefully it's a no-brainer to try this again next season, assuming hockey is back by then, which I wouldn't bet my life on. The only people that could screw up hockey worse than Gary Bettman has are the members of the Hulman-George family.

-Matt Slovin went up to Toronto and wrote a stellar story about Zach Hyman. There are some great stories in there about meeting Gordie Howe, the OHL pushing for him to sign, Zach wanting no part of that league, and his transformation into an all-around player. It sounds like the Panthers still think he's a potential NHLer. The lesson here is when you let the Daily kids travel to Toronto, you get great stories. Remember the one about St. Mike's a few years back?

Lastly, I've been playing around with the CHN Go! (College Hockey News's Android app) on the Droid RAZR M that Verizon is letting me test out (Reminder: I was given a device as well as five months of service in exchange for my honest opinions about the product and the things it allows me to do), and it's a pretty solid effort. They've added news stories to it, they have a nice live scoreboard feature, and you can set teams as your favorite and easily view their season results along with detailed boxscores for each game. The screenshot above is their "Tale of the Tape" for Friday's upcoming game against NMU.

There are some things that they still need to work out (the Standings section is kind of a mess) and there are some features that I'm sure will be added later (it'd be MONEY if they had stats for each team) and that I can dream about (if you could easily get to game audio/video if available). Overall it's a very nice app and a good addition to the college hockey coverage that's out there!