Better late than never right?
Friday, December 2nd Michigan Tech 3 – Northern Michigan 4 OT
Despite the disappointing outcome to the game on Friday, I love how close both of the games this weekend were. Rivalries are so much better when its actually a competitive game. It was basically dead even through the first two periods, even if Northern did pull away in the third.
Return of the Gif. Don’t love to see how many shots Northern got in the slot this game, especially when you compare that to the shots in tight that Tech generated. Fun fact about this game, both teams had exactly 53 shot attempts according to InStat. The fact the Wildcats pulled away in xG in the third is due to the quality of shots they took, not the quantity.
Brett Thorne was breaking the TOI scale once again with a insane 32:57 minutes of ice time on Friday night. The line of Vanderbeck, Fyre, Keefer ran the show and the rest of the players were all fairly even. Based on the scoresheet you might have expected to see Kash Rasmussen higher on this chart. He had a great night in terms of Kashing in on his chances, but in terms of generating chances he was pretty average. The “point” of xG is to attempt to see how well players are generating good opportunities to score, not if the player is shooting well or if they got some puck luck.
Saturday, December 3rd Michigan Tech 3 – Northern Michigan 1
After a sad but thrilling end to the game on Friday, the first period started out slow with with a lot of shots from the outside and from the point. Neither team were able to get into the dangerous areas of the ice until second period where things really started to open up. It was a pretty close game in terms of xG, although interestingly in this game the shot attempts were heavily in favor of Tech at 79 to 46. But, Northern once again was generating a higher percentage of dangerous shots than Tech. Despite the difference of 33 shot attempts, the if you look at just shots that have 0.1 xG or higher, it was much closer with Tech at 13 and Northern at 11.
gifs are back bb
I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but Brett Thorne isn’t human. Just another game with seven minutes more ice time than the next highest player on the team. He had 29:28 on Saturday to bring it to a total of 62:25 minutes on the weekend. Once again, a very close game in all around. I haven’t mentioned it yet, but its worth noting that despite being a very tight game in the stats, it was a 3-1 win and Bah gawd that’s Blake Pietila’s music! It’s unreasonable to expect a shutout every weekend, even if it feels like that is something Blake is absolutely capable of doing. But, this was still a very good game from Blake, and he was a massive reason why was fairly low on the stress meter for me in the third period.
No thoughts, just vibes
Some evidence* based conclusions.
Michigan Tecc: good.
Northern Michigan: bad.
BONUS CONTENT!!!1!!11!!!
As an apology for this recap being so late, I have a few charts from other interesting games that happened in college hockey recently. No analysis on these, just enjoy the view.
Closing Time
I hope you enjoyed taking a look at some nice charts and graphs with me. If you have any questions about the charts, my analysis, or just want to say hello, please leave a comment or reach out to me on the THG discord server (@Augie) and I’d be happy to try and answer your questions.
Special thanks to Livonia Technical Services for being the official sponsor of all InStat analytics at Tech Hockey Guide
