Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The Band Director Won't Dance? Mr. Johnson Will.



So who is having a better time in Ann Arbor: Jack Johnson Jr. or Jack Johnson Sr.?

Gotta love Mr. Johnson. Too bad we don't have a video of last weekend when he did the lawn mower. That was classic!

Some belated comments on the weekend, pulled from my posts on The Wolverine's Yost Post:

-Really nice to see Michigan come out and play well for 3 periods. Lots of shots given up, but not a ton of great scoring chances.

-It amazes me sometimes that if there's anyone on this team that's undisciplined, it's our seniors and not the younger guys. Hunwick took another bad penalty Saturday. Dest sold out to try and smoke a guy (up 3-0 mind you), missed him and it led to a 2 on 1 and Summers had to take a penalty to save a goal, and Kolarik got himself an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty when Michigan was going to have a power play.

-I loved everything else about Saturday though. Sauer had one of those nights where he LOOKED shaky on a lot of stops, but only one ended up getting past him. Just quite a few of the plays where a harmless shot would hit him in the glove and bounce out. Probably not as dangerous as it looked, but I still get that "Osgood" feeling that every shot could/might go in.

-Maybe a new name for the Hotboard. Ryan Grimshaw from the U-17 team and his folks were sitting next to us. They said they're from the same city that Billy Sauer came from, and that he played with Kevin Quick last year I believe. I believe Kenny Ryan was also at the game. Merrill definitely was. God that kid is big.

-I really do like Lebler.

-Bailey was just out there smoking people Saturday. He had 3 or 4 big hits...funny moment. He hit a kid and knocked him down. He stood over top of him for a few seconds because his stick was caught and he had his hand up in the air to show he wasn't holding him. The puck came back over by them and into that guy's feet. So Bailey brought his hand down, and hit the kid again. It was great.

-Also nice to see the 4th line contributing. Naurato can't do much but shoot. But he did it well tonight.

-Cogliano's play on Miller's goal was just nasty. He came in, deked his way around the guy to the outside, the goalie came with him, Cogs took the puck around the net, then fed Miller in the slot. He had a wide open net. It was gross.

-Our power play was weird Saturday. They had our checking line out there a couple times. It was like we've got a power play and they throw Naurato, Miller and Turnbull or something out there. Then Kolarik and Cogliano were out there together on the PK. Trying to get guys used to playing in different situations? I dunno.

-Wilkens was weird this weekend. Usually he calls everything, but he let them play for the most part this weekend. I'm a fan of letting the guys play...it was an unexpected surprise.

Other thoughts on the weekend from DC Nole and tbarr.

Michigan received Letters of Intent from 5 of their 10 freshmen yesterday. Caporusso, Winnett, Llewellyn, Quick, and Palushaj are signed, sealed and delivered to Ann Arbor. Mike Spath posted comments from Billy Powers about each of them and Bob Miller had his comments on the entire class. The gist is that this class may not have the top-echelon player like Johnson or Cogliano, but they should have much more offense upside than the 2005 class.
Pacioretty has been having a huge year thus far and Bob says there are whispers he could end up being a first round selection.

That brings me to a new feature that I added this week. If you direct your attention to the right sidebar, you'll notice each of our verbal commits listed. Click on their name, and it will take you to their stats, making it nice and easy to keep up with how our future players are doing.

Lastly, if you go to the website of the St. Michael's Buzzers and click on the number one in the screen that comes up, you can see a video of Louie Caporusso netting a hat trick. He's sniping. In their video section they also have video from the semifinal games of the World Junior A Hockey Challenge. Caporusso is on Canada East and Winnett is on Canada West.

1 comment:

Aram said...

Got to spend gameday in Grand Forks this spring with JJ, Sr., Mrs. Johnson, and Jack's little brother. Great people. Jack's dad really is having the time of his life with all of this stuff. He's hilarious.