Round 2 is officially over and with it goes Wolverine alum and Washington Capitals player, Mike Knuble. Through 11 games he had 2 goals and an assist for the Caps.

With Washington’s loss, the New York Rangers advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals vs. the New Jersey Devils. This means that Michigan alum and rookie, Carl Hagelin is still playing.

In the Western Conference, the Phoenix Coyotes and LA Kings advanced to the Western Conference Finals. Michigan alum, Chris Summers, is in the Phoenix system but has not played in any playoff games.

Right now Hagelin and the Rangers are the wolverines only hope for keeping the Stanley Cup for another year! They had it last year when Steve Kampfer of the Boston Bruins won and the year before when John Madden played for the Chicago Blackhawks.

And as I’m typing this, Anton Valchenkov just hit Carl Hagelin near center ice and took his helmet off! Hagelin is on the bench getting his helmet fixed–should be back out on the ice soon.

Congratulations to Wolverine football alum, Junior Hemingway who signed a four year deal with the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs selected him in the 7^th round, 238^th overall of this year’s draft.

Hemingway is a wide receiver and 2012 Nokia Sugar Bowl MVP—it’s that sweet?

He played in 48 games for the Wolverines, starting 31 and wearing the coveted “21” that was designated this year to wear the “Desmond Howard Patch”.

Howard, who won a Heisman Trophy for Michigan became the first “Michigan Football Legend”. The number wasn’t retired, but instead used as a symbol for whoever receives the honor of wearing it.

Over his career, Hemingway caught 88 passes for 1,638 yards and 11 touchdowns. I’m really going to miss having him wear the maize and blue because he was such a dependable player to go up for a pass and come down with the ball. At 6’1”, 222, he wasn’t the biggest guy in the world, but he sure could jump. He was a great target–someone I’m sure Matt Cassel will be thanking his lucky stars for!

Hemingway graduated in April with a degree in General Studies. Good luck in KC!

Let’s make it 4 recruits from the U-18 NTDP team! Andrew Copp, an Ann Arbor kid who attends Skyline, is their quarterback and just happens to play forward for the Team USA hockey team in his spare time announced earlier this week on his twitter that he is committing to Michigan for next season.

He joins defensemen Connor Carrick, Jacob Trouba and goalie Jared Rutledge from the Ann Arbor program.

Copp didn’t play in the fall for Team USA because he was quartback of the Skyline football team–that’s probably why his name sounds familiar to those of you who read AnnArbor.com and keep up with the prep sports around town. He was injured last October during a game against Bedford and sustained a broken collar bone.

This unfortunate injury came 2 weeks after he set the state record of 557 passing yards!

Once he was healthy he played for both the u-17 and u-18 teams. According to the USHL website, he played in 18 games, scoring 3 goals and had 7 assists.

Here’s a football highlight video:

We are 14 games into this years World Championship, and we’ve got two Michigan Wolverines playing in the tournament. Max Pacioretty and Jack Johnson are representing Michigan wearing red, white, and blue.

Through 2 games, Jack has scored 3 goals and leads the team in time on the ice by over 10 minutes with 48 minutes. He’s also the captain…

Max has also played in two games and has one goal and three assists, leading the team with 4 points!

Johnson currently plays defense for the Columbus Blue Jackets and Pacioretty is a forward with the Montreal Canadiens.

Way to go guys! Keep up the great work! Through two games they have beaten France 7-2 and Canada 5-4 in OT with JMFJ scoring the game winner in OT.

Go USA! Go Blue!

Jack Johnson

To be a “Michigan Man” you have to be a lot of things…leadership is one of those qualities.

Jack Johnson, former Michigan hockey player, was named captain of Team USA at the World Championship. This is the second time he has been given the honor.

Jack was traded from the LA Kings to the Columbus Blue Jackets earlier this year. He had 8 goals and 16 assists for the Kings through 61 games and 4 goals and 10 assists through 21 games with the Blue Jackets.

Congratulations, Jack! Good luck!

Used with permission from Lisa Gansky, flickr

John-Michael Liles may have been a Hobey Baker Award Finalist for the Michigan State Spartans, but we at The Yost Post were lucky enough to interview him last fall—therefore, by association with the Yost Post, he’s a good guy who we have no problem talking about!

Well, why are we mentioning him?

Easy, Liles has been nominated for the 2012 NHL Foundation Player Award. This Award is given annually to an NHL player who “applies the core values of hockey—commitment, perseverance and teamwork—to enrich the lives of people in his community.”

Other nominees this year include Mike Fisher from the Nashville Predators and Matt Moulson of the New York Islanders.

So what has Liles done?

He created the Liles’ Buds program. From the Toronto Maple Leafs,

“an initiative he developed early in the season in partnership with The Canadian Safe School Network (CSSN) that recognizes children who perform acts of kindness and give back to their community through anti-bullying efforts. Liles donated 10 suite nights to this program, valued at $33,000, to Maple Leafs games during the 2011-12 season to children from the CSSN, Autism Speaks Canada and Cardiac Kids. Liles further demonstrated his dedication to education through a $25,000 donation to the First Book Canada program, money that purchased 5,000 books, supporting First Book Canada’s mission to address the challenge of literacy in Canada at its root by providing new, age and language appropriate books to children who otherwise would not be able to access them.”

Think that’s a lot…there’s more!

He lead the Maple Leafs—the first year he’s been on the team mind you—for most community appearances this season.

Here’s a list of what he did: visiting and signing autographs for children at numerous team events in support of the charitable arm of the Maple Leafs, the MLSE Team Up Foundation, and was an active participant in all of the Leafs’ full team events, including the Leafs and Legends Charity Golf Classic, Have a Heart Dinner, Outdoor Practice, SickKids Hospital visit, Easter Seals Skate and One4One.

He also participated in the following…

Liles also participated in the Canadian Military’s Operation HOHOHO, served breakfast to the homeless at University Settlement in Toronto for three hours on Christmas morning, visited numerous terminally ill patients at local hospitals, and was an ambassador of the Leafs School program Shape Up, which is a program available to schools in the Greater Toronto Area that focuses on creating healthy, active living opportunities for children and youth in Grades 1-8.

And no, we are still not done. This one is close to my heart because my sister is a graduate of Culver. He donated $90,000 to the renovation of the locker room facilities at Culver Academy.  This include the purchase of new training equipment both inside and outside the rink as well as tournament entry fees for their teams and other equipment purchases and expenses that occur during the hockey season.

He’s pretty much Mr. Everything.

Good luck to John-Michael—you’ve earned this nomination and as far as I’m concerened, the award! Keep doing great things and making a difference!

So how about that first round? Crazy, right?

Saw some upsets—Vancouver getting beat/owned by LA, Phoenix beating Chicago and Nashville beating Detroit. I really don’t think you can call that last one an upset, because Detroit had it coming. They hadn’t been playing well the 6 weeks leading up to the playoffs and were having injury issues. It happens.

Philly beating Pittsburgh was intense, although as far as I was concerned, I wouldn’t mind watching them play for 6 weeks and decide the winner. Those games were insane both on and off of the ice!

But how did Michigan alums fair? Going into the first round the Wolverines had 6 players playing for the following teams:

• Boston
• Chicago
• New York Rangers
• Phoenix Coyotes
• Vancouver
• Washington

Boston (Marty Turco), Chicago (Brendan Morrison), and Vancouver (Andrew Ebbett) were eliminated leaving Michigan with 3 guys in the second round: Chris Summers (Phoenix), Mike Knuble (Washington), and Carl Hagelin (New York Rangers).

As fate would have it, the Hockey Gods have paired Hagelin and Knuble up against one another. So Michigan is guaranteed a player in the third round, but they are also guaranteed that someone will go home.

How about some stats?

• Marty Turco did not see game action for the Bruins.
• Chris Summers did not dress for Phoenix.
• Andrew Ebbett played in 1 game for the Canucks and recorded 1 shot.
• Brendan Morrison played in 3 games scoring 1 goal.
• Mike Knuble had a hand in the overtime goal that send Washington to the second round. He blocked the dump in by a Burins player and took it up ice. The rebound from his shot was put in by Joel Ward. He played in 5 games and had 1 goal and 1 assist.
• Carl Hagelin has played in 5 games so far for the Rangers. He was suspended for 3 games after elbowing the Senator’s captain and one of his childhood idols, Daniel Alfredsson, in the head.

Probably my favorite Michigan moment so far were the announcers during Saturday’s New York/Washington game talking about Hagelin.

Pierre McGuire jumped in saying, “Red Berenson would love to hear you say that. He’s a stickler for fundamentals.”

That he is, Pierre. That he is…

Big Ten hockey. Just saying that sounds weird. It’s really difficult to think that the CCHA is entering its final season and everything will be changing once next season ends.

With those changes, mean there is no more CCHA Championship Tournament but a Big Ten Hockey Tournament.

St. Paul, Minnesota will host the first Big Ten hockey tournament in 2014 at the Xcel Energy Center.

And, Detroit will host the 2015 tournament at Joe Louis Arena! Good, because I’m not flying to Minni in the middle of March!

The exact dates for the tournament at JLA would be March 19-21, 2015.

JLA has hosted the CCHA Tournament for years. It’s nice to see that they will be able to host this tournament every other year with Xcel. I’m actually happy about this because I don’t think it’s fair for the site to be in the same place every year. It gives people from Minnesota a chance to show off their hockey rink and hospitality and provide Detroit with that same opportunity.

Now the Xcel rink is relatively new (opened in 2000). JLA on the other hand…..it might be time for some updates!

#1team1dream

If you follow any of the u-18 Team USA hockey players on twitter, they have been adding that hashtag to their posts over the last 2 weeks during the IIHF U-18 World Championship.

Team USA went into the tournament playing for their fourth straight Gold medal.

On a Sunday morning in the United States, Sunday afternoon in the Czech Replic, Team USA accomplished that goal beating Sweden 7-0.

Commence the celebration!

I paid the $7.99 to watch the game on FastHockey.com. I’d like to think that this was one of the best choices I’ve ever made in how to spend my money!

Seeing Team USA dominate Sweden and capitalize off of so many Sweden miscues was wonderful. This team has been together for 2 hockey seasons now and has worked so hard for the opportunity to win gold for the fourth time in a row. They didn’t want to be the team to ruin the dynasty!

screen cap of the Celebration

The first and only goal in the first period was scored by Notre Dame recruit, Thomas DiPauli. Ohio State recruit and my personal favorite goalie, Collin Olson, stopped 11 shots in that frame.

Goals in the second period were scored by Danny O’Regan. Danny is from Massachusetts and came to Ann Arbor a few times this spring to play with Team USA.

The third goal of the game was scored by Michigan recruit J.T. Compher. He had a 2 on 1 breakaway, kep the puck, and sniped it top shelf. The water bottle sitting on top of the net actually flew up into the air from the speed of the shot!

The fourth goal was scored by Wisconsin recruit Nic Kerdiles.

Olson faced 10 shots in the second period.

The third period saw another three goals scored. The first by Miami University recruit Ryan Hartman. The second by Michigan recruit Connor Carrick. He striped one from the blue line. I’m not even sure the goalie saw it coming, but he let it rip and before you knew it, it was in the net! The final goal was scored by Kerdiles with 16 seconds remaining in the game.

Collin Olson received the Best Goaltender of the Tournament Award and was named Player of the Game.

Team USA was able to overcome the unthinkable when two days before they were set to fly to the Czech Republic, the International Ice Hockey Federation ruled USA forward Stefan Matteau was ruled ineligible. Stefan was born in the United States, but had lived in Canada for several years. Since he hadn’t played hockey in the United States for a full two years before this tournament, the IIHF said he was not eligible. Imagine the heartbreak Stefan and his teammates faced knowing he couldn’t play. He has been on the team with them since the beginning, dreaming and working hard together for this tournament.

Team USA really showed the IIHF! You can’t hold them down!

It’s hard to believe these two years have come to an end. I’m really going to miss having these guys in Ann Arbor. The current U-17 team and all other kids looking to be a part of the NTDP have some big shoes to fill. Dedication, hard work, and leadership are all qualities the u-18s have.

Sunday at 10 am, you should turn on TSN and watch the U-18 IIHF World Championship. If you don’t have TSN, you can watch the game on FastHockey.com. Fast Hockey does require you to register and pay to watch the game ($7.99).

Why?

• We are Americans and our Team is going for their 4^th gold medal in a row!
• We have an amazing team that consists of college bound players—except for a few, one is going to the Q and at least 3 are only juniors!
• This is the future of hockey in America as we know it!
• Seth Jones, a junior forward, is predicted as being the number 1 pick in the 2013 NHL Entry Draft and he currently sits in a tie for 14^th overall in the tournament with 3 goals and 4 assists. He’s also received 2 Best Player of the Game awards this tournament.

And if American pride and watching good, quality hockey won’t persuade you, four Michigan recruits are involved in tomorrow’s gold medal game vs. Sweden.

This is not a typo, 4 Michigan recruits!

Connor Carrick (D), Jacob Trouba (D), and Jared Rutledge (G) will all be on campus in August. J.T. Compher is a junor forward who will be in Ann Arbor next August.

Compher is tied for 9^th overall on +/- ratio with +6. Tied with teammate Brady Skjei who will be a Minnesota Golden Gopher come fall.

Ohio State recruit—don’t hold it against him—Collin Olson is listed as the number one goalie in the tournament with a save percentage of 95.51% through 4 games.

Jared Rutledge has played one game and he shut out Denmark, who USA beat 4-0.

So watch the game tomorrow!

USA! USA! USA!