Sunday, October 04, 2009

Michigan 6, Windsor 2

The Wolverines completed their perfect exhibition season with a 6-2 win over the Windsor Lancers. After falling behind 2-1 in the second period, the Wolverines scored five unanswered goals to win by the same 6-2 count that The Dynasty beat the Lancers by a day ago.

Thoughts (keeping in mind that I didn't see the game and listened to about half of it):

-Red Berenson said that Carl Hagelin wants to have a terrific year and he's certainly off to a good start. Hagelin had a 4-1--5 line over the weekend, including 3 power play goals. In the post-game, Berenson said that he scored some goals on plays where, last year, the puck might have hit the post or the goalie. That sounds similar to Caporusso's freshman-to-sophomore year transition. As I said yesterday, Hagelin led the team in shots last year. He doesn't have to top 20% in shooting percentage like Caporusso and Wohlberg did a season ago. If he can even put in 15% of his shots, he could have a fantastic season. That would put him right around 20 goals, using his shot total from a year ago.

-AJ Treais had another good game offensively, posting a 1-1--2 line for the second straight night. He scored the first goal for the Wolverines tonight early in the second period, one-timing the rebound of an Eric Elmblad shot that hit the endboards and caromed back out.

-Just when I was thinking to myself that he had been strangely absent from the scoresheet this weekend, Caporusso exploded with 2 goals and an assist in the third period tonight.

-The power play was 3 for 7, making them 4 for 14 on the weekend after starting 0 for 6. The PK was successful on all four of their kills, allowing just three shots. Good weekend for the special teams as a whole.

-Bryan Hogan made five stops in the first period before being given the rest of the afternoon off. Shawn Hunwick came in and made 9 saves on 11 shots. One stop in the third period had Huntzicker and Randall going crazy on the broadcast, and I heard Temptation on another occasion though I didn't hear the play. Windsor's second goal was a 2 on 0. Coach Berenson was complimentary after the game, after saying that Hunwick battled some nerves early on.

-Humorous moment at the end of the second period when Windsor goalie Jim Watt was given a ten-minute misconduct, and had to serve it himself. That brought up happy memories of the "Free Montoya" game, which is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen at Yost.

Michigan will start the season for real next weekend up in Anchorage, where they're taking part in the Kendall Hockey Classic. The Wolverines open the season against CCHA-foe Alaska, before taking on Alaska-Anchorage on Saturday. Hopefully the polar bear doesn't blow up the city of Anchorage while we're there.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It was hilarious when Watts was serving the penalty. You probably couldn't hear it on the radio, but as he was sitting in the box with his helmet off, we chanted "ugly goalie" the entire time.

MHNet said...

Hey Tim, didn't get a chance to listen to the game. But what did you think of the new broadcast team? Was it all three--Randall, Huntz, Trainor--or just the former two?