4B — Monday, February 5, 2018 SportsMonday The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Wolverines haunted by missed opportunities, fall to Wisconsin, 4-2 The adage “three strikes and you’re out” may have originated with baseball, but it works fairly well in hockey too. One minute into Saturday’s game, Michigan defenseman Sam Piazza motored around to the left circle, where his shot rebounded off of Kyle Hayton’s pads. The puck then bounced to a wide-open Cooper Marody with the Wisconsin goaltender nowhere near the play. Marody, a Hobey Baker Award nominee, normally puts away chances like those in his sleep. His attempt flew past Hayton — and the pipe. Not long after Marody’s near-miss, senior forward Tony Calderone poked the puck away from a Badger near the blue line. The Wolverines’ leading scorer had a clean breakaway, but Hayton stonewalled him deep in the crease. A third opportunity — while not quite as golden as the first two — came a minute later. On a three-vs-two, freshman forward Josh Norris laid the puck off to freshman forward Dakota Raabe, who cruised unchallenged into the slot. Again, Hayton made the save. When Wisconsin forward Trent Frederic slipped the puck past Hayden Lavigne four minutes later, the tone was set. The Badgers made the most of their chances. The Wolverines didn’t. Thusly, Wisconsin (8-9-3 Big Ten, 14-13-4 overall) came away with a 4-2 win Saturday night at Yost Ice Arena, splitting a crucial Big Ten series between two teams neck-and-neck in the conference standings. Despite winning 5-3 on Friday, Michigan (8-10-2, 13-13- 2) was seemingly outplayed for long stretches, especially during the third period. The opposite was the case Saturday. The Wolverines consistently controlled the puck and outshot the Badgers, 34-33, including a high volume of grade-A opportunities. “I thought we had a better effort tonight. I thought we played a better game,” said Michigan coach Mel Pearson. “We created more offense tonight than we did last night. Had some golden opportunities, especially that first five, six minutes, we came out and were all over them played in their zone. ... We put one of those in, I think you see a totally different game tonight.” Instead, Hayton, who replaced Friday night starter Jack Berry, was up to the task all night for Wisconsin. Brilliant with both his glove and his pads, the ECAC goalie of the year last season at St. Lawrence posted 32 saves to keep the Wolverines at bay. “We had all the opportunities in the world to make it a 5-4 game for us and he stood on his head, made a few really good saves and hurt us,” said sophomore forward Jake Slaker. “But it comes down to us. It’s not really what (Hayton’s) doing, it’s what we’re doing.” Michigan suffered some self- inflicted wounds, too, but none hurt more than Wisconsin’s second goal, which came against the Wolverines’ shaky penalty kill. Thirteen minutes into the first period, Badger forward Ryan Wagner stretched out his stick and sent a slow roller into the crease that had no business finding the net. But junior defenseman Nicholas Boka couldn’t clear it, Lavigne didn’t see it in time, and the puck crawled past them both. Just 56 seconds later, forward Cullen Brady lasered a wrist shot from the right circle past Lavigne. In the span of six minutes, the Badgers had taken a 3-0 lead. Michigan went on the penalty kill early in the second period, again with disastrous results. Defenseman Wyatt Kalynuk scored on a rip from the blue line just five seconds after the initial face-off, prompting Pearson to insert sophomore Jack LaFontaine between the pipes in relief of Lavigne. “I just wanted to get (LaFontaine) in the net,” Pearson said. “Just to get him some minutes and see how he was, and I thought he did an outstanding job. He gave us a chance to come back in this game.” Michigan took advantage of that chance. Slaker found the net midway through the second with an angled shot off a pass by senior defenseman Sam Piazza. Eight minutes into the final stanza, Jack Becker lit the lamp on a power play to pull the Wolverines to within in striking distance. Meanwhile, LaFontaine stopped all 18 shots that were sent his way. But it takes more than one strikeout to lose a baseball game, and the same logic applies to hockey as well. The three opportunities the Wolverines had early in the first period weren’t the only strikes they took — for them, missed opportunities defined the contest. When Kalynuk went to the box early in the third period, the ensuing power-play proved to be a microcosm of all of the chances Michigan had to take control of the game. Freshman defenseman Quinn Hughes missed the net wide right. Calderone fanned on an open shot from the slot. Hayton extended an elastic reach to deny Slaker from straight on. The misses kept coming up until the final horn. On a two- on-one, Norris hit Slaker with a perfect pass, but his effort sailed high. After the Wolverines pulled LaFontaine in desperation mode in the final minute, junior defenseman Joseph Cecconi’s shot went wideby mere inches. And that was that. “Frustrating,” Pearson said. “That’s the best word to describe this evening.” Added Piazza: “I thought we had a really good start, we played well enough to win. Just really unfortunate we couldn’t put the puck in the net early, and they got a few crappy bounces. Just one of those nights.” EVAN AARON/Daily Mel Pearson and the Michigan hockey team split their weekend series against No. 18 Wisconsin after a 5-3 win on Friday and a 4-2 loss on Saturday. JACOB SHAMES Daily Sports Writer “It’s not really what (Hayton’s) doing, it’s what we’re doing.” “...They got a few crappy bounces. Just one of those nights.” No. 20 Michigan fell two spots in the PairWise Rankings after splitting its series against the 18th-ranked Badgers No. 13 Michigan’s offense listless in loss Where has the Michigan women’s basketball teams offense gone? The 13th-ranked Wolverines’ scoring touch was nowhere to be found in their 63-56 loss to Rutgers (6-5 Big Ten, 18-7 overall). Unfortunately for Michigan, this has been the case since the fourth quarter of its loss to Purdue on Thursday. Entering Sunday’s game, the Wolverines (8-4, 19-6) were ranked fifth in the Big Ten in scoring, averaging 77.1 points per game. The 56 point total was their third fewest of the season. The struggles were apparent from the opening tip. Michigan scored just seven points in the first quarter while Rutgers played solid defense on the Wolverines’ all-time leading scorer, senior Katelynn Flaherty. The guard wasn’t able to find her rhythm, shooting just twice in the opening period and scoring zero points. While Flaherty and Michigan were able to pick up their output in the second, the team still amassed just 14 points in the third quarter. The Wolverines were, however, able to execute defensively, holding the Scarlet Knights to 13 points. Despite the ineffective play, Michigan was down just seven at the half. The Wolverines’ biggest struggle was their inability to take care of the ball. Michigan committed 26 turnovers, well over its season average of 16.1. And Rutgers capitalized on their mistakes, scoring 26 points off the Wolverines’ turnovers. The biggest culprit was Michigan’s main ball handler — Flaherty — who committed a staggering 10 turnovers. “I think we turned it over trying to get out in transition,” said Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico. “Watching them play Maryland (on Thursday), Maryland was really able to get out in transition and score some easy buckets that way. And (Rutgers) is a team that makes you play in the half court, and if they make you have to grind it out we thought that would be tough.” “You can’t win a game with that many turnovers.” The Wolverines did show glimpses of solid play in the second half, partially returning to form with 35 points. But it wasn’t enough. Michigan shouldn’t be too surprised, though, as the Scarlet Knights have the top- ranked defense in the conference, allowing just 57.1 points per game. The staunch defense and the hostile road environment undoubtedly took a toll on the Wolverines’ bench, which scored just four points. The first player off the bench, freshman guard Deja Church, was the only Michigan non-starter to score. A positive takeaway for the Wolverines was their ability to shut down Rutgers best player, Tyler Scaife. Despite averaging 19.2 points, the senior guard was held to just two field goals, totaling seven points. However, the Scarlet Knights found an unlikely hero in sophomore Ciani Cryor. The guard, who averages 6.6 points, had a career day with 16 points and four assists. “I think every team goes through this,” Barnes Arico said. “It’s like, now you have to keep your confidence, now we have to get back to work (and) we have to get better. Let’s not lose our mind, I mean we’ve lost two games. The world is not coming to an end. Let’s regroup. Let’s figure out how to get better.” Special teams play significant role in weekend split with No. 18 Wisconsin Earlier in the week, Mel Pearson said he expected the series against No. 18 Wisconsin could get a little “chippy.” With conference points at stake for both the Badgers and the 20th-ranked Michigan hockey team this weekend, the presence of physicality and emotions was almost inevitable. What Pearson couldn’t have foreseen, though, was that Friday night’s game would have a penalty summary lengthy enough to look like a team roster. The night witnessed a grand total of 48 penalty minutes — with 17 separate players receiving penalties — and 24 of them were doled out during the first period of the game. The Wolverines accounted for just over half of these minutes, putting Wisconsin on the power play seven times in the game. “Discipline was not good,” Pearson said. “You could see right at the start of the second period after we got the lead that (Wisconsin) was going to come out and play physical and try to get us off our game a little bit, and they did a good job. And we fell right into it, and took some penalties in the second and the third and that gave them some momentum and some life. And that’s what they wanted to do.” Added sophomore forward Jake Slaker: “We took way too many penalties and I think it’s unacceptable on our part.” And though Michigan gave the Badgers many man- advantage opportunities that played a part in their third period resurgence, when they rallied for two more goals, the Wolverines largely stood their ground on the penalty kill. Wisconsin converted on just one of its seven special teams showings. On the other side of Michigan’s special teams, there was a stark contrast from last weekend’s lifeless power plays in Ohio State and the general trend of this season. The Wolverines lit the lamp twice, constituting just under half of the goals in Michigan’s 5-3 win. The first time came just over halfway into the first period, when junior defenseman Joseph Cecconi took the puck into the Badgers’ zone and slapped a strong shot into the top-left shelf. Then, on another power play with under three minutes remaining in the same period, Slaker — set up perfectly outside of the crease — knocked the puck in. “The power play is just a huge momentum swing, and when we’re not scoring it’s tough,” Slaker said. “… You know it hasn’t been our strongest aspect of the game, but it showed up big for us tonight. And it shows we’re working hard in practice and sticking to details for that.” The next night, though not nearly as physical as Friday and with less than half the penalty minutes, the ability to perform on both sides of special teams again proved crucial. But Saturday night, the Wolverines’ penalty kill — which sits second to last in the conference with an effectiveness of 75.90 percent — wasn’t as resilient as it had been just a day earlier. With five man-advantages during the game, Wisconsin found the net on two of them, all before Michigan put anything on the scoreboard to show for its efforts. On the Wolverines’ first penalty of the game, the Badgers were able to convert and bring their lead to two. Then, just over three minutes into the second period, when sophomore forward James Sanchez was called for unsportsmanlike conduct, Wisconsin defenseman Wyatt Kalynuk sent the puck past sophomore goaltender Hayden Lavigne just seconds into the penalty. This was enough to bench Lavigne for the remainder of the game, as the netminder allowed four goals off 16 shots. The night before told a very different story for Lavigne. The goaltender largely bailed his team out Friday, as the Badgers fired double the amount of shots, forcing Lavigne to make 37 saves in the showing. Pearson noted Lavigne has seen better nights, but attributed the Wolverines’ early deficit to poor timing with penalties. And Michigan never recovered. “We were (more disciplined), but still, a couple bad penalties,” Pearson said. “… It happened at bad times too, when we were trying to get back in the game. And we would take a penalty, and lose all of that momentum. So we have to understand how to manage the game better in those situations.” ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily Michigan guard Katelynn Flaherty was held in check as the Wolverines fell, 63-56, to Rutgers on Sunday. HUNTER SHARF Daily Sports Writer ANNA MARCUS Daily Sports Writer ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily Jake Slaker believes his team took too many penalties in Friday’s game.