Saturday, October 03, 2009

10 Things to Know About This Weekend

It's finally here! Michigan kicks off the 2009-2010 season with exhibition games against the NTDP and Windsor this weekend. Here are 10 Things to Know about the upcoming weekend.

1) The U-18s come in 1-1-1, beating Tri-City, falling to Sioux City in a shootout, and then losing to Des Moines. Jon Merrill has one of the Americans' 6 goals and Jack Campbell is 1-1 with a 2.02/.905.

2) Anyone who reads this site knows that there are several future Wolverines who will be skating at Yost tonight: Goaltender Jack Campbell, defensemen Kevin Clare and Jon Merrill, and forward Luke Moffatt. Jacob Fallon will not play.

3) Michigan is 9-0-0 all time against the NTDP. The past couple of games have ended in semi-blowouts (5-1 and 4-1 the last two years), but the youngsters have come dangerously close to breaking through a few times: (6-5, 4-3, 3-2 in ot the previous three games).

4) Michigan has had 24 players come out of the NTDP, including seven players on the current roster (eight if you count Patrick Summers who stepped in as the backup goalie late last year).

AnnArbor.com has a nice preview story with quotes from the future Wolverines.

5) Michigan is 2-0 all-time against the Windsor Lancers, including a 12-1 win in their last meeting in 2004. I could be wrong, but wasn't that the controversial game where the band didn't play the Canadian anthem? Maybe I think that about every Canadian team, but I could swear it was against Windsor.

6) They're opening the season against Miami of Ohio (yeah, you're damn right I said it) tonight, so there's not much to go off of with this current team.

7) The roster on the website hasn't been updated for the current season, so the players I mention below may or may not still be on the team.

8) Kyle Nishizaki is the 57th-leading scorer in school history with a 14-33--47 line. Josh Gaynor (15-15--30) and Jon Ryan (not the former Packers punter--who is also Canadian--who they never should have cut, but that's another story) also rank in the top 100.

9) Goaltender Jim Watt is the 5th leading goaltender in school history with...umm...a 3.75 goals against average. #16 on the list has a 5.33. Methinks I would have cut that list off a little sooner. Watt had a .932 save percentage last year and was an All-Star. Head Coach Kevin Hamlin (not Dale Earnhardt's old crew chief) was named

10) Defenseman Steve Ferry (Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve Ferry! Dude, we promised no Journey psych-outs!) played 5 seasons in the OHL and was said to be a prized recruit added to the team for this season. He was top-20 in OHL scoring amongst defensemen last year. Christian Steingraber is a former Plymouth Whaler, Kyle Tront and Anthony Tapper also played in the OHL last year.

5 comments:

Ed Cormany said...

does anybody have a functioning audio feed? now that mgoblue has decided to rely on CBS sports to serve all their content (i mean really, the makers of the horrid, horrid gametracker app?), i've got nothing.

any help appreciated

(p.s. yes i've installed silverlight, etc. etc. the app launches, says it's playing, no sound.)

Packer487 said...

The audio is really really faint. My computer's volume is about 20 times louder through the headphones than the internal speaker so I plugged in some headphones and I can hear talking..........buuuut it's the Auburn/Tennessee football audio.

Major downer to wait all summer for hockey and then not be able to listen to the opener. Especially since the original Comcast TV schedule had this game on there.

Anonymous said...

Interesting how you don't mention that Jacob Fallon was not playing because he was kicked off the NTDP team due to receiving a MIP ticket and running from the police after the house party that he visited and the football game where it all came to a screeching halt! Oh, but wait, I think his dismissal was downgraded to a suspension so you choose to just say that he was not playing in the game. I guess that is the way your recruits actions should be covered up.

Packer487 said...

It was already mentioned in an earlier post that he was kicked off--and then just suspended from--the team for an alleged drinking incident. Seemed silly to bring it up again, especially when I've seen nothing official about it.

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