4B — February 24, 2020
SportsMonday
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NOTRE DAME SNAPS MICHIGAN’S WIN STREAK,
SWEEPING WOLVERINES AT YOST IN CRUSHING
BLOW TO AT-LARGE NCAA TOURNAMENT HOPES
ALEC COHEN / Daily
OUT OF LUCK
Michigan falls, 3-0, on Senior Day
Two-and-a-half
periods
of
grinding hockey were over, and
yet the game remained scoreless.
But
then
Notre
Dame
defenseman
Spencer
Stastney
skated across the slot and fired
a shot from the left side at
sophomore
goaltender
Strauss
Mann.
The puck ricocheted off a post
and play continued. Sophomore
forward Nolan Moyle immediately
got a breakaway the other way, but
couldn’t convert. Play stopped
to review the events that had
unfolded. The key question —
what post did Stastney’s shot hit?
Video replay soon made it clear
that the puck had hit the post all
the way at the back of the net. And
just like that, the Michigan hockey
team (15-14-3 overall, 10-10-2-1
Big Ten) trailed by one against
Notre Dame (14-12-6, 9-8-5-3) on
Saturday’s Senior Day at Yost Ice
Arena.
To
Michigan
coach
Mel
Pearson and the rest of the guys
on the bench, it was clear the shot
went in when they saw it live. For
sophomore forward Garrett Van
Wyhe, who was on the ice at the
time, it was less certain.
“To be honest, I didn’t think
(the puck went in),” Van Wyhe
said of his initial thoughts. “But I
was right there and I had to turn
around a little bit, so I wasn’t sure.
I just played to the whistle.”
That goal seemed to take some
energy out of the Wolverines. A
couple minutes later, forward
Cam Morrison attacked Mann
from the left side and snuck the
puck by him to put the game away
for good.
Michigan tried to fight back by
pulling Mann in the final minutes,
but the efforts fell short. The
Fighting Irish notched an empty-
net goal, and thus the Wolverines
fell, 3-0. The loss marked the
second in a row and a change in
momentum after what has been a
surging second-half performance.
“When you don’t score, you’re
not gonna win, and we just
couldn’t make enough plays. Give
them credit,” Pearson said. “They
came and played like a desperate
team, like their season was on the
line, and that’s how they played.”
Within the first 30 seconds
of the game, Michigan’s penalty
kill unit went into action, as
senior defenseman Luke Martin
got called for slashing. The
Wolverines did a good job clearing
the puck and successfully killed
the penalty. The unit had a strong
night, killing all four penalties.
The Fighting Irish had their
best chance of the period within
the first few minutes. Forward
Jake Pivonka corralled a stray
puck in the neutral zone and
immediately
went
one-on-one
against Mann. The ensuing shot
sailed wide left, though.
That was one of the few scoring
chances for either side in the
opening frame. Halfway through
the period, Michigan still had yet
to register a shot on goal, while
Notre Dame had done so just
twice. The Wolverines’ first shot
on net came from sophomore
defenseman Nick Blankenburg
from the high slot, but goaltender
Cale Morris handled it with ease.
The two sides went back
and forth with penalties in the
latter part of the opening frame.
Defenseman
Matt
Hellickson
cross-checked
senior
forward
Will Lockwood with nine minutes
to go. Right after the Fighting Irish
killed their penalty, sophomore
forward Jimmy Lambert headed
to the box for tripping. That
penalty, too, was scoreless.
And then in the final minutes
of the first frame, Michigan went
on the power play again. But it was
the same story.
Right
after
the
first
intermission,
senior
forward
Jacob Hayhurst nearly got the
Wolverines on the board first.
He attacked the crease from the
left side and started to pull the
puck across his body. But Morris
somehow used his blocker to strip
the puck from Hayhurst’s stick
and keep the game scoreless.
Midway through the second
period, Lambert skated off the ice
and never returned. It was unclear
what happened, but his future this
season looks bleak.
“He’s probably out for the
year,” Pearson said. “We’ll look
at — I think he got X-rays. I think
it’s broken, so I don’t expect
him back the rest of the year. I
was just talking a couple weeks
ago about how we’re healthy
and feeling good, then he goes
down. (Freshman forward Eric)
Ciccolini had shoulder surgery
and it’s hard. It’s tough. But we
have to carry on. Nobody’s gonna
feel sorry for us.”
And then with around eight
minutes to go, Lockwood fell to
the ground after blocking a shot
with his left leg. He was slow to
get up and over to the bench. He
returned soon after, but couldn’t
play as much in crunch time.
“It’s tough, my knee I think
is just bruised,” Lockwood said.
“I kept going out there, trying to
put weight on it, but I couldn’t go
out there and it’s tough watching
from the bench, I’ve been in that
position before, and it’s hard,
especially when your team’s losing
like that, so it’s not too easy.”
A scrum broke out near the
Wolverines’ net in the second
frame. Van Wyhe and forward
Mike O’Leary both got tossed in
the box for coincidental roughing
penalties. That confrontation was
emblematic of the game — it was
a battle, with both sides searching
desperately for a leg up.
Eventually,
though,
Notre
Dame
found
it
—
stealing
Michigan’s spotlight on Senior
Day.
“We’ll learn from it,” Pearson
said. “We’ll go forward. Now we
just have to take it game-to-game.
Literally. Because we’re getting to
that point now where that’s how
it’s gonna be.”
The assumption of a defensive game
None of the Michigan hockey
players said it. Mel Pearson
didn’t either.
But they didn’t have to.
Even if no one said it aloud, it
was easy to see why, in a hard-
nosed, gritty defensive battle,
that the one to come out would
be the one to strike first.
For all of Saturday’s game,
Michigan and Notre Dame had
struggled to score.
Both teams went two full
periods unable to produce a
single goal. The scarcity of
goals wasn’t the fault of poor
offense, but rather exceptional
defense. Both sides have stout
goaltending. They play the
passing lanes. They pack the
crease. And they recognized
that the highly-coveted first
goal would be the deciding
factor.
“You just don’t want to play
from
behind,”
sophomore
forward Garrett Van Wyhe said.
“Get that first one and then we
can kind of dictate how the rest
of the game goes.
“If we get that first one, that
means that we’re hard on the
forecheck and we are playing
our systems. If you get that
first one, then they’re kind of
scrambling and maybe we can
get the second one quick. But
the first goal is huge.”
And the Wolverines failed to
obtain it — leading to a 3-0 loss.
Going
into
Saturday,
Michigan knew what mindset
it needed to have. Just the day
before, the Irish had given them
another two scoreless periods
to start the game. Just the day
before, the Irish had broken
the ice late to snowball goals in
rapid succession, dominating
the low-scoring affair.
The point was hammered
home; the first team to score
was the one to win.
“When you give up a goal
— whichever team is gonna
score, they’re gonna get the
momentum,” Michigan coach
Mel Pearson said. “That just
shifted like that. We just didn’t
have enough pushback in the
third period. We were tired. We
were exhausted both mentally
and physically, at that point.”
That’s the nature of a scrappy
game. Goals give energy; they
spark
positivity.
They
give
affirmation that all the banging
and physical play was worth it.
And when the stalemate lasts
all game, the suspense of the
first goal builds. If it hasn’t
come after two hard period’s
worth of work, what says it
comes at all?
But
it
did
come
—
for
Notre
Dame.
The
Irish
struck in the
middle of the
third
period
after
Spencer
Stastney
held
the puck and
waited for his
shot,
curling
through
the
slot. He slung it on net and it
rang on the back pipe, quickly
bouncing in and out. If you
blinked, you would have missed
it.
In fact, Van Wyhe didn’t
even think it went in. But when
the play was under review, it
became clear to everyone upon
the first replay. It was a goal.
And the dejection came shortly
after.
“You just see it. You sag, and
then you start thinking about
last night’s game,” Pearson
said. “We were exhausted. We
pushed hard. You need that
fire, that spark, and when you
go pretty much six periods
without scoring — last night
was an extra attacker goal.
It starts to wear on you both
mentally and physically. More
mentally.”
The mental wear led to the
collapse. After the first goal
was
scored,
Notre
Dame’s
second followed less than two
minutes after.
Michigan began to panic,
forcing offense and jeopardizing
defense in a desperate attempt
to tie the game.
“(The Irish) just play a certain
way,” Pearson said. “They wait
for their opportunities and
they take advantage of their
opportunities.”
And at the start of the game,
the Wolverines did, too. But
after the late goal was scored,
their patience was running thin.
They jumped on high pucks;
they tried to pushed behind
the
net.
They
were playing out
of their normal
defensive system
and
chasing
offense
where
there was none.
“They’re
trying to do too
much instead of
just,
‘Hold
on,
keep back, wait
until we get some
better opportunities,” Pearson
said. “We just tried to push
forward too hard”
It was the mental strain of
being unable to produce.
“I think we just get in our
head a little bit,” Van Wyhe
said.
Added Lockwood: “When we
swept them, I think we scored
both goals first. If we would
have gotten that first one, it
could have been a different
story both nights.”
At that point, it was wishful
thinking. If they had gotten
that first goal, things could
have been different. If they
had gotten that first goal, they
could have controlled the game.
If they had gotten that first goal,
they could have won.
And those were words they
didn’t have to say aloud.
TIEN LE
Daily Sports Writer
ROHAN KUMAR
Daily Sports Writer
Get that first
one and then
we can kind of
dictate.