NHL Draft: Day 2

Jon Merrill was selected 38th overall by the New Jersey Devils, who just love picking Wolverines. According to the official Michigan Hockey Twitter page, Merrill becomes the 12th Michigan player to be selected by New Jersey.

Dallas selected Alex Guptill with the 17th pick of the third round (77th overall).

Lee Moffie went to the Sharks in the 7th round.

Luke Moffatt became the fourth Wolverine to get picked. The Colorado Avalanche selected him in the seventh round.

Kevin Clare and Jacob Fallon were not selected.

Merrill not Drafted in Round One

The first round of the NHL Entry Draft concluded tonight and Jon Merrill did not hear his name called. He should go very early tomorrow.

De-commit Jack Campbell was selected 11th overall by the Dallas Stars, which is interesting because in addition to Turco, they also drafted the last goalie to commit to Michigan and end up in the OHL instead (Jason Bacashihua). And, come to think of it, they drafted Michigan de-commit Matt Nickerson as well. Things didn't work out so hot for the last two. Hopefully things go a lot better for the goalie formerly known as JMFC. I suppose I have a thought as to where Jared Knight will end up tomorrow.

Also mentioned was that the Oilers were looking to get back into the first round and offered up Andrew Cogliano for the 15th pick, but were turned down.

Improvements to Yost Coming?

An article on AnnArbor.com from a couple of days ago mentioned that Michigan's revenues for the 2011 fiscal year are projected to top $100 million. What are they going to do with that money? AD David Brandon indicates that some improvements to Yost might be coming:

“We’re looking at some updates and enhancements to Yost ­- bleachers, the concession areas, the circulation space, lighting,” Brandon said. “And we’re looking at some real interesting things as it relates to the scoreboard and technology in all of our venues, including the football stadium.

“We’re in a situation where one of the things we have to attend to at some point in the future would be update the technology because there’s HD technology, bigger screens and higher resolution that our fans would really enjoy.”

Mmmmm...video screen at Yost that does more than say "Go! Fight! Win!"

The hockey schedule is out, and it's on starting October 2nd! It's kind of interesting that we play a real game (Mercyhurst) before our yearly beatdown of a Canadian team. You've got the one-game trip out East (to play UNH, which could be fun). You've got the potential for four games against FYS in a month's span. (The Big Chill, GLI, and an early-January home-and-home. 

The College Hockey Showcase is a Friday/Sunday series this year, with our game at Minnesota coming on Sunday. 

No midweek games outside of the GLI and our exhibition game against the NTDP. 

We've got UNO coming to Yost for a non-conference series, as the Mavericks slide to the WCHA. 

It's kind of interesting that we go to BGSU for a series, rather than the usual home-and-home, but we have a pair of home-and-homes against Ferris. You could about walk to BGSU. Ferris? Not so close.

The evaluation camp roster for the 2010-11 USA World Junior team has been released as well. Chris Brown, Kevin Lynch, and Jon Merrill are on the list. So is the goalie formerly known as JMFC, who has to be a lock.

USCHO had a very nice writeup about Jon Merrill. Red Berenson had some lofty praise, comparing him to a Nick Lidstrom-type. Merrill said that he'd like to be drafted by the Wings, as if we ever take players from Michigan. He would also like to marry Miley Cyrus.

TJ Hensick was traded to the St. Louis Blues for Julian Talbot. He is an RFA and there have been rumblings about him heading to the Swedish Elite League, but hopefully he'll finally get a shot in St. Louis. Kevin Porter signed a two-way deal with the Avs.

Lastly, Coach isn't going anywhere! Red signed a three year extension, which would carry him through the 2012-13 season. It's a good thing Ted Thompson isn't our AD. He'd be getting tired of the retirement questions and would push for the coach of the future to take over. 

Back

There hasn't been a ton going on lately, but it's been so long since I've written that I suppose a few things have piled up. So I give you some new stuff, some old stuff that I still want to comment on, and probably a few things that you don't care about.

First up, The Daily had another great article--this one about the evolution of the student section at Yost. I don't just say it's great because it has a few quotes from yours truly about the shining moment of the decade at Yost--the Molly game. All five pages of it are a great read. It's really well-researched and Mike has quotes from people that attended games in several different eras. The best part, however, is how the story goes full circle--from the Spartan fans filling up Yost to the "Children of Yost" packing Munn at the end of last season.

God that paper has come a long way. Today they have articles like this one during the offseason. We got season previews that picked Dan Ellis as CCHA Player of the Year after he had already friggin' left school.

The comments section on that article is bringing back a lot of good memories. "Mrs Cockburn", going through every college in Michigan (and some high schools) before getting to "If you can't get into X go to Ferris"....God I miss Yost.

Other stuff:
Jeff Jillson was a member of the HC Pardubice team that Dominik Hasek led to the Czech league title.


Talk that the CHL teams were going to be in NHL 2011 spawned some talk about if that would lead to a recruiting advantage for the Canadian junior teams. But fear not! It looks like the NCAA teams might be in the game as well, which would be AMAZING. In the era of downloadable rosters, it wouldn't be too hard for some enterprising souls to turn C 12 into Hagelin. And it would save me from having to make rosters made up of college alumni teams, like I do pretty much every year. That would turn the NHL 2011 release date into the way I used to feel about the NCAA football games.

Hagelin and Glendening will wear Cs next season, while Rust and Caporusso will be alternates. Good choices, all of them.

MGoBlog had a detailed look at the forwards, defense, and goaltending for next season. I think I already commented on the forwards part. A commenter in the goalie article says that our third goalie for next year will be a walk-on named Adam Janeck. I had heard that Summers wouldn't be back. I ran a quick Google search, and there's a goalie named Adam Janecyk that is from Michigan and played for Sioux City in 08-09. Worth mentioning....

DeBlois is for sure coming. Lessio attended Oshawa's camp, but the smart money is still on him ending up in Ann Arbor.

NHL Home Ice on XM runs little draft previews during commercial breaks, and I swear the Jack Campbell one eats a little bit of my soul every time I hear it.

Deadspin is a couple of years behind the times, but Charles Clinton's "Back to you, guys!" finally went mainstream.

Rules changes may be coming to a rink near you! MGoBlog, MHNet, and WCH had their takes on it. The rules committee will be meeting for the next four days in Indianapolis. On the docket:
-Half-shields vs. full cages. I vote keeping the full cages. I know people think that it causes a lot of shots to the head, but you see a guy like Yzerman get hit in the eye with a puck, and you wonder why everyone isn't wearing the full cage. 

-Various options for overtime:

Those options for games tied after regulation, in addition to the current format (five-on-five for five minutes): five-on-five for 10 minutes; four-on-four for five minutes; four-on-four for 10 minutes; five-on-five for five minutes, then four-on-four for five minutes; five-on-five for five minutes, then a shootout; and four-on-four for five minutes, then a shootout. The last is the method used by the NHL.

Gotta say, I kind of like the 5-on-5 for five minutes and then 4-on-4 for five minutes. I think you'd get a winner more often than not. I think I like watching shootouts more than I actually like the fact that they exist. 

-Officials: Don't care, but I'd like some that are competent. 

-Icing: Kind of like the idea of a hybrid icing rule. If a forward is clearly going to win the race, then it can be waived off, otherwise, it's no-touch icing. I don't care one way or the other about the attainable pass rule. They call it so randomly anyway. 

-I love the idea of making a team clear their zone on a delayed penalty in order to get a whistle. Sadly, apparently there's not much support for that one.

-I also really like the proposed change to not allow a team to change players if they shoot the puck over the glass in their own end. The automatic delay of game for that is the worst rule in hockey aside from the trapezoid, but treating it like an icing? I'm ok with that.

Western College Hockey also covered Jon Merrill and Jacob Fallon in their annual draft preview.

Alex Guptill is going to get a Top Prospect award from the OHA. Mike Cammalleri, Andrew Cogliano, and Jeff Carter are among the past recipients. Where will Guptill play next year?

Already committed to play for the University of Michigan in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) either this year or in 2011, Guptill said his immediate future, including where he might play come winter, will become more clear at the end of June.
“It is all up to — if a (NHL) team takes me — what their stance is and then Michigan’s,” Guptill said. “It will go from there.”

I think part of me is still pissed about the way the season ended. After Galarraga's should-have-been perfect game, and the reaction of the Detroit fans after Joyce's apology, the thought that immediately jumped to mind was how that was the perfect way to handle the situation, and how it was the exact opposite of what happened in the wake of our loss to Miami. Show contrition. Admit you blew the call. Apologize. People are forgiving. Don't make the ref available for comment and have some asinine explanation that he got the call right because he lost sight of it....ERRRRRR the guy touched the puck? People stay pissed. Can you imagine what the reaction of the Detroit crowd would have been the next day if Joyce had said, "I got the call right because in my mind the guy beat the throw?" There wouldn't have been cheers, I assure you.

I can't promise this site is going to be updated with any consistency for the rest of the summer, but I'll try to not go another month between posts.

Marcantuoni is Gone

From the Sault Star:

 

The Toronto Marlboros centre's lack of enthusiasm for the OHL — he told almost everyone he had a serious interest in playing NCAA hockey at the University of Michigan — scared off the majority of teams in Saturday's draft.

Except. . . the Rangers, who selected Marcantuoni 18th overall.

And wouldn't you know it?

On Sunday, the six-foot, 180-pounder told the Kitchener Record: "The only team I would play for is Kitchener."

Boo.

More Details About "The Big Chill"

Great find by a commenter on my last post: AthleticBusiness.com has a fantastic story about The Big Chill at The Big House, which includes several comments from Mike Stevenson. In there, he mentions that the Wolverines will be wearing 1940s-style throwbacks for the game. Awesome!!

So, which ones will they be? A quick query of the Bentley Historical Library's image archive has a few choices:



My vote is for the white ones, because they're the goofiest-looking, and therefore the coolest to have as a throwback.

There's a lot more in the article than just talk about our jerseys, however. There's great stuff in there about the process of setting up the rink, the financial considerations, even why you'd want to rent a separate Zamboni from the one used in your arena.

Stevenson also talks about wanting to get the "Big Chill" graphic on the ice, even though it's typically not recommended due to dark spots attracting sunlight. Michigan may take a creative approach however:

"One of the options we're looking into is whether we can project that logo on the ice from some type of a light system and not have it actually in the ice," he says.

I'm curious how that would work and not annoy the players. It'd be kind of sweet though.

It's a really great read. Another very cool revelation is that if the ground is frozen, they may plow the golf course and let cars park on it. How awesome would it be to tailgate on the golf course before a hockey game at Michigan Stadium?

OHL Stuff and the New Playoff Format

The OHL Draft was today and Bob Miller had a great thread on The Wolverine about it. The quick version: Boo Nieves went to Niagara in the 10th round and that's a good sign since "if anything was in the works they would've taken him WAY earlier".

Matia Marcantuoni went to Kitchner in the first round and that's probably not a good sign for him eventually donning the Maize and Blue. He dropped farther than you'd typically expect and that likely means he was telling some teams he wasn't going to the OHL, but is that true or positioning to play for a team? I'm not taking that as good news, though it would be phenomenal if he ended up at Michigan.

Kitchner also took target Jacob Trouba in the third round, which isn't bad but not necessarily a good thing either. Goalie target Dalton Izyk didn't go until the 11th round. Good sign for him playing college hockey. Commit Connor Carrick also didn't go until the 11th round, to Guelph.

There are some other names thrown around in that thread, including a few other players that Michigan could ultimately be interested in.

MGoBlog has an early look at next year's forwards, including some good stuff about Moffatt and Fallon's draft status. Interesting that Fallon is pretty well thought of, despite some off-ice issues and not a ton of on-ice production.

The only real point of contention: I think Glendening was too good last year to be relegated to the fourth line. Even if Moffatt and Fallon both show up and make a heavy-impact offensively--which I don't think is a lock--I don't see him falling lower than the third line. He fit right in in our top six last year. I don't think you can relegate a twenty point scorer who constantly does good things down to the fourth line.

I like the pick of Chris Brown to "break out", if you can break out after a 28 point freshman season. I fully expect a monster year out of Brown.

And yes, Carl Hagelin is going to be so, so awesome next year. I'd be very surprised if he doesn't find himself in the mix to be a Hobey finalist. There aren't too many players in the country who bring as much to the table as he does.

Moffatt and Merrill won gold at the U-18 World Championships. Merrill has apparently seen his draft stock go through the roof. He was picked as one of the three best players on Team USA.

Michigan has now sold 92,839 tickets for The Big Chill at The Big House. It won't be too much longer until they crack six figures. Ridiculousness. They've just launched an additional site for the "after party" where apparently area restaurants will be serving "Big Chill" themed eats and drinks. There's not much on there yet, but it bares watching in the future. All I want to see is that we're doing an open-skate like they did at Camp Randall. That was so full of win.

No shocker, but INCH has Carl Hagelin on their list of the top ten returning players for next season. Tommy Wingels is the only other representative from the CCHA.

Lastly, the CCHA said, "Hey, the Big Ten has 11 teams, we have 11 teams. Let's adopt their tournament format." The top five teams will get byes in the first round, while 6-11, 7-10, and 8-9 play each other. In the second round they'll re-seed as usual. The 4 and 5 seeds from the regular season know they'll be playing each other. And the four winners in the second-round go to the Joe.