Because I haven’t really been paying attention to hockey–shocking, I know. Usually I miss it a lot more than this. I actually don’t miss it at all…don’t hurt me! I guess some guys have switched teams or gotten signed so here goes the update:

Kevin Porter moved from the Colorado Avalanche to the Buffalo Sabres (1 year contract)

Al Montoya moved from the New York Islanders to the Winnipeg Jets (1 year contract)

Andrew Ebbett signed a two way deal with the Vancouver Canucks.

Recent grads Luke Glendening and Shawn Hunwick will both be playing hockey this fall. Luke signed a one year contract with his hometown team—the Grand Rapids Griffins.

Shawn is going to Europe to begin is “Eurotrip” (great movie if you haven’t seen it!) with EC Red Bull Salzburg of the Austrian Hockey League. According to his twitter account, he’s leaving this weekend.

I think that’s it in terms of updates. Go back to your summer lives now ….

Michigan senior captain Luke Glendening is the lone senior without a contract offer no more!

According to the Providence Journal, Glendening will be in Providence Wednesday morning for practice with the Providence Burins–the AHL team of the Boston Bruins.

Good luck to Luke in the Bruins organization!

Luke was named this years CCHA Best Defensive Forward. He finished the season tied for 7th in points (20) with 9 goals and 11 assists. *as of March 18th

Link to an excellent article from the Michigan Daily about Luke by Stephen J. Nesbitt.

The University of Michigan hockey team will host the Northern Michigan Wildcats this Friday and Saturday in their last home games of the season.

The Wolverines currently sit in third place in the CCHA, 6 points behind first place Ferris State. The Wildcats are in a tie for 7^th place with Miami and Notre Dame, 5 points behind Michigan.

Friday night’s game will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network beginning at 7:35 pm. Saturday night’s game will be shown on Fox Sports Detroit at 5:05 pm. There was a change in the time because the basketball team is hosting Ohio State on ESPN College Game Day.

Michigan will honor their seniors before the game on Saturday night. Defenseman: Greg Pateryn, Forwards: Luke Glendening and David Wohlberg, and Goalie: Shawn Hunwick

The Wildcats are coming off a series sweep at Bowling Green. They currently sit in 10^th place in the CCHA in scoring defense with 2.79 goals per game average. They are the second most penalized team in the CCHA with 18 minutes per game spent in the sin bin. Their power play ranks 2^nd with 20.5% while their penalty kill is 3^rd with 85%.

The Wildcats are led by senior forwards Tyler Gron (14 goals and 19 assists) and Justin Florek (15 goals and 13 assists). Their defense is led by junior Kyle Follmer with 3 goals, 19 assists and 29 block shots. Sophomore Wade Wpp leads the team with 44 blocked shots.

Sophomore Jared Coreau was in goal for both of the Wildcat victories last weekend. He has a 2.03 goals against average compared to Reid Ellingson’s 2.92 GAA who has played 16 games this year to Coreau’s 19.

Coreau has started the last 3 games, so look for him to be in net for the Wildcats.

Florek had this to say to NMU’s website:

“Michigan’s one of the hardest places to play in college hockey. Their fans are pretty crazy and last time we played them there was a good scuffle so it’ll be a battle down in Ann Arbor.

“We need to get pucks on net. Hunwick is a great goaltender and we just need to get chances. It worked the Friday night game here and he got flustered so we need to do the same thing.”

So what is Michigan going to have to do to get the sweep this weekend?

If history has anything to do with it, they’ve got a great head to head record with the Wildcats: 36-19-6 all time and 6-3-1 in the last 10 meetings.

Michigan gave up 3 power play goals last weekend to the Spartans. If NMU really does spend 18 minutes in the sin bin per game, the power play is going to have a field day attacking the net—the pucks have to start going in at some point. This weekend would be a great time for them to start!

I will be at Yost for both games this weekend. A friend gave me their tickets. I have great friends! Looking foward to the intensity from both the team and the fans. There’s nothing quite like a hockey game at Yost.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Michigan hockey team tonight—they looked good, especially when up against the #2 team in the country in Ohio State and beat them 3-0 in Columbus!

Michigan held their own with the physical play of the first period. I guess you would call it physical. It was more aggressive than a normal game in terms of finish checks and hitting guys on open ice, but nothing that resulted in any fights. It was there to prove that this game meant a lot to both teams and both teams came to play.

Michigan opened the scoring in the first period. Just over the 10 minute mark, Lee Moffie found himself with an open net and the puck after it rebounded to him from an Alex Guptill shot. The entire OSU team was bunched up on the opposite side of the rink.

Just before the second period ended, A.J. Treais found the back of the net to make it 2-0 going into the first intermission.

The score after the first period just showed how stellar Michigan goalie Shawn Hunwick was playing. He faced 19 shots in the first period and according to the official Michigan Hockey twitter account, that’s the second most shots faced in a period this year.

Michigan put 15 shots on goal.

The second period was relatively even. Michigan looked strong on the forecheck and created some trouble for the Ohio State defense even catching Ohio State goalie Cal Heeter out of position once. He trapped the puck behind the net and then was met by Derek DeBlois who stole it creating an opportunity for Michigan.

Hunwick faced another 9 shots in the second period and Michigan put only 4 shots on goal.

Ohio State had a great opportunity after defenseman Mike Chaisson went to the penalty box 6:22 into the third period. Right off the face off they had some great passing for an opportunity, but then the Michigan defense shut them down by clearing the puck over and over again.

With more than 13 minutes to go in the third period, Hunwick had already faced 39 shots, a season high.

Michigan ended up with 26 seconds on a 5 on 3 opportunity. They didn’t capitalize on it, but it was fun to see Ohio State chasing the Wolverines around the ice.

Michigan captain Luke Glendening scored an empty netter to take the score to 3-0.

Ohio State decided to leave the goal empty and Michigan came down and scored again, this time Alex Guptill with assist from David Wohlberg to make it 4-0.

Shawn Hunwick recorded his 8^th career shutout and a new personal best for saves with 46! He was a busy goalie tonight and after facing 46 shots, the reason Michigan won this game.

Michigan put 33 shots on goal the entire game yet scored 4 goals. Two of those goals were empty netters, but still. They can’t allow the opposition to put so many shots on Hunwick.

Things started to get a bit chippy with seconds left in the game which I’m sure will carry over to Sunday when the teams face one another in Cleveland, Ohio outside in the Frozen Diamond Faceoff.

CCHA Friday Night Scores:
Alaska 4, Ferris State 4, Final OT
Miami (OH) 2, Lake Superior State 1
Northern Michigan 5, Michigan State 5, Final OT
Western Michigan 3, Notre Dame 2

Here is a colorful picture book view of the Michigan scoresheet from their game Thursday night against St. Lawrence where they scored 10 goals. The pictures are broken down on the overall scoresheet and then divided up into classes.

Team Scoresheet

As you can see, there are a lot of people from all different classes contributing for the Wolverines. What’s so nice to see this early into the year is the number of freshman on the scoresheet. Not only are they helping out with helpers, but they are finding their way to the back of the net!

Michigan plays next on Friday and Saturday in Nothern Michigan in Marquette. These games mark the beginning fo the CCHA season for the Wolverines.

For a game that started out with the University of Michigan hockey team being outshot by the St. Lawrence Saints, Michigan was able to turn it around at the end of the first period and eventually win the game 10 to 3.

It wasn’t pretty hockey, but it was win.

There were “lazy” penalties according to head coach Red Berenson, and the game was a lot closer than the score would indicate.

“If you looked at the scoring chances and the shots on goal…our shots were going in and theirs weren’t.”

Saints player Tommy Thompson found the back of the net nearly 8 minutes into the first period to give St. Lawrence the early lead. They had 8 shots on goal at that point to Michigan’s 2. Michigan goalie Shawn Hunwick spent most of those first 8 minutes with his pads on the ice blocking pucks!

Finally at the 15:33 mark, Michigan captain Luke Glendening took charge of the game. He crashed the net to even the score with assists from David Wohlberg and Travis Lynch.

Berenson said of Glendening, “He’s our best back checker our hardest forechecker; our strongest most physical player, and our hardest working. If your captains playing like that, your team can’t be far behind.”

Less than a minute after Glendening’s goal, Luke Moffat did an acrobatic move while on the ice (literally) to give Michigan the lead with assists from Lee Moffie and Mike Chaisson. 

Not to be left out, A.J. Treais decided to get involved with first period scoring two minutes later with help from Phil DiGuiseppe and Greg Pateryn.

By the end of the first period, Michigan had managed to catch up to St. Lawrence with shots on goal being even at 11.

The second period started with a beautiful centering pass from David Wohlberg to Luke Glendening for his second goal of the game.

Two minutes later, Chris Brown was called for high sticking and it only took St. Lawrence 7 seconds to score to make it 4-2, Michigan. Kyle Flanagan, St. Lawrence’s captain scored the goal.

Greg Pateryn responded with a goal 2 and a half minutes later on a pass from Mac Bennett and Chris Brown.

Two quick goals were scored back to back within 27 seconds by Lee Moffie and Luke Glendening. The goal was Glendening’s third in the game. It is his first career hat trick.”

“I don’t remember the last time I did that. It was probably a really long time ago.”

Michigan didn’t close out the period the way they began; another “lazy” penalty resulted in Kyle Flanagan scoring another power play goal.

Michigan went into the second period with a 7-3 lead, but was once again falling behind St. Lawrence in the shots on goal.

Phil DiGiuseppe, Lindsay Sparks, and David Wohlberg scored for the maize and blue scored in the third period to bring their total to 10 and finish off St. Lawrence.

Shawn Hunwick blocked 27 of the 30 shots he faced and was replaced by Adam Janeyck with 9 minutes and 14 seconds to play in the third period.

Overall, this game wasn’t nearly as lopsided as the score would indicate. Michigan made a lot of mistakes with turnovers and dumb penalties. They did have their moments when things seemed to click in terms of passing and when one guy got a goal it was followed up with another. “You get a goal and you get a goal and so on…” The fans at Yost were having a great time with their goal chant!

It was nice to see so many of the freshmen contributing to the score sheet (DiGiuseppe, Chiasson, Travis Lynch).

I was under the impression that St. Lawrence was really going to throw their weight around and be the physical team they were when they hosted Ferris State last weekend, but that team didn’t show up. Neither did a physical Michigan team.

The maize and blue will have 8 days to regroup before their next game at Northern Michigan next Friday and Saturday.

This will be Michigan’s first games on the road of the season and the beginning of their CCHA hockey schedule.

“Now the CCHA kicks in, and it’s just that much better. The hockey will be better, everything will be more serious. I think we’re ready for it. We’re going out on the road and we won’t have the comfort of home, but the good thing is we have some confidence at home we have to take on the road,” said Berenson in his post game interview.

Player who impressed me the most today: Mac Bennett

He had St. Lawrence guys attacking him while he took the puck down the ice and he skated right through them with help from the boards. He was also all over the ice making plays on defense by blocking puck with his body or just being a downright pest for the Saints.

As I was writing this Bennett tallied his second assist of the night on Phil DiGuiseppe’s goal in the third period! His first assist came on Greg Pateryn’s goal. He recorded his third assist on David Wohlberg’s goal…the helpers just keep coming!