GBMWolverine: Michigan Hockey -- Michigan at Notre Dame -- Irish Ranked 6th -- Part I

Posted at 4:00pm — 1/13/2012

GBMWolverine: Michigan Hockey — Michigan at Notre Dame — Irish Ranked 6th — Part I

#10 Michigan (13-8-4, 8-6-4-1 3rd CCHA) vs. #6 Notre Dame (13-8-3, 8-5-3-0 T5th CCHA)
7:35 p.m. Friday 1/20 & Sat. 1/21 (South Bend, Ind., Compton Family Center)
TV: Friday-NBC Sports Network (formerly Versus) — DirecTV Channel 603
Saturday-CBS College Sports Network — DirectTV Channel 613

From Notre Dame website: WHITE OUT NIGHT — Notre Dame hockey fans are encouraged to wear white for Friday night’s game against Michigan as the game is the annual “White Out Night,” the first at the Compton Family Ice Arena. Five-thousand long-sleeved t-shirts and pom pons will be given away prior to the game.

Michigan skated into Columbus last weekend and bounced the #2 Buckeyes on their ears, sweeping the series 4-0 on Friday and 4-1 in Cleveland at the Frozen Diamond Faceoff. The Wolverines unbeaten streak now stretches to nine games (7-0-2) and vaulted them up into 3rd place in the CCHA. Meanwhile, Notre Dame fell victim to WMU, losing a home and home series with the Broncos 3-2 and 3-1.
The Irish dropped into a 5th place tie with hard charging Miami, one point behind 4th place LSSU and two points behind Michigan, with two games in hand. Michigan holds a 71-48-5 overall record against Notre Dame. This will be the only two regular season meetings. Friday night’s game will also be the first for Michigan at the new Compton Family Center, a 5,022 seat arena christened earlier this season. Michigan and Notre Dame have split their last ten meetings dating back to January, 2009.

Rewinding Michigan’s Previous Action:

The Wolverines shutout the Buckeyes 4-0 behind Shawn Hunwick’s 46 saves (a career best) and first period goals by Lee Moffie and AJ Treais. The game stayed 2-0 until late into the third period when Michigan added empty net goals by Luke Glendening and Alex Guptill. Hunwick was especially sharp in the first period, turning aside 19 shots. Michigan also shut down the OSU power play, going 0-4 on the night.

Sunday evening the Wolverines moved into Cleveland’s Progressive Field for the first ever outdoor game hosted in Ohio. Michigan wasted little time taking the momentum as Chris Brown pounded home a rebound midway through the opening period and fellow line-mate Alex Guptill lasered a top corner shot from a behind the net Brown backhand feed for a 2-0 first period edge. The Buckeyes came out with more intensity in the second period and scored a PP goal inside the first minute to cut the lead to 2-1. But, Michigan regained the momentum with two goals just: 28 apart to end the frame 4-1. Derek DeBlois deflected a pass behind Buckeye net-minder Cal Heeter to make it 3-1. Right after the face-off, David Wohlberg burst down the right side, cut in, and had the puck slide off his stick under Heeter’s pad to extend the lead to 4-1. Michigan then played a dump and chase game in the final period to secure the victory- and sweet revenge for an OSU sweep in November at Yost. Hunwick finished the weekend with a 0.50 GAA and a .987 save %. He collected his third shutout of the season and eighth of his career, tying him with former U-M net-minder Billy Sauer for 4th overall in shutouts for a Michigan goaltender. Hunwick is also the all time leader in Michigan history for save percentage (.924) and goals against average (2.16).

Scouting the Irish:

Coach Jeff Jackson’s Irish were selected by the media and the coaches during the pre-season to win the CCHA this season. Little did they know that the conference would be so difficult to navigate with upstarts like Ohio, WMU, LSSU and Ferris State jumping into the national rankings joining perennials like Michigan and Miami. Actually, it is hard to believe that a wily veteran coach like Jackson wouldn’t think of the CCHA as the most competitive conference in college hockey this season. It wasn’t too long ago that Notre Dame was an also ran program stuck in the throws of several coaching changes. Enter Jackson in 2005, and soon the Irish were back to national prominence he had accomplished while starting his career at LSSU (two NC’s) in the early 1990’s. 154 of his 336 career victories have come from behind the Irish bench.

The 2011-12 addition in South Bend is full of young talent that is still seeking consistency. The Irish have had a difficult road this season, taking on what is deemed as the 4th toughest schedule in the country (for comparison sake, NMU is #1, Michigan is #3, WMU is #7, MSU is #8, OSU is #9 and Miami is #10) which includes a brutal conference schedule. The Irish started the season in Duluth splitting with the defending national champion Bulldogs. They have also defeated the cream of Hockey East, BC and BU at home, while in-explicitly getting bombed in a weekend home sweep by Northeastern. They recently traveled to Minnesota and beat the Gophers for the first time since 1973 (in four meetings.) Notre Dame has also split with the Buckeyes, Lakers and Ferris St. with two more games coming with the Bulldogs. It seems that their new nemesis is WMU, which not only swept them last weekend (first time ND has been swept in a conference series since February, 2010-by WMU) but the Irish could only muster a win and tie (and a shootout loss) in a previous series this season. Overall, the Irish are 7-5-3 versus ranked teams and have Michigan, Ferris St. (H&H), and a huge trip to Miami on the schedule as their prominent obstacles to compliment a long visit to Alaska, a home series with BG and a season closing home series with MSU.

Notre Dame is not going to dazzle anyone in any one aspect of their game. Matter of fact, their statistical numbers are average at best. Their offense averages 3.0 GPG (25th), 3rd in the CCHA, but features two of the top offensive players in the country and several other offensive minded forwards. Defensively, the Irish rank 27th allowing 2.70 GPG. There is little margin for error when you are just barely outscoring what you are yielding opponents- and the Irish have been in plenty of close contests. Their goal differential is a skinny +6 (compared to Michigan’s +30) so Notre Dame is used to playing tight, low scoring contests.

The special teams are where the Irish make up some of their deficiencies, pounding opponents with a 20.7% PP (17th). The Domers have scored a PP goal in 19 of their 24 games, lead the CCHA in this category and will make teams pay that put them to the test once too often. The PK unit is similar to Michigan, at 82.4% (28th) and will not overwhelm anyone- but that depends on how strong the opponent’s PP is. The Irish take on average 14.4 minutes in penalties per game, (22nd /58 teams) so they do give their opponents enough PP opportunities. Notre Dame in general is not a poor defensive team- yielding four more goals than Michigan- but find generating offense- even with their top six forwards- a challenge at times.

Notre Dame is led by five seniors with two of them prominent in their attack. Center Billy Maday (6-12-18, -1) leads their roster with 7 points in 10 career games against the Wolverines. Defense-man Sean Lorenz (2-10-12, -1) is a rough and tumble type that has assisted on key game winning tallies this season. The offensive attack is centered on two superb sophomores- TJ Tynan (9-22-31, -1) and Anders Lee (14-8-22, +2.) Tynan leads the CCHA in points and is 8th nationally in scoring. Both are Hobey Baker candidates. Forwards (junior) Riley Sheahan (7-14-21), sophomore Bryan Rust (5-4-9, +3) and junior Nick Larson (3-3-6, -3, 55 PIM’s) round out the experienced supporting cast. Freshman forward Austin Wuthrich (5-7-12, +3) and freshman defense-man Robbie Russo (3-9-12, -1) have bolstered the special teams with Russo captaining the first unit of the PP. He has scored 10 of his 12 points in that fashion. The blue line also features junior Sam Calabrese (2-9-11, -2) and hard hitting sophomore Stephen Johns (2-4-6, +4, 61 PIM’s.) Sheahan is suspended for Friday’s game and will sit out- a pretty big loss for the Irish.

The goal-tending at Notre Dame is split between junior Mike Johnson (7-6-3, 2.63 GAA & .887 save %) and sophomore Steve Summerhays (6-2-0, 2.73 GAA & .893 save %). Neither is glamorous in their approach and has had nominal starts this season considering that the defense in front of them has been pretty decent. Both tend to give up the soft goal and then turn around and stop everything. Part of the issue may be that Notre Dame only yields an average of 24 shots on net allowed, so neither sees a ton of work.

Part II we will discuss “Charting the Wolverines, Expectations, and of course Yost Bits”.

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Written by GBMWolverine Staff — YostMeister

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