Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Media Roundup: Miami Series

Alright, I'm sick of talking about Kevin Quick. Unless some major revelation comes to light, I've said my piece--dumb action, extremely disappointing, wish him well in the future--and it's time to move on. Future articles may be included in the media roundups but I can't see writing anything else of any substantial length about the story.

Back to the guys who are still on our top-ranked hockey team and their impressive sweep weekend against Miami. I want to get the media roundup out of the way now so that I can do the review of the games mid-week. So let's have at it (there are a few random non-hockey links sprinkled in as well):

The Michigan Side:
First up, Michiganhockey.net has a great new look as well as more of a "blog" feel. Jason broke in the new site with a hilarious summation of the 5-5 tie. Couldn't have put it better myself...and I absolutely love that commercial! I also finally remembered to put up a link to his site on the sidebar. That was long overdue because he really does a nice job. It was a huge oversight on my part.

Michigan Sports Center had a solid wrap-up of the two games. That issue with the glass was interesting. A commenter from MU mentioned below that it's virtually shatterproof, so the players weren't at risk. It's pretty cool if that's true, but I wonder why pick glass like that over the traditional model that doesn't break when fans hit it? In seven years of going to games at Yost, I don't think I ever saw a pane of glass break. And I definitely never had my view obstructed for the rest of the game due to glass splintering.

This is of really no relevance to Michigan's weekend but I want to point it out before I forget. This thread on USCHO cracked me up: Describe your team's season in only six words. It's worth reading if for nothing more than the entries from the Minnesota fans. They're pretty hysterical ("Revised goal: Finish ahead of Seawolves"). If anyone's so inclined to throw a few Michigan ones out there either in the thread or in the comments, I'd love to read them. Here are my entries:
Sauer's really good? What the ****?
Enjoy Pacioretty while we got him.
Porter. Not a product of Hensick.
Porter: Hobey winner if no misconducts.
Michigan: Putting Miami's dynasty on hold.
I excluded one about the player I'm not talking about any more.

Michigan returned to the top spot in both polls. I'm curious who watched that weekend and thought there was some justification for keeping Miami #1.
Edit: No one. The remaining first-place votes went to the University of No Hardware. Though I'd also like to know who's voting an 18-7-1 team with a loss in the last month to freaking Dartmouth over Michigan. If this was the BlogPoll in football, Brian would be calling those three voters out and making hilarious, snarky comments about how they just doomed their team to a loss. UNH? Really?

Adam Wodon from CHN was impressed with the Wolverines.

Michigan articles/video highlights from Friday and Saturday. The 9-0-2 record in their last 11 road games is the second longest road unbeaten streak in team history. The record is 15 games. In the Saturday quotes, Red was happy with the effort, not so happy with Langseth. Kolarik said he thought the puck hit the netting on the fourth goal. The Miami commenter below disagrees.

Chad Kolarik won CCHA Offensive Player of the Week and Max Pacioretty was awarded Rookie of the Week for their roles in the three-point weekend.

Michigan has launched the Kevin Porter for Hobey website. They failed to include "0 misconduct penalties". That's apparently what really matters. There's a sweet little highlight video as well.

As usual, the Daily did liveblogged Friday and Saturday.

Again, not relevant to the hockey team, but well worth a link. Scott Bell from the Daily wrote an excellent column about our basketball team. I agree that some support for these guys would be nice, but then again, after the crap sandwich they've been serving up for years, I can't blame the fans for staying away. Michigan's never going to be a "basketball school", but even when I was there from 2000-2004 I had some great times at Crisler. They did have some really great crowds, who got rowdy. Winning will bring people back. Nice read though.

Much in the way MSU would've taken 3 points from Michigan at the start of the weekend but was disappointed they didn't get four in the end, Michigan feels the same way about their series with Miami. Sauer too thinks the puck hit the netting.

Michigan didn't see on film that Zatkoff's glove hand was vulnerable, but they exploited it. Also it's pointed out that Michigan has clinched a bye in the first round of the CCHA playoffs. Not that there was any doubt.

Miami's crowd was excellent. I gotta admit, I've always wanted to camp out before a game. I wouldn't be a fan of general admission seating, but every so often, it'd be fun to spend the night outside the arena. Call me crazy. It'd be great for the conference if this team could stay up toward the top for awhile. Plus maybe it would convince OSU to have a real hockey program again.

The Ann Arbor News talks about Michigan's new line groupings. I kind of like that Naurato, Caporusso, Turnbull line. Naurato has kind of been under the radar but he's really contributed offensively as of late. Louie is awesome and Turnbull has been outstanding. I also think that Palushaj/Rust/Hagelin has the makings of a very nice freshman line. I love all three of those kids. Really solid defensively and some offensive bite as well.

Game stories from Friday and Saturday.

Kolarik is going with the assumption that Michigan needs to win out in order to take the league title. I'd like to think we'll get some help from Ferris this weekend, but he's right with the idea that if you want something done, the best way is to do it yourself.

So you all know what I'm dealing with here, let the record show that on February fricken 12th, Madison, WI has officially gotten more snow this season than they have ever received. Time to take a run at the century mark. Dammit.

The RedHawks Viewpoint:
Official game stories. Friday's includes more comments from Red about Matt Shegos. For the record, only three Michigan games over the last five seasons has had more power play opportunities than Friday night's contest (games against U-Conn, Minnesota, and Quinnipiac). Probably unnecessary.

The Miami Student gets negative points for requiring registration to view articles. There's not a lot on the internet that irks me more than opening 12 tabs and then having all of them say "Please enter your email address to continue". At least unlike the Free Press, it let me read the article once I logged in.

Nothing earth-shattering here, but a nice story about the weekend's contests featuring some quotes that weren't seen in the other articles.

They find some positives in the weekend, despite only picking up a single point. If you take out the first period of Friday's game, Miami outscored us 7-5. But by the same token, if you take out Miami's 7 goals, hooray! We swept them 9-0! Definitely some valid points in the article though. I have a feeling these teams haven't seen the last of each other this season.

John Bacon, author of Blue Ice and Bo's Lasting Lessons is actually teaching at Miami right now. Didn't know that.

Nathan Davis wasn't at the top of his game, but he still delivered when the RedHawks needed him to.

Enrico Blasi doesn't think Miami is overrated. I agree. They weren't overrated, at least not substantially. I think Michigan was clearly the better team on the weekend though.

Blasi didn't blame his goalie on any of the first-period goals Friday night. Zatkoff, to his credit, said that he didn't make the stops needed to keep his team in the game.

From USA Today via the Cincinnati Enquirer, a story about Saturday night. One point. The winner of the conference won't necessarily get the national #1 seed in the NCAA tournament. There's the conference tourney to be played as well, and ignoring that, would a single Michigan tie be enough to flip Miami into #1 in the PWR? I don't think it's impossible that we could stay #1 despite losing the conference title.

The Enquirer also had a story about Friday's game. I'd suggest that you could answer the question posed by saying "Yes, Michigan is that good." This article also includes a photo of a girl in a Muck Fichigan shirt. You keep your newspapers classy, Ohio. Also, why is it that people say "girlfriends" when they speak of female acquaintances of a female? Does "friends" have a male connotation that I don't know about? I've always wondered that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

check out todays a train vlog for a real cool update on knight and moffatt recruits.
moffatt all 5 goals, knight, a bunch of assists.