Michigan 6, Notre Dame 1

The Wolverines got off to a slow start, but picked it up as the game
went along to pull away from Notre Dame, 6-1.

Right off the bat it was the Irish applying the pressure on U-M,
which was a little unexpected given the way the Wolverines played at
the College Hockey Showcase you would think they'd be more fired up.

T.J. Hensick, who was benched against Wisconsin, returned to the
lineup and made his presence felt at 5:24 of the opening period when
he stole the puck along the right boards of the Irish zone, skated
to the center and sent the puck top shelf on Irish goalie David
Brown.

Eric Werner put the Wolverines up a pair at 10:18 with a blast from
the top of the right circle beating Brown low glove side.

The tide then turned back to the Irish. The Wolverines took a
penalty right after Werner's goal, then on the ensuing power play Al
Montoya made a bad clearing attempt in front of the net and hit an
Irish player. Wide open net, but they fired it wide.

U-M took another penalty after that one expired and this time
Michael Bartlett ripped a slapshot from the left hashmark between
the legs of Montoya to make it 2-1. Montoya made the initial save
on a centering pass that was redirected at him, but the rebound went
right to Bartlett, who was all alone.

The Wolverines continued to take penalties and gave the Irish a 1:20
5-on-3 power play to end the period, but Montoya came up with some
key stops and U-M killed off the remainder of the power play early
in the second period.

But soon after that, Werner took a penalty, but on the ensuing Irish
power play the momentum this time shifted back to the Wolverines. U-
M did a fantastic job killing the penalty. The puck was in the
Irish zone longer than the U-M zone. At one point Jason Ryznar
skated in with the puck and worked the boards and skated around the
Irish zone killing off 30 seconds by himself. He got a big ovation
for his effort as he skated off for a line change.

The Wolverines then went on the power play and Milan Gajic skated in
on the right side and found Brandon Kaleniecki all alone in front,
and the Pitbull went upstairs on Brown to make it 3-1 at 8:47 of the
second period.

The Irish took another penalty and this time David Moss sent the
puck down low to Chad Kolarik at the endline to Brown's right.
Kolarik stepped out, turned and whipped the puck between the legs
just after the power play ended to make it 4-1. Morgan Cey replaced
Brown in net for the Irish after the goal.

More penalties to both sides resulted in another 5-on-3 for Notre
Dame, but again they couldn't take advantage, which was the theme of
the game for them. The Irish finished just 1-for-10 on the power
play.

Midway through the third period, Ryznar found Gajic cutting in front
of the net, and Gajic made a beautiful move around a defender and
slid the puck past Cey.

The Irish took a penalty after the goal as well, and 30 seconds
later Brandon Rogers buried the puck past Cey with a blast from the
blueline to cap off the scoring.

Don't have any official game stats, but Montoya made around 22 saves
while Brown and Cey combined for around 30 stops.

Weekend series wraps up tomorrow night in South Bend.

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Random notes and observations...

Lots of turnovers by U-M early on. They didn't seem too sharp in
the opening period despite the 2-1 lead.

Reilly Olson returned to the lineup tonight as part of Red
Berenson's shuffling. He had his good cutting off the angle on a
two-on-one early on and also playing on the penalty kill, and some
bad where he was caught out of position a few times, but considering
he hasn't played in over a year it wasn't too bad.

In the still trying to figure out the rules department, the referees
got a little lax with the rules in the third period... there were a
few what seemed like rather obvious Irish penalties... and a
scuffled occured late between Hensick and Matt Amado. A second
Irish joined in, Mike Brown was quick to grab him from behind and
throw him to the ground and pin him.

Mike Brown did everything but score tonight. He got stoned by Cey
on a shorthanded breakaway, he hit the post once or twice, and he
got two points for the take down.

Montoya still scares me handling the puck. He had the turnover in
front of the net, then at least two more times had turnover behind
the net. One of them he flipped right to a Notre Dame player, who
then stepped out in front to an open net, but didn't put much
mustard on his shot and two Wolverine players came sliding in to
block the shot and bail out Monty. Otherwise he had a solid game in
net.

Fox Sports Detroit interviewed Milan Gajic during the second
intermission and showed footage of his riverboat dance his freshman
year at the Mock Rock. Great stuff, and I'll try getting the
footage online for everyone to enjoy later this weekend.

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That's all for now...

Go Blue!

Jason
Michigan Hockey Net
http://MichiganHockey.net/