Michigan 5, Ferris State 2

Jared Rutledge's commitment wasn't the only good news for the Wolverine hockey team tonight. On the ice, they downed the sixth-ranked Ferris State Bulldogs by a 5-2 margin. Coming in, the Bulldogs had allowed just 5 goals in the previous six games combined. In a battle of the #3 offense against the #1 defense, Michigan's offense got the upper hand tonight.

After a scoreless first period, the Wolverines put three on the board in just over five minutes in the middle of the second period.

On a Michigan power play, Phil Di Giuseppe scored his first of two on the night. Wohlberg's shot from the point hit a defenseman's glove and deflected to Chris Brown. Brown was able to corral the loose puck and slide it to the other side of the net where Di Giuseppe was waiting to bury it.

With the goalie pulled on a delayed penalty, Travis Lynch made it 2-0 as he tipped in a Bennett shot from the point. Then--thanks to the rule that if you score on a delayed penalty the violation still gets called--the Wolverines were able to capitalize again on the man advantage. This time it was David Wohlberg with a beeeeeautiful wrister up under the bar from just inside the top of the faceoff circle..

Ferris would close back within two on a couple of occasions but the Wolverines were able to answer. After Billins made it 3-1 on a nice rush, Derek DeBlois lasered one just under the crossbar for his first of the year. Ferris scored another power play goal to draw within two again with 7 minutes left, but Chris Brown passed up an empty-netter, feeding Di Giuseppe for the final margin of victory. That was a great all-around play by Brown, as his stick lift in the Michigan end prevented a scoring chance and got Michigan possession of the puck.

Shawn Hunwick made 28 stops in the win, as Michigan was outshot 30-28.

Lindsay Sparks now has 5-6--11 on the season and 3-5--8 during a five-game point streak. There are only two players in the country with more points than Sparks has. PDG is tied for the team lead in goals with 5. Kyle Rau is the only freshman in the country with more goals (6).

The Wolverines now have ten players with 5+ points on the season (and 3 more with four points apiece). Not bad for being 7 games in.

In other happy news, LSSU knocked off Miami in overtime. The RedHawks are now 2-5 overall and 0-3 in CCHA play.

The Wolverines and Bulldogs will resume their series tomorrow night at Yost. CJ Motte will likely get the start for Ferris State.

Having a Seat Over There: Jared Rutledge

For the third straight year, the Wolverines have picked up a commitment from an NTDP goalie. Like Jack Campbell and John Gibson before him, Jared Rutledge has verballed to Red Berenson. Hopefully unlike the other two, he will wear the Maize and Blue next season. He had been mentioned as a possibility for the Wolverines over a year and a half ago.

Rutledge is listed at 5'11", 167 lbs and like Connor Carrick, he hails from Illinois.

This season, he is 3-2-1 with a sparkling 2.34 goals against and a .918 save percentage.  His two losses have come against Michigan and Colorado College, two of the top 4 teams in the country. He made 33 stops against Michigan in a 3-1 loss and 38 against CC, though USA fell 5-0.

Last season with the U17s, he put up very solid numbers. He was 17-9-1 with a 2.57 goals against and a .905 save percentage. Internationally, in the Vlad Dzurilla tournament, he was 2-0-0 with a 1.00/.957 en route to the tournament title. He was in net for the final game and stopped 24 of 25 shots.

He was also 2-0-0 with a 2.00/.844 in the Four Nations Cup. In the World Under 17 Challenge, he was 3-1 with a 2.57/.844. The Americans fell 5-3 to Team Ontario in the gold medal game. Rutledge didn't get the start, but stopped 10 of 12 shots in about 48 minutes of relief work. One of the goals he allowed was on a penalty shot.

He played with the Chicago Young Americans prior to joining the NTDP and led the league in wins. His head coach said the following:

"His anticipation for what a shooter is going to do and his reading of a situation so he can best position himself in the net are definitely his strengths," Young Americans head coach Bruno Bragagnolo said. "He's able to analyze his weaknesses about as well as any goalie I've ever coached. And then I think his movement across the crease and his play out of the net are underrated." 

 The Skokie Review had a neat story about how his dad has helped his career along.

“I took (Jared) to NHL goalie coaches, read everything they wrote and watched every DVD. There was a tremendous amount to learn,” said Johnny, who works full-time in the music business. “I videotaped every one of Jared’s games, watched the videos and analyzed his game. It was an intensive training process. By the time (Jared) was 14 years old, I started backing off. By the time he was 15, I let him go.”

His dad now coaches other young goalies.

Dan Sallows, a scout for the Indiana Ice, had some kind things to say about him:

Rutledge is technically and positionally very sound, is excellent at controlling rebounds, handles the puck well, competes hard, has a good glove, doesn’t get phased on the rare occasion he does let in a bad goal, and is extremely good at anticipating the play. Though he isn’t overly big, he challenges exceptionally well, and makes life miserable for shooters.

I'd still imagine that Michigan will bring in a second freshman goalie for next season. I don't know that they'd risk the possibility of getting whammied three years in a row.

NMU Revisited and Ferris State Preview

The "top ranked" Wolverines went on the road for the first time to take on Northern Michigan last weekend. They lost on Friday night before rebounding with the first shootout win in program history on Saturday. That dropped them to a more-reasonable-but-still-probably-a-little-high #4 ranking.

Halfway through Friday night's game, Shawn Hunwick had made 17 saves and the score was 0-0. Hunwick was run into and reacted poorly. I haven't seen a video clip, but it looked like he clocked an NMU player with his blocker. He was given a 5-minute major penalty for contact to the head and was ejected. Luke Moffatt and Andrew Cherniwchan were also given fighting majors and game DQs in the altercation.

After the fight, NMU scored 4 goals on their next 14 shots. The Wolverine battled back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the game with under 4 minutes to play in regulation, but the Wildcats scored just over a minute later and added an empty netter to win 5-3. Sparks, Hyman, and T. Lynch scored for the Wolverines.

The next night, the Wolverines got out to a 2-0 lead behind goals from Treais and Sparks. NMU scored a pair of power play goals to tie the score, before Kevin Lynch put Michigan back ahead heading to the 2nd intermission. NMU tied it back up in the first minute of the third period and it stayed that way the rest of the game. Michigan had a power play for almost the entire overtime session but was unable to capitalize. Treais scored the only goal in the shootout, and Michigan was able to salvage two points on the weekend (out of six).

#6 Ferris State comes to town for a Thursday/Friday series at Yost. The Bulldogs are 6-0-0 on the season and just swept The Dynasty last weekend in Big Rapids, which helped them jump 8 spots in the USCHO poll and got them a first-place vote. They've given up just 5 goals in six games and held the high-powered Miami offense to a pair of goals.

One positive: The Bulldogs played a pair of games against St Lawrence (on the road) and beat them 4-2 (with an ENG) and 5-1 (in a game that was 3-1 with under 5 to play). Michigan beat them 10-3 at Yost. They then blanked RPI by 4-0 and 2-0 scores. Last weekend, the Bulldog duo of Tyler Nelson and CJ Motte out-dueled Cody Reichard and Connor Knapp.

The Bulldog power play was the difference in that series. They went 4 for 13 with the man advantage and held the RedHawks scoreless on 8 opportunities. Both of their goals in the 2-0 game came on the power play.

As you'd expect, since they've only given up 5 goals, the goaltenders have fantastic numbers. Nelson and Motte have split time this year and are both 3-0-0. Nelson has a 1.34/.943 and Motte has a ridiculous 0.33/.986(!).

Only 8 players have scored for FSU (which matches how many we had against SLU), but Travis Ouellette has 6 (second nationally with four on the PP) and Kyle Bonis has 5. They haven't gotten any goals out of their defensemen, but Chad Billins had 6 assists.

Overall, they're 14th nationally with 3.50 goals per game. Clearly 0.83 goals per game defensively is #1 in the nation. Only five other teams are even within a goal of that. The power play is humming along at 25% and they've given up just one goal on the penalty kill, which is good for 96.4%.

Easy Canvas Prints

I was recently invited to try out Easy Canvas Prints, a company that puts pictures on canvas. They suggested that I might like to blow up one of my photos from a Michigan hockey game. Unfortunately, when I was in school, I had a really crappy film camera, and replaced it with an okay Kodak Easyshare after hockey season my senior year. By the time I had a real disposable income to get a nice camera, I had moved away and have only gotten to a couple of hockey games since then.

One game that we had the nice camera at was the media game for The Big Chill at The Big House. I thought it would be fun to take the opportunity to blow up one of the photos that my fiancee took me there.

There's the finished product, and I think it's pretty awesome. The canvas is a really high quality, the colors pop, and they've got the ability to do some photo-shopping and other image-enhancing on your pictures if necessary. It's got a hanger built in as well.

I also had the option of having a solid border or having the photo wrap around. I went with the latter option, because it looks much cooler that way and luckily the photo was taken in a way that it wouldn't cut off any of my head or the logo on my jersey to do so.

It arrived at my doorstep less than a week after I placed the order, and it was packaged really well. It actually took me a little doing to get it out of the box!

According to their website, due to the archival-quality material that they use, even in direct sunlight, the canvas should last for "decades to come".

Their website will let you know if your file is of a good enough resolution to be blown up, and if it isn't, then they offer a service as minor-retouching to help increase the resolution. Magic.

So yeah, thanks to Easy Canvas Prints for the offer! I'm really happy with how my print turned out. I've always loved the look of art on canvas. I was actually thinking about getting a couple of prints done before this offer came along, so I was really excited to take advantage and get this one printed!

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.

RIP Dan Wheldon

For most of his career, I was never a Dan Wheldon fan. I didn't dislike him--beyond the fact that he won a lot of races and wasn't Bryan Herta, the guy I cheered for--but I wasn't a fan. This year, that changed. He signed with Herta's team to race the Indy 500 and I had someone else to root for in addition to Will Power.


As I mentioned, Herta was my favorite driver growing up. Far and away. I used to pick drivers to root for based on how they treated me when I would go autograph-hunting in the paddock as a young'un. Herta was always the nicest guy out there. He didn't win a lot--only 4 races in his open-wheel career--but he was a solid driver in an extremely competitive era. He was always kind of an underdog, and he was fun to root for.

Now, as a car owner, he's continued that. He's owned a team in Indy Lights for a couple of years (that's the equivalent of the NASCAR Nationwide Series, but without the Sprint Cup regulars driving). For the 2010 Indy 500, his team decided to take their Indy Lights driver, Sebastian Saavedra, and make their Izod IndyCar Series debut. Due to the unique qualifying procedure for the Indy 500, Saavedra was bumped from the race, wrecked his car in practice before making another attempt to get in, and then (while at the hospital and without turning another lap) regained his spot in the field while other drivers withdrew their qualifying times to try to defend themselves against other drivers bumping them. It led to a classic scene where Herta called Saavedra at the hospital to tell him that he made the race.

Like I said, a huge underdog.

For the 2011 Indy 500, Herta hired Wheldon to drive his car. The two were former teammates and good friends. People laughed when Wheldon suggested he could win the race in the #98 William Rast car, but due to an alignment with the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team, they were able to put a good car under him. It looked like Wheldon was headed for a third-consecutive runner-up finish in the race when this happened:

The leader of the race, rookie JR Hildebrand, crashed in the final corner and Wheldon snuck by for the victory. Seeing Bryan Herta's tiny team win the Indianapolis 500 was one of the single greatest moments of my sports-watching life. Just listen to that in-car audio at the end. The first voice to come on is Herta's. The squeal of excitement is Wheldon.

Wheldon didn't have a full-time ride for the rest of the year and spent a lot of time doing color commentary for Versus during some of the races. It quickly became evident that in addition to being the best color guy I've ever seen working a race, that he was a really great guy. Always smiling, always enthusiastic. Herta and Wheldon teamed up to be the test team for the new car that is coming next year. Ironically, the new car has a bumper behind the rear wheels that will strive to keep cars from launching into the air.

Wheldon was invited to drive in the season finale at Las Vegas and would have split $5 million with a fan had he won the race. As part of the promotion, he had to start at the rear of the field. Early in the race, a wreck was triggered mid-pack. With cars going 220+ miles per hour, no one had time to react and several cars, including Wheldon's, got airborne. Wheldon flipped cockpit-first into the catch-fence. There aren't many worse feelings in the world than knowing a wreck was potentially fatal and having to wait for them to identify which car it was, hoping that it wasn't one of your favorite drivers, while feeling like a scumball at the same time because you realize that means you're involuntarily hoping that it's someone else. The race was red-flagged, and as time went on it became more evident that this story wasn't going to have a happy ending. It felt eerily similar to when Greg Moore was killed in 1999, and you could hear it in the announcers' voices that they knew more than they were able to let on. By the time Randy Bernard made the announcement we were all fearing....you pretty much already knew.

These drivers know the risks of strapping themselves into these machines. I know that they know the risks. But this still never gets any easier. I love this sport so damn much, but when this happens it really makes me question why I keep watching. Not many of my friends have shared my love for racing, but a couple have. One cheered for Greg Moore. One cheered for Dan Wheldon. I was raised a Dale Earnhardt Sr. fan.

I know there were likely thousands of other great husbands/fathers/people who died today, and many didn't voluntarily partake in a job that has this much risk, but seeing Dario Franchitti's face as he strapped back into his car for the 5-lap tribute to Wheldon, hearing Danica Patrick barely keeping it together in her goodbye to the series that made her famous, seeing the cars drive slowly around the track while "Amazing Grace" and "Danny Boy" played over the PA system, and seeing pictures like this....

...and I can't help but shed a tear. Or a lot of them. I know it's part of the risk of the sport, but like I said, it never gets any easier seeing someone's life come to an end like that.

Here's the tribute. Undoubtedly that's one of the hardest things any of those drivers have ever had to do:

So thank you, Dan Wheldon. Thank you for bringing an Indy 500 victory to Bryan Herta. Thank you for one of the happiest moments of my sports-watching life.

I'm really crushed right now--and I'm so thankful that somewhere along the lines, my fiancee and I got our wires crossed and she thought that I didn't actually want to go to Vegas for the finale this year. There are a pair of tickets sitting on my window sill. I can't decide if I should keep them or tear them up into as small of pieces as I possibly can, and get rid of them as quickly as I got rid of the recording of the race on my DVR.

Marty Reid gets a lot of criticism about his broadcasting, but the way he left it today was beautiful, so I'll leave you with his words: "Many people ask me why I always sign off with 'Til we meet again'. Because 'Goodbye' is always so final. Goodbye Dan Wheldon."

St Lawrence Preview

The ECAC's St. Lawrence Saints come to town for some Thursday night hockey tomorrow. SLU is 0-2-0 on the season after being swept at home by Ferris State last weekend 4-2 and 5-1. The Saints led Friday night's game 1-0 before giving up 3 straight to the Bulldogs. They drew within one with about 4 minutes left, but Ferris scored an empty-netter. Matt Weininger got the nod in goal and gave up 3 goals on 20 shots. The next night, Ferris got one in the first, two in the second, and two in the third. Robby Moss made 30 saves on 35 shots. Both Kyle Flanagan and Greg Carey were in on all three Saints goals.

Carey led the team in scoring last year as a freshman, posting 23-17--40 in 40 games. Flanagan was second on the team with 12-23--35. They're also the top two returning goal scorers, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they were driving the offense last weekend.

Weninger played the majority of the games last year, going 7-15-3 with a very respectable 2.65/.913. Moss's record was better (5-6-2) but gave up 3.23 goals per night and stopped 90.2% of shots against him.

Their special teams didn't have a whole lot of luck against Ferris, going 1/10 on the power play and giving up 4 goals in the 12 times they were shorthanded. 

Inside College Hockey picks the Saints to finish 10th in the ECAC. The media picked them 8th, and the coaches picked them 9th. USCHO was the most optimistic, picking them 7th. They media put Carey on the preseason all-conference team.

The Saints were 13-22-5 last year and finished 11th in the ECAC before knocking off Princeton in the first round of the ECAC Tournament (and nearly taking out Yale as well).

Thoughts are with longtime Saints Head Coach Joe Marsh, who has taken a leave of absence from the team to deal with a medical issue. Assistant Coach Mike Hurlbut is calling the shots in his absence.

Michigan is 11-2-1 all-time against St Lawrence and has won the last 7. Their last meeting was in 2008. The Wolverines won 5-3.

The puck drops at 7:35. No video, sadly. I love how we're regressing in internet video technology. It wasn't so long ago that we got free streaming video for all of the non-televised games.