AN EVENING WITH SAFA AL AHMAD

NOVEMBER 19, 2019 | 7:30 P.M. | RACKHAM AUDITORIUM

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4B — November 18, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SportsMonday

W

alking through the
Michigan Stadium
concourse at about
3:50 on Satur-
day, you could
hear it before
you saw it.
“It’s great
to be a Michi-
gan Wolver-
ine,” they
chanted, and
the chants
came from no
one direction,
just every-
where.
It was minutes after the Michi-
gan football team kneeled down
to put the finishing touches on a
44-10 beatdown of Michigan State,
with Shea Patterson running the
game ball to Jim Harbaugh, and
minutes before Harbaugh told the
assembled media that he stuffed
the ball back into Patterson’s book
bag, a token of appreciation for a
384-yard, four-touchdown perfor-
mance, Patterson’s best in a Michi-
gan uniform.
It was two days after, trailing
by one against the Spartans with
a power play coming midway
through the third period, junior
forward Mike Pastujov got called
for roughing, negating the Wolver-
ines’ best chance at pulling back in
a 4-3 loss.
It was hours before the Michi-
gan State hockey team would skate
over to its student section in the
corner of Munn Ice Arena and
pound on the glass after a 3-0 win,
basking in chants of their own,
that in the game’s last three min-
utes went from “Board the Buses,”
to “Fuck Jim Harbaugh,” and
finally, “Little Sister.”
It was one moment in a week-
end full of them, and it encap-
sulated everything about the
Michigan-Michigan State rivalry.
There are separate repercus-
sions on all sides for all of these
games. Michigan football got a
highlight in what seemed poised to
be a lost season. Michigan hockey
fell further back on its heels, then
got kicked into the dirt. But this
is not a platform to try and mix
football and hockey analysis. It’s
one to dissect a rivalry, and what it
means to the people in it.
Like senior safety Josh
Metellus, from Florida and indoc-
trinated into this, who waved
at the Spartans when the final
whistle blew and later explained,

“I was telling them to go home. It’s
time for them to leave. They don’t
deserve to be in this stadium.”
Like sophomore defenseman
Nick Blankenburg, from Washing-
ton, Mich., who does need need
the rivalry contextualized and
who stood in the offices at Yost
Ice Arena on Thursday after his
team threw away a 3-1 lead, arms
crossed and frowning. “We just let
off the gas,” he said, a cardinal sin
in this rivalry.
Like Mel Pearson, who has
coached in this game in some form
for a combined 26 years, who took
a long walk to center ice on Sat-
urday and shook Michigan State
coach Danton Cole’s hand, then
trudged to the end of the hand-
shake line. He stood in a hallway
behind the bench 15 minutes later,
his hands on his hips, and said
of Michigan’s power play, which
went 0-for-8 on the weekend, all
but costing the Wolverines two
games, “We’re terrible there.
We’re absolutely terrible.”
Like athletic director Warde
Manuel, who sent a co-signed let-
ter with Michigan State athletic
director Bill Beekman to fans
on Friday imploring respectful
behavior at the football game. That
got thrown out the window along
with a few thousand yellow towels
that rained down on Nico Collins
after he waltzed into the end zone
on a 22-yard post route early in
the fourth quarter, making the
score 34-10 and making a crowd of
111,496 lose its collective mind.
Like Harbaugh, the public face
of Michigan athletics, who cried in
the Spartan Stadium locker room
a year ago after the Wolverines
beat the Spartans. On Saturday, he
only used one word to describe his
emotions. “Happy. Really happy,”
he said. “It’s a big game, it’s for the
state championship. 112th version.
And now our team, everybody
that’s in the locker room has the
advantage. Fifth-year seniors

are 3-2. The seniors are 3-1. The
juniors are 2-1. Sophomores are
2-0 and the freshmen are 1-0.
That’s a big program win. Makes
me very happy.”
This is stereotyped as a chippy,
physical matchup, and rightfully
so. The two football teams had
five combined unsportsmanlike
conduct penalties, two personal
fouls and an ejection, imposed on
Michigan State defensive lineman
Jacub Panasiuk after a blatant
cheap shot on Patterson. Thurs-
day’s hockey game featured a fight
after Michigan State defenseman
Christian Krygier cross-checked
Jake Slaker. Sophomore defense-
man Jack Summers jumped on
Krygier, whose twin brother, Cole,
started punching Slaker.
There is real, visceral hatred
on all sides. And with that comes
emotion, the two extremes dis-
played across sports and across
the weekend.
“You never want to be in this
situation, losing games,” said
senior defenseman Griffin Luce
Saturday night, sweat still drip-
ping and skates still on. “... I
wouldn’t say we’re panicking here,
we’re not worried, but day-to-day,
we just have to bring it every day
as a team.”
Forty-nine miles away and a
few hours earlier, Metellus was at
a podium with cameras trained
on him, expressing the exact
opposite.
“I’m pretty pleased,” Metellus
said, “because I feel like we’re way
more classier than them. They try
to take it to a level that wasn’t play-
ing football. We play football over
here. I don’t know what they do
over there, but we play football.”
That’s what this rivalry is,
and that’s what it always will be.
Whether you’re in the Michigan
Stadium concourse, the bowels of
Munn Ice Arena or anywhere in
between, it only takes a moment
to see it.

A weekend inside the rivalry

ETHAN
SEARS

Spartans crush ‘M,’ 3-0, for sweep

EAST
LANSING
—
Kris
Mayotte turned to Mel Pearson
on the bench, and with a grim
expression on his face, the
assistant coach — in charge of
goaltending — shouted one word,
or rather, one name.
“Hayden!”
Pearson
had
presumed
Mayotte wanted to discuss the
goal Strauss Mann had just
allowed, his third of the night. But
when a second shout of Hayden
Lavigne’s name came, without
another thought, Pearson cued
the switch of goaltenders — a
“no-brainer” he later called the
decision.
Pulling
a
goaltender
is
indicative of only one thing. A
team is struggling to stop shots,
and that a change is needed.
And for the Michigan hockey
team, that meant that its recent
struggles to stop pucks against
Michigan State had continued
onto Saturday’s matchup that
resulted in a 3-0 loss — leading
the team to turn to Lavigne.
“You’re just trying to change
the tempo of the game a little bit,”
Pearson said.
The decision came too late,
though. The switch didn’t remove
the fact that the Wolverines had
dug themselves into a three-goal

hole. Or that any offensive pushes
resulted in a glaring zero on
Michigan’s side of the scoreboard.
The goaltender change was just a
change of pace, a gamble to spark
energy amongst the deflated
Wolverines.
“We’re just not getting many
breaks,” Pearson said. “You have
to make your breaks”
The despair built from the
three goals that
were
allowed
early. A tipped
shot in front of
the crease in the
first
period
is
a difficult task
to
ask
anyone
to save. Add in
two
screens,
and the task was
impossible
for
Mann.
But the blame for the second
and third goals, however, laid
largely on Mann’s shoulders.
A shot from Austin Kamar off
a faceoff win snuck between
Mann’s glove and leg pad, and
diminished
any
momentum
the Wolverines had built from
their relentless second-period
attacks. And a third goal, minutes
later from Tommy Apap after
a persistent crease attack — a
top-shelf shot on a rebound after
three saves — sent Michigan into
a state of dismay.

It wasn’t just the relative
ease that Michigan State scored
with, it was the difficulty that
came with every high-danger
scoring chance the Wolverines
produced. In the second period,
sophomore
forward
Jimmy
Lambert conducted a three-on-
one breakaway that fizzled out
without a single shot on goal.
“You see it on the bench,
when you get a three-on-one like
Jimmy had and we don’t even get
a shot, you can just see it on the
bench, like, ‘What do we have
to do?’ ” Pearson said. “And it
gets frustrating, and they’re all
frustrated right now.”
Sensing the frustration, the
switch was called, and a timeout,
too, as insurance.
The message in the 60 seconds
was clear. Stay with it. Keep
playing hard. There was plenty of
time left in the game.
The
revitalized
efforts
didn’t procure any goals, but
opportunities
came,
which
couldn’t be said about much of
the first period, and the latter half
of the second. And in all three
periods, the lack of opportunities
on the power play
further doomed
Michigan.
Converting
0-of-5
power
plays, the man-
advantage
proved to be a
non-factor when
its
inherent
purpose
is
to
provide
teams
with an increased
chance to score.
“We have two opportunities
in the first period,” Pearson said.
“And we have the chance to do
some things and we’re terrible
there, we’re absolutely terrible
there.
“... You have guys who aren’t
finishing and really struggling
offensively, they go hand and
hand, the power play and (even-
strength scoring).”
And those problems are not
things a simple goaltender change
can fix.

ALEXANDRIA POMPEI/Daily
Cornelius Johnson scored the final touchdown in Michigan’s 44-10 win.

TIEN LE
Daily Sports Editor

ALEC COHEN/Daily
Sophomore goaltender Strauss Mann got pulled on Saturday for Hayden Lavigne.

You can see it
on the bench
like, “What do
we have to do?”

Michigan unable to respond to deficit

EAST LANSING — It took just
under two minutes for the game to
completely slip away.
In those brief 104 seconds, the
Michigan hockey team collapsed.
But
it
wouldn’t
show
immediately. Entering the second
period, the Wolverines were riding
a wave of momentum. They showed
no signs of having surrendered a
goal in the opening minutes of the
first period. Their play was sharp.
The offense displayed urgency.
Every puck that connected with a
Michigan stick went towards the
net.
“We were all over them,” said
senior defenseman Griffin Luce.
“They couldn’t hang with us, they
couldn’t play with us. They get the
first goal there and I think we did
a pretty good job answering. They
didn’t know what hit them.”
But no matter how potent their
second-period start was, there
was still the fact that the first goal,
scored in the opening minutes,
was, ultimately, the game-winner.
When Luce was asked about the
team’s response to the early goal,
he pointed to the team’s intensity
in the second period. But there
was still 18 minutes between the
goal and the “strong response”
unaccounted for. Because in those
18 minutes, there was little to point
to.
Little
improvement.
Little
upswing
in
intensity.
Little

response to show for a team that
needs to start learning to handle
the adversity it faces.
Because as quickly as everything
seemed to be going right for the
Wolverines in the second period,
everything began to go wrong.
It started with senior forward
Nick Pastujov losing a faceoff in
the defensive zone. Michigan State
forward Adam Goodsir won the
draw and slid the puck behind him
to forward Austin Kamer. Kamer
released the puck within a second
of receiving it, connected with the
back of the net and then the buzzer
sounded.
Michigan had fallen into a 2-0
deficit, but the bleeding didn’t stop.
Immediately after the goal, there
was no pushback, similar to the 18
minutes after the first Spartan goal.
The Wolverines seemed deflated,
and more obviously, frustrated.
Sticks were slammed. Heads
were shaken. It didn’t matter that
almost half the game still remained,
Michigan was playing like a team
that had already lost. And rather
than responding immediately to
Michigan State’s second goal —
exactly what the Wolverines had
failed to after falling behind 1-0 —
they faltered.
“They just fought a little harder
in those gritty areas to score those
goals,” said Michigan coach Mel
Pearson. “That’s what (we’ve been)
talking about. We’ve got to play a
little harder there.”
The lack of response by the
Wolverines resulted in an even

stronger push from Michigan
State.
One
minute
later,
Spartan
forward Jagger Joshua pushed the
puck past freshman defenseman
Keaton Pherson to gain the
offensive zone. Joshua fired a rising
shot towards the net, but freshman
forward Johnny Beecher batted
the puck out of the air.
Beecher’s play was followed by
a scramble for the puck in front of
the net, and sophomore goaltender
Strauss Mann was forced to make
a series of saves. One of the saves
left him vulnerable, Mann was
stomach down on the ice, sprawled
across his crease.
When the puck came found the
stick of Michigan State forward
Tommy Apap, it was too easy. The
net was wide open, and he buried
the puck top shelf.
The game had gone from bad to
worse to over. The Wolverines had
fallen into a three-goal hole they
were unable to climb out of against
the Spartans.
The team was rattled because for
the first time in a string of games,
Michigan’s biggest problem wasn’t
their offense — it was everything.
And the response to the third
goal wasn’t a rally or a harder
press or anything effort-based. It
was a personnel change. Trying
to provide a spark for his team,
Pearson pulled Mann from goal
and replaced him with senior
goaltender Hayden Lavigne, who
had yet to see ice time in a game
this season. Pearson followed the
swap with a timeout to regroup the
team.
“It just gives a little boost there
for us,” Luce said. “It just gets guys
on their toes a little bit. So we can
go and get right back on it. He’s
coming in cold so you never wanna
give him any chances early right
away.”
But it didn’t have the effect
Pearson intended. In the wake of
those two goals, the Wolverines
would never regain control of the
game, and there were no shortage
of chances to do so.
The opening two minutes of the
game, and the 104-second stretch of
play in the second period had done
too much damage, and Michigan
showed just how incapable it is of
immediately responding to falling
behind in a game.

MOLLY SHEA
Daily Sports Writer

ALEC COHEN/Daily
The Michigan hockey team let the game slip away over a short span on Saturday.