Michigan Swept at Minnesota

Minnesota 5 - Michigan 2

Minnesota 4 - Michigan 2

Coming into the weekend the Wolverines needed to do everything right if they were going to get a win at Mariucci. They never came close to a win, in fact, the Gophers took care of business like you would expect a first place team to do against a team near the bottom of the conference standings.

Friday and Saturday night at Mariucci gave us the same old stuff we’ve seen all year; goaltending was great, defensive zone play was shoddy and their offensive possessions were so short that Minnesota coasted in both games once they took the lead. During the second period of the Saturday game, the Wolverines got three shots on goal. Three! You can’t win games playing like that.

Michigan is now 1-5-0 in conference play and 8-11-1 on the year. In their 5 conference losses the Wolverines haven’t looked competitive and are being outscored 28-14 in Big Ten play.

The fast-paced transition style of play that Red Berenson has coached at Michigan for the last three decades doesn’t work with this team. They have a group of bigger forwards who would be more suited to grinding and they should be playing like that, but if the coaching staff hasn’t changed their philosophy after 20 games there’s no hope at all that a change will come now.