Michigan Nearly Pulls Off Sweep of #1 Miami

By Sean · Monday, February 11, 2008 · 1:10 AM |  Share | 1 Comment 

The Michigan hockey team played #1 Miami (Ohio) on the road in its two biggest games of the season this past Friday and Saturday. This series had CCHA title implications, which made for a big showdown between the top two teams in the country.

Friday night’s game went Michigan’s way early on, resulting in an eventual 4-2 victory. In the first 15 minutes of the game Michigan scored 4 times to build a huge lead, making life a little easier for the remainder of play. The referees certainly didn’t help, though, as Matt Shegos and company were whistle happy for much of the second and third periods. 5-on-5 hockey seemed like a rarity for the second half of the game, and that directly resulted in an attempted comeback by the RedHawks. It fell 2 goals short, thankfully, and Michigan went on to win, snapping a 4 game winless streak.

Saturday night’s game was back and forth for all three periods, leading to a tie after overtime didn’t settle anything either. Michigan got ahead 1-0 just over a minute into the game, but Miami was able to score two goals afterwards to take a 2-1 lead into the second period. The lead didn’t last long, though, as Michigan scored 23 seconds into the second period to tie things up. This is when things got really interesting.

Miami scored almost 10 minutes later to regain the lead, but after that it was all Michigan. The Wolverines scored two goals to finish the second period and then scored again within the first minute of the third period. Those three goals gave Michigan a 5-3 lead and gave fans hope that the Maize and Blue would leave Ohio with a sweep.

Just as the game was on the verge of slipping away for Miami, the RedHawks caught a lucky break to cut the lead on half. The puck was hit into the Michigan zone by a Miami player and took a weird bounce. It looked like the puck hit off the netting above the boards, but the refs missed that call. The funny bounce fooled Billy Sauer and led to the puck falling back to the ice in front of the net, giving Miami an easy goal.

With the lead down to only a single goal and momentum favoring Miami completely, it really was only a matter of time until this game was tied up again. The RedHawks made sure that happened by scoring a goal three-quarters of the way through the third period, tying the game up at 5-5. The final five minutes or so of the game produced no other goals, and overtime was exactly the same. That meant that this high-scoring affair would end in a draw, although it felt more like a loss for Michigan.

I have to say, the referees really were bad in these two games. Friday night’s contest featured way too many penalties, many of which were really shouldn’t have been called. That was nothing, though, compared to Saturday night’s game. A linesman actually accidentally tripped a Michigan player, leading to a 2-on-1 for Miami that resulted in a goal for the RedHawks. I know it was an accident, but that’s still no excuse. And to top things off, how they missed the puck hitting off the netting on that third goal is beyond me.

The only thing more irritating than the refs was the Miami fans. It’s pretty common for college hockey fans to use some of the same chants, but never before had I heard a fanbase completely ripoff so many of Michigan’s. They did the same exact chant after scoring a goal and even counted down to 1:00 remaining at the end of a period. I understand chants are going to be copied, but the Miami fans were taking that thinking to a whole new level.

One thing that was a positive about the atmosphere from these two games was Miami’s arena. It is in it’s second season and was very nice looking. The boards weren’t very sturdy as two of them were broken just by fans pounding on them, but other than that I would say it’s probably a very nice place to watch a game.

Michigan should move back up to #1 in the rankings this week and will take the title of the nation’s best team back home to play Lake Superior State on Friday and Saturday. Friday’s game will be on CSTV at 8:05 and Saturday’s will be on FSN Detroit at 7:35. Michigan can’t afford to fall to an upset now with the CCHA title race so close, so the Wolverines will have to get two victories against LSSU before heading into a series with arch-rival Michigan State next week.