College Hockey:

This Week in the CCHA: Jan. 20, 2005

Am I Dreaming?

Two top-10 teams will be playing in Columbus this weekend, the building is sold out, and the Frozen Four is months away.

And the skies have obliged us with snow.

Folks in states like Michigan take for granted the omnipresence of hockey is omnipresent, the knowledgeable fans who know when to applaud at a game, a winter that is — mostly — a consistently, recognizable season.

Here in central Ohio, where the temperature can approach 70 degrees one week in January and zero the next and where the only game in town from August through Bowl Time is Buckeye football, a sold-out Schottenstein Center for a regular-season hockey series is rare and exciting.

How rare? Think snow days in Syracuse. Or A Charlie Brown Christmas, pre-cable. That first stride onto the frozen pond after a month of gray, anticipating days.

The week before the Buckeyes and Wolverines meet to end the Big Ten football season, whether the game is played here or in Ann Arbor, every cashier in ever grocery store in Columbus is decked in scarlet and … well, mostly scarlet, sometimes with those annoying Buckeye necklaces, folks don’t usually wear gray. Every news anchor makes reference to “The Game” even when not teasing the obligatory preview. Citizens wear tee-shirts splattered with large, Michigan-directed obscenities.

OSU students toilet-paper their own campus, radio sports shows whip callers into a “Go Bucks!” frenzy, and those of us not native to these parts wonder if anyone around here knows all the words to “Hang on Sloopy.”

Michigan Week — aptly named, since it usually ends with a Wolverine victory on the gridiron — is supposed to come just once a year in Columbus, but with two sell-out crowds, no distracting NHL, and a familiar nemesis, even the local sportscasters are catching the buzz and the phrase usually reserved for football has been applied to (sacrilege!) our favorite game.

“I think it will be exciting to have Michigan Week, I guess you could call it. As a coach, you’re looking at last week as Notre Dame week, and next week as Western Michigan week.”

If Ohio State head coach John Markell sounds nonplussed, that’s because he knows a few things the local talking heads don’t. First, the Buckeyes have a dismal record against the Wolverines all-time (24-56-11).

Second, Markell is 6-19-6 against Michigan all-time.

Third, even though the Buckeyes and Wolverines are 2-2-2 in their last six meetings, the record is 6-2-2 in Michigan’s favor for the last 10 games.

“You don’t want to get too high and you don’t want to get too low,” says Markell. “I’m pretty sure the sun is going to come up on Monday and Sunday and we’ll have to move on either way. Again, we’re looking at this as an exciting opportunity to play a good team, a team that’s ahead of us that we’re trying to chase, the third-ranked team in the nation.”

If Markell sounds business-as-usual, he’s not alone. Michigan head coach Red Berenson doesn’t underestimate the Buckeyes, not one bit.

“They’ve had a great year. Right from the get-go when they went in and swept Ferris State [on the road], you could tell they were for real. Let’s be honest here. I expect two battles. I’m sure they do, too.”

Like the football rivalry, Buckeye fans are the ones more likely to get worked up about this series than are the Wolverine faithful. After all, Michigan has owned Ohio State on the ice for years, and a rivalry really isn’t one unless it’s competitive. In fact, Michigan has been the premier CCHA team for so long that every team it plays considers it a “rival,” while the opposite may not be true.

And what else can be said about this series that hasn’t been said already? “Exactly,” says Berenson.

“Exactly,” says Markell.

What remains is what is to take place on the ice, and the facts are these:

Both teams have goaltenders who can play brilliantly, or let in a few softies.

Both teams can run up a score on an opponent, but Michigan tends to do that more than does Ohio State. Each team’s offense can overcome a sub-par performance in net.

Michigan’s defense scores; Ohio State’s defense stays at home more.

OSU may have an edge in special teams. Just ask Berenson about Michigan’s penalty kill, which has seen better days. “It seems like it’s an off-and-on issue. A month ago our PK was one of the best in the country and our power play was down a little bit. It definitely is a concern and I can’t tell you what the answer is or we wouldn’t be talking about it.”

The Wolverines have allowed at least one power-play goal in seven consecutive games, and the Michigan penalty kill which was successful at a 90.2 percent clip in December is performing at 65.5 percent through four games in January, during which the Wolverines have allowed opponents to score more than once per game.

Still, it’s hard to feel sorry for the Wolverines, who are still 13-3-1 when allowing a goal on the power play.

There is no question that special teams will factor into these games. Even though the Buckeyes — the nation’s most-penalized team — plays a different, more controlled game at home, each of these teams will have a chance to show off its glorious offense with a man advantage, and here the Buckeyes have the advantage in the form of one player. Rod Pelley leads the league in power-play goals (nine) and is a wicked threat from the right point.

Want some other numbers? Here they are:

Goals per game: UM 4.38 (first); OSU 3.42 (second)
Goals allowed per game: UM 2.58 (fourth); OSU 2.25 (second)
Power play: UM 20.4 % (third); OSU 20.0% (fourth)
Penalty kill: UM 83.4% (seventh); OSU 87.7% (second)
Top scorer: UM T.J. Hensick (15-17–32); OSU Tom Fritsche (4-21–25)
Top ‘tender: UM Al Montoya (2.68 GAA, .897 SV%); OSU Dave Caruso (2.12 GAA, .920 SV%)

The Wolverines have four guys in double digits in goal production: Hensick, Jeff Tambellini (12-18–30), Milan Gajic (11-14–25), and Brandon Kaleniecki (10-5–15). With 13 goals on the season, Pelley is the only guy to hit or surpass the 10-goal marker for the Buckeyes.

The Wolverines are coming off a two-game home sweep of Alaska-Fairbanks, one in which they outscored their opponent 10-4, which is definitely more business as usual for Michigan than was the previous weekend, when they needed 12 goals to beat the nine that Western scored. The sheer number of goals Michigan can allow is definitely a concern.

But Berenson said that he’s not at all concerned about Montoya’s performance in net, in spite of the junior’s stats.

“I’m not saying he’s struggled. I’m just saying that Al’s going through what a lot of first-round draft picks go through, players who have gone through a lot of early success have gone through.

“Getting the World Junior tournament out of the way he can just focus on our season.

“The bottom line for the coach is not the save percentage, not the goals against, but the wins. We gave up nine goals against Western and he was one of our best players.

“Western played their absolute tails off against us. Their power play was clicking, and they had six power-play goals against us and it was hard hockey.”

The Buckeyes have a few concerns of their own, although Markell insists that goal scoring isn’t among them, even though OSU hasn’t been spectacular in that area for its last five games. OSU tied Colorado College 2-2, then split at home with Ferris State, scoring five on that weekend, and just last week the Bucks went to Notre Dame and won 3-1 and 4-1.

Until FSU came to Columbus, OSU was averaging about 4.7 goals per game at home, but Markell says that his team is still creating opportunities, and that’s what counts.

“As you get toward the end of the season, it gets harder to score goals. It’s not that easy. Teams tighten up and obviously points become harder [because] teams are playing harder against you.”

Markell credits Notre Dame goaltender Morgan Cey with a great performance, saying that the score in Saturday’s 3-1 game could have been much more lopsided. “You take what the games give you and y