A lot can change in college hockey over the course of a month. Few understand that better than the No. 10 Michigan hockey team.
Flashback to Feb. 17th when the Wolverines were in a precarious situation. They had just split yet another series at a critical point in the season, losing to Penn State 4-2 in Happy Valley. The loss to the Nittany Lions marked Michigan’s third in four games, putting the Wolverines’ backs against the wall heading into the final stretch.
But as Harvey Specter once said, when your back is against the wall, you break the goddamn thing down. So that’s exactly what Michigan did.
Since their loss against Penn State, the Wolverines saw exactly how much can change, rattling off five wins in their last six games. All five have come in one-goal games and three in postseason play.
“It’s not like we’re just snapping our fingers and everything’s great defensively now, that’s all credit to them,” Michigan coach Brandon Naurato said Tuesday. “It’s not like they (were) not trying earlier on, but they’re growing and they’re continuing to take steps. … It’s just playing winning hockey and playing for the team.”
Over the course of one month, the Wolverines went from battling for a spot in the NCAA Tournament to vying for a third-straight Big Ten championship. The turnaround has been nothing short of Harvey Specter-level drama. And it’s not hard to pinpoint an area of tremendous growth: game management.
For most of the regular season, Michigan struggled mightily to close out both games and series alike. Whether it was collapsing in the third period against Michigan State or failing to close out a game against Minnesota, the script looked much the same over the course of the season.
But in the past six games, the Wolverines have rewritten the script entirely. They have not only been able to finish games, but have done so in season-defining moments.
Take Saturday’s Big Ten semifinal game against the Golden Gophers for example. Leading the game 2-0 — famously known as the “most dangerous lead in hockey” — the early season version of Michigan would’ve been in a prime position to squander the opportunity.
For one, the Wolverines were playing in Minneapolis against a team they beat the past two seasons in the Big Ten Tournament. There was plenty of added motivation for the Golden Gophers to make a late-game push on their home ice, not to mention that they had almost done so back on March 2.
Those factors made Michigan’s eventual 2-1 semifinal win Saturday all the more important. The victory demonstrated a complete deviation from the Wolverines’ status quo. They showed a newfound ability to play a full 60 minutes of hockey and protect a lead in crunch time.
And there are a multitude of reasons to explain this shift.
“I feel like our game has gotten a lot faster,” sophomore forward Rutger McGroarty said. “We move pucks North faster. We’re stopping our spots in the (defensive) zone. We’re winning the blue line. … I feel like we’re just managing the puck better. I feel like we could do it for certain points in the game, but I feel like we’re playing a full 60 now. It’s really cool to see and we’re just going to keep progressing for these last five games.”
Indeed, if Michigan can build on this recent success, a Big Ten championship is well within striking distance. For a team that didn’t even know if it was going to make the NCAA Tournament a month ago, it suffices to say that a lot has changed.