Michigan hockey coach Red Berenson doesn’t recruit his players based on skill alone. Before he sends out scholarship offers to potential Wolverines, he asks his assistants — the ones that do the bulk of the recruiting — one simple question.
Can you see these guys playing playoff hockey?
Berenson envisions an atmosphere like the one last weekend, when Michigan swept rival Notre Dame in the quarterfinals of the CCHA playoffs.
If Berenson’s assistants can imagine these amateur players playing in front of a raucous crowd with postseason implications on the line, then they have Berenson’s full support.
Against Notre Dame, Berenson’s vision came to life. Without prior knowledge of the team, you wouldn’t have been able to tell the youngsters from the veterans.
“I thought I was going to be a little more nervous against Notre Dame, to be honest, but I was pretty calm,” said freshman forward Alex Guptill. “I really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun out there.”
Playoff hockey is a completely different animal than the regular season. The games have a different feel to them, and it can be hard for freshmen to adjust to the amped-up tempo. The key phrase in that sentence is “can be.”
“It takes one period to get into it, and once you’re in, you’re set,” said senior forward David Wohlberg. “You don’t worry about the outside things. You’re just playing hockey.”
On Friday night, freshman forward Phil Di Giuseppe got a puck past Notre Dame goaltender Steven Summerhays a little more than a minute into the game. The puck settled right on the goal line before senior captain Luke Glendening tapped it in.
“I think it got the momentum going, but I didn’t even see it go in,” Di Giuseppe said. “I just heard the crowd and started celebrating in the corner.”
Di Giuseppe also assisted on the first goal on Saturday, before putting in his own in the second period. He now has five points in his last six games.
But if not for Berenson and his patience, Di Giuseppe wouldn’t have been in that position.
In some other programs, the freshman would have been relegated to the bench after a brutal stretch when he had only one point in January. But Berenson stuck to his gut feeling.
“I think that’s been one of the strengths of our program,” Berenson said. “Our coaches have been willing to put the freshmen in a situation where we think they can have some success.
“They played well because they got a chance to play.”
Players like Guptill, who leads the team in goals, and Travis Lynch, who is one of the team’s best faceoff men, have benefited from Berenson’s willingness to play unproven players.
The leash, and the grace period, are a lot longer for freshmen under Berenson than most coaches.
“You are always going to play up to your coach’s expectations,” Berenson said. “I think I have been good about playing young players and trying to show confidence in them and pushing them when they needed to be pushed.
“But if your coach expects you to do well, then sooner or later you are going to do that.”
Without Di Giuseppe last weekend, who knows what would have happened for Michigan. In January, no one would have expected him to be the difference maker in a CCHA playoff series. But Berenson and his coaching staff believed in their young prospect, and it paid off.
“These kids have had a good job,” Berenson said. “They’ve had a good experience.”