After the rollercoaster of a tournament that was GLI the Huskies headed south for the winter weekend to play in another holiday tournament. Facing off against Arizona State on Friday and either Air Force or Boston University on Saturday.
Friday, January 6th Michigan Tech 4 – Arizona State 2
This is going to be a common theme in this article, so get used to reading it. This was a very close game all the way through. It was close on the scoreboard most of the night, it was close in shots on goal, it was close in total xG and as we’ll see down in the gif section even the shot locations were pretty similar.
If you took away the goals from this gif and switched the colors, I wouldn’t have been able to tell a difference.
It took looking at the static image of all the shots to be able to really notice any difference at all. The shots ASU took from the outside were closer to the boards where as most of the shots Tech took were closer to the faceoff dots. That’s a pretty small difference, but man it was a really close game. When you have a game that looks this close in terms of skaters, usually it comes down to the goalie and that is something that usually works out pretty well when you have Blake Pietila in net for you.
Something something Brett Thorne played a lot. I find it really interesting that Jed Pietila looked way better in terms of on ice xG% on Friday despite not getting any points, but had worse performance (in terms of on ice xG%) on Saturday when he assisted on two big goals. It’s just another reminder that these stats aren’t indicative of success in any specific game, but are an attempt to show if a players success or lack of success is likely to continue or not.
Saturday, January 7th Michigan Tech 3 – Boston University 2
sUcKs tO bE yOu haha original jokes are the best. Would you look at that, another very close game. It was great to see Tech play this close of a game against the #6 team in the nation. Getting three quick goals like that is always nice, but I was happier to see that the team was able to keep up with BU the rest of the game and close it out. I don’t expect this team to score their way out of problems against teams in the CCHA playoffs or the NCAA tournament if they make it, so being able hold a lead in tough game is something that I am hoping to see a lot more of this year.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; another close game where Blake Pietila was a big part of why the Huskies came out on top. That being said, it was very good to see a game this close against a team as good as BU. Going into, the game I wasn’t expecting it to be as close as it was, but I was pleasantly surprised with how the team played as a whole.
Something something Brett Thorne lead the game in ice time. Wait…What’s that? He didn’t lead the game in ice time? Are you sure? Huh. Well that’s something new. Fairly close game, BU did have the edge overall, but really it was pretty close.
No thoughts, just vibes
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.
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