-of m p W I a a Ah a w v w w w FAC EO FF 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 MICHIGAN'S LEAGUE? Michigan has dominated the CCHA. Can it win the last Mason Cup ever awarded? 3 STAFF PICKS The Daily hockey beat predicts the outcome of the 2012-13 NCAA hockey season. 4 THE ZACH HYMAN STORY How the Ontario native found a home in Ann Arbor CCHA CONTENDERS The conference is dying, the teams as strong as ever. We take a look at the CCHA's best. SCHEDULE NO. 1 3 4 6 7. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 26 27 28 29 30 37 39 NAME Steve Racine Mike Chaisson Kevin Clare Brennan Serville Phil Di Giuseppe Jacob Trouba Luke Moffatt Justin Selman Zach Hyman Boo Nieves Lee Moffie Kevin Lynch Daniel Milne Andrew Sinelli Andrew Copp Derek DeBlois Travis Lynch Jeff Rohrkemper A.J. Treais Jon Merrill Mike Szuma Alex Guptill Jared Rutledge Luke Dwyer Adam Janecyk Mac Bennett Lindsay Sparks POSITION Goalie Defense Defense Defense Forward Defense Forward Forward Forward Forward Defense Forward Forward Forward Forward Forward Forward Forward Forward Defense Defense Forward Goalie Goalie Goalie Defense Forward YEAR Freshman Sophomore Junior Sophomore Sophomore Freshman Junior Freshman Sophomore Freshman Senior Senior Freshman Sophomore Freshman Junior Sophomore Senior Senior Junior Sophomore Sophomore Freshman Sophomore Junior Junior Senior draft day - the day his NHL dream became a tangible real- ity. The long wait had ended. At the other end of the stage, a Florida Panthers executive held out the red, blue and gold sweat- &r that would become his own. It took five rounds of selec- tions and 11 years since Stu made that promise to his son at Maple Leaf Gardens, but it had finally happened. The NHL was in sight, but then came the fork in the road that so many top junior players before him had experienced - NCAA or OHL? For Zach, it was a non-deci- sion decision. "I don't even remember one instance when the OHL popped into my mind when I was mak- ing a decision," said Zach, who committed to Princeton Uni- versity at just 15. "I didn't ever really think about the OHL." Zach had been a member of the Florida Panthers orga- nization for no more than 15 minutes, and he had already described himself as a "power forward" who "loves to crash the net" in an interview with the Panthers' website. He didn't realize it then, but he'd be a completely different player in two years time. In April 2011, Zach was back at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, taking ina Kings game. While he watched, he hoped he would get the chance to play there one day. During the game, he got word that Princeton head coach Guy Gadowsky was interviewing for the same job at Penn State. Zach didn't think much of the news - he believed Guy would be there when he stepped foot on cam- pus that fall. The next day, Zach and Spen- cer unwound in the living room of their grandfathers' California home. Zach spanned to atten- tion asa television anchor broke the news that altered his future. "And the new head coach of the Penn State hockey team is Guy Gadowsky." Zach's jaw dropped. Not two minutes later, the phone rang. Gadowsky was on the other end. Somehow, Zach managed to get words out. "It was shock," Zach's mom Vicky recalled. "Zach was one of the first ones he called." Zach and Gadowsky were close. Vicky said his decision to originally commit to Princeton "came down to Guy." There was a comfort level between the two of them that would make many coaches envi- ous. It takes, a special kind of relationship to get akid to com- mit at only 15, as Zach did. "He told me the news and he felt really bad because of the sit- uation I was in and the relation- ship we had," Zach said. "It was four years in the making that I was going to go play for him and that school." Tollowing Gadowsky to Penn State wasn't ever a seri- ous option. The Nittany Lions would still be a club-level team for another season, and Zach didn't want totake another year off, like he did in 2010-11 to play in Hamilton. When he committed to Princ- eton at 15, he started a trend of early hockey commitments by doing so. But Zach's recruit- ment was suddenly wide open, just four months before he had planned on arriving at Princ- eton. "As soon as he decommitted, it was overwhelming," Vicky said. "You got a taste of what movie stars go through. They were fighting for him." It's 10 hours from the Hyman's Forest Hill neighbor- hood in the heart of Toronto to Boston. Stu's phone rang for nearly half the drive as he drove his two oldest sons to Boston College and Boston University. Zach had a decision to make, and everyone wanted to see him before he made it. "Every 10 minutes, the phone rang," Spencer said. "Norm Bazin (head coach at UMass- Lowell) was like, 'Stop by on your way.' UMass called. Maine, we went to. North Dakota, Min- nesota - they all wanted us to come." Some of the schools never stood a chance. The family nar- rowed the decision down to the Boston and Michigan areas, largely because of the great aca- demic reputations for the Ivy League-caliber student. On the way back from Bos- ton, with Boston University the clear leader in the clubhouse, the Hymans detoured to Ann Arbor for a stop.a It would be their last. Zach and Spencer sat across from Red Berenson in the coach's office, while Berenson laid out why they should be Wolverines. It didn't take long. "Ten minutes into Michigan, we had completely forgotten about every other school," Spen- cer said. "It was over. Zach and I were sitting in the (Ross Aca- demic Center) and we looked at each other and it was like, 'Yeah, we're going to Michigan." When Zach arrived in Ann Arbor in fall 2011, his suitors were still pleading. The OHL executives kept calling. "In Michigan, right 'at the beginning of the year, we were getting offers for him to go," Stu recalled. "Guys were saying 'Red's not playing him properly,' and 'He's a goal scorer but he's playing defensive forward' and 'I can take Zach to the NHL.' "We just said 'Thanks a lot.' " At the start of last season, though, the puck just wasn't going in for Zach. He heard metal after seemingly every shot - frustrating after scor- ing basically at will the season before. Berenson has been coach of the year in the NHL before. He knows the type of forward that today's game demands. If you're going to be a part of his pro- gr'am, you're going to play sound two-way hockey. Berenson met with Zach and told him he wanted to see more of a two-way game out of him. Don't worry about the points, Berenson told the natural goal- scorer. Zach's not the first to have that conversation with Beren- son. He certainly won't be the last. But he has bought into the system as well as anyone in pro- gram history. His dad compares him to Luke Glendening - last season's captain and the type of team- first leader that every locker room needs but not every one can have. Zach scored only nine points last year compared to 102 the year before in Hamilton. He played only two more games in Hamilton than at Michigan. "I would've liked to have had more of an offensive impact," Zach said. "But in the NHL, if you can't play defense, you can't play. You need to be a two-way player in the NHL nowadays." Fred Bandel, the amateur scout for the Florida Panthers responsible for Michigan, hadn't seen Zach before the draft. So his description of Zach as a player reflects only on his development as a Wolverine. And you can't tell from his input that Zach wasn't always the Oct 11-12 Oct 19 Oct 26-27 Nov 2-3 Nov 9 Nov 10 Nov 15-16 Nov 21 vs. RIT vs. Bentley vs. Miami (Ohio) at Northern Michigan vs. Michigan State at Michigan State vs. Notre Dame vs. Bowling Green Dec 14-15 Dec 27-28 Dec 29-30 Jan 4 Jan 8 Jan 11-12 Jan 18-19 Jan 25-26 Feb 1 Feb 2 vs. Western Michigan Great Lakes Invitational Great Lakes Invitational vs. U.S. NTDP (ex.) vs. Bowling Green vs. Alaska at Lake Superior State at Western Michigan vs. Michigan State vs. MSU (Detroit) Feb 8-9 Feb 22-23 Mar 8-24 Mar 29-Apr 13 at Notre Dame at Ohio State CCHA Tournament NCAA Tournament 2072-13 Nov 24 Cornell at New York, NY Nov 30-Dec 1 at Ferris State 2B Faceoff, October 26, 2012 TheBlockM, www.theblockm.com 7B