As preseason favorites Michigan and Minnesota meet for the first time this season, we were correct about at least one thing from the preseason.
The two teams are in first and second place, Michigan leads Minnesota by a point, but both have also played two more contests than everyone except Wisconsin.
“We know what kind of team they are,” Wolverines senior captain Nick Blankenburg said of the Gophers after Saturday’s victory over Niagara. “They’re a fast team and they like to play physical and work hard. We’ve just got to stick to our game and get better this week in practice starting on Monday.”
The Wolverines rebounded by sweeping Niagara Thanksgiving weekend after Notre Dame nabbed two overtime victories at Yost Ice Arena the weekend prior. The Wolverines had slow starts against the Purple Eagles in both games, Friday’s game was tied 1-1 after one period and they trailed 1-0 Saturday, but finished both games strong to score 10 goals over the weekend.
Michigan coach Mel Pearson echoed his captain in saying that they were going to have to be better to get results against Minnesota this weekend.
“Minnesota’s going to play fast, so we’re going to have to match that,” he said after Saturday’s game. “We have to continue to get more pucks to the net and have people there. We don’t need to have the big slap shots and windups. We just have to get it to the net. That’s going to be a big area that we work on, for sure.”
Pearson also suggested that it was important for the many top talents on the team to not get stuck playing a professional style of hockey, instead preferring a quick-strike offense.
“When we slow it down and play more of a pro game and a controlled game, like the defenseman takes it back and gives it to his partner and over to his partner again and we play East-West instead of North-South, we allow the other teams to get up into their neutral zone trap,” Pearson said.
Minnesota solved its Friday-night woes by beating North Dakota 5-1 last weekend but came up short of the sweep on Saturday. The Gophers split all four of their series in November, two at home and two on the road. They went 4-1-0 against the Wolverines last season and swept the series at Yost.
“We just can’t get them on the power play, we have to be disciplined,” Minnesota coach Bob Motzko said of the challenge against Michigan this week on his radio show. “They’re going to score on the power play with the firepower that they’ve got.”
This will be the final series of the first half of the season for the Gophers.
“One weekend left to fight right now,” Motzko said. “We haven’t had any byes. All we talked about with the guys today is one fight left in us and then we regroup and come back for a strong second half.”
Notre Dame puts winning streak on line against Ohio State
The battle atop the standings gets the headlines, but there is also an intriguing matchup between the teams in third and fourth on the docket this weekend.
Notre Dame unexpectedly had the weekend off last weekend after Boston College was forced to postpone its trip to South Bend. The Irish will now put their six-game winning streak on the line when they host Ohio State this weekend.
The third-place Buckeyes are 4-2-0 so far in the conference and are coming off a nonconference split with Mercyhurst.
Goal-scoring opportunities of any kind should be cherished this weekend as both teams are averaging 1.92 goals against per game, tied for seventh best in the country. On the other side of things both are also averaging more than three goals per game with Notre Dame’s 3.69 edging out OSU’s 3.33.
Getting a power play unit that has netted only five goals on 40 opportunities would be a boon for the Buckeyes, but they’ll have to do it against an opponent that has surrendered only three power-play goals this season.
