Michigan 10, St Lawrence 3

8 different Wolverines scored, 12 had points, and 10 players were at least +4 as the Wolverines completed the non-conference portion of their early season schedule in a 10-3 victory over St. Lawrence on Thursday night.

Luke Glendening led the way with his first-career hat trick. David Wohlberg had a goal and three assists. Mac Bennett and Greg Pateryn each had 3 points as well.

Bennett and Mike Chiasson were both +5 in the game, and Pateryn, Di Giuseppe, Moffatt, Moffie, Travis Lynch, Treais, Glendening, and Wohlberg were each +4. Michigan scored multiple goals against all three of the SLU netminders.

Michigan actually fell behind 1-0 in the game before scoring 3 goals in the last 4 1/2 minutes of the first period to take a 3-1 lead into the intermission.

The first Michigan goal was the type of goal that Glendening scores. Wohlberg took the shot, it bounced high in the air and hit the top of the goalie's pad when it landed. It bounced into the crease and Glendening crashed the net and knocked it in.


Moffatt's goal was a beauty. He took a pass from Moffie in the faceoff circle to the goalie's left, quickly pulled it to his left and flipped it in with a nifty back-hander.


Treais put a good shot through a screen to make it 3-1.

 
They quickly made it 4-1 on Glendening's second of the game. Wohlberg picked off a pass in the neutral zone and beat the defenseman up the ice. He got a lane and fed Glendening for an easy goal. SLU bounced back with one on the power play to make it 4-2. Pateryn (on a bomb), Moffie (good shot that somehow got through, off great work by Di Giuseppe to keep the play alive), and Glendening (fluky goal when Wohlberg threw one off the goalie from behind the net and the puck sat there) extended the lead.

The Wolverines tacked on three more in the third. Di Giuseppe absolutely worked a diving defenseman to get around him and slid the puck into the net. That kid has hands. Wow. Sparks put a shot up under the bar for goal #9, and then, to chants of "We want pizza", Michigan made it ten. Wohlberg got around the D again. Instead of passing, this time he just pulled it to the front of the net and tucked in a shot that should never go in.

Amazingly, all ten of the Wolverine goals were even strength. St. Lawrence was actually 2-7 on the power play. Michigan had just three chances with the man advantage. Shots in the game were 34-32 Michigan. Shawn Hunwick made 27 saves in the victory and Adam Janecyk saw the ice for just over 9 minutes, stopping 2 shots.

Zach Hyman didn't register a point and was even on the night, but he was 14 of 19 in the faceoff circle. Travis Lynch won 11 of his 15 draws as well. Nice to see, since we lost several very good faceoff guys after last season.

After the game, Coach Berenson was not happy with some of the penalties that his team took in the second period:

I thought we took some bad, unnecessary penalties. You can put different adjectives on them, but as coaches sometimes you will call them a lazy penalty or a stupid penalty or a selfish penalty or whatever. The honest penalties you can kill, but you can't kill the others and that is what showed up in the second period.

I know the competition thusfar has been in line with Wisconsin football's non-conference schedule, but it's hard not to get at least somewhat excited when you look at where the offense has come from so far this year. In short, it's come from everywhere.

The only players who have seen action and have not registered a point are backup goalie Adam Janecyk, Kevin Lynch (2 games), Andrew Sinelli (1 game), and Mike Szuma (1 game). Everyone else has gotten on the scoresheet. 11 players have at least 4 points, and yet no one has more than 6. It's still really early and I certainly don't expect them to keep scoring 6 goals per game, but maybe (hopefully?) the offense won't end up being as big of a challenge as feared. The guys we need to score are scoring (Treais, Wohlberg) and some of the younger guys (like Di Giuseppe) are fitting in very nicely.

Notre Dame has already lost a CCHA game. Miami just lost to Colgate. FYS got swept by LSSU this weekend. And for funsies, I'll mention that Wisconsin just got swept by Mel Pearson's Michigan Tech squad, which, unbelievably, has already matched last year's win total in both overall wins (4) and conference wins (2). Great start for Coach Pearson. I'm really happy for him, and for Tech, which deserves to have a good program again.