Michigan Hockey: Starts Anew; Big Ten Inaugural Season Commences — Preview — Part IV
Posted at 5:30am — 10/1/2013
Michigan Hockey: Starts Anew; Big Ten Inaugural Season Commences — Preview — Part IV
Coach Red Berenson begins his 30th season behind the bench on October 6th buoyed by the excitement of a new group of freshmen and a new conference. The Wolverines will attempt to rebound from an up and down 2012-12 campaign where they finished 18-19-3 and saw their 22 year NCAA tournament string snapped in the final CCHA Conference Championship game. Here is a look at the 2013-14 Wolverines along with a projection on the schedule and their B1G Ten opponents. Part I examines the returnees, while Part II looks at the freshmen and Part III will review the 2013-14 conference /schedule.
The Big Ten Opponents and Michigan’s 2013-14 schedule:
The Wolverine’s move to the B1G Ten Hockey Conference provides opportunities as well as challenges for Red Berenson’s charges. In the CCHA, Michigan was locked into a 28 game conference schedule that offered very little latitude for non conference games. (Michigan is tied into the GLI, which always took two of their precious six or seven total games they could schedule.) Now that Michigan is competing in a smaller conference with five other member schools, the conference schedule will consist of 20 games (four games versus each school / two home and two away.) This frees up a larger number of high quality non-conference games (14) that can be scheduled, including away series (which has been an opponent critique of Michigan hockey for decades.)
The Wolverines took full advantage of this scheduling opportunity in 2013-14, bringing in high caliber Hockey East opponents (U-Mass Lowell, Boston College and Boston University) as well as traveling to two familiar opponents (UNO and UNH) for weekend series. Take a look at the full schedule here:
www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-hockey/sched/mich-m-hockey-sched.html
Michigan opens the season on October 6th in an exhibition match against the University of Waterloo. The regular season begins at Yost against perennial Hockey East power Boston College on October 10th (Thursday). The Eagles will bring in a lightning fast squad with plenty of offensive firepower. Their roster only features four seniors, so they are young, but talented. It will be a good first test. BC finished 2nd in the HEA last season and was knocked out of the HEA conference tournament by rival BU. ECAC’s Union upset the Eagles in the first round of the NCAA playoffs last season.
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Written by GBMWolverine Staff — Yostmeister
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