Michigan Tech wheeled downstate for a series versus Ferris State University, which is in fact not a state nor a wheel, but a hockey team. How will the boys fair in the wiggly bin? Only one way to find out, and that is obviously by looking at what the numbers say and not by having watched the actual games last weekend or checking out a box score.
Friday, January 20th Michigan Tech 1 – Ferris State 0
This game was stressful to watch in person, because it was giving HUGE “Tech deserved to win but got unlucky and ended up losing” vibes the entire time. But things went the way they were supposed to, at least in terms of Ferris not scoring a lucky goal against a very good goalie. Obviously it would have been nice to get an insurance goal or at least not miss an empty net goal. I don’t know about you, but I was having ‘nam flashbacks to the missed empty net against St Cloud in 2015. Thankfully the boys held on, and I don’t need to talk to my therapist about this game.
Looking just at the shots in this game, I have to imagine that this (along with a freshly mowed lawn, a driveway that has been shoveled for him, and an analogy that no one has thought of before but everyone somehow understands) is what Coach Shawhan dreams about. The Huskies ran the show on Friday in every conceivable way. They had more shots, better quality shots, and rarely allowed Ferris to get the puck let alone get a dangerous scoring chance. This was textbook domination from the Huskies, and the only surprising thing is that Tech only scored once.
Once again Brett, Thorne leads the game in ice time and its not really that close. Nearly every Tech player outperformed every Ferris player with only Schleppe cracking the 50% mark for FSU. You don’t expect to lose many games like this. I literally copy pasted (substituting names) the first three sentences of this paragraph from the series against Lake State and I bet you wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t point it out. But everything I said was true.
Saturday, January 21st Michigan Tech 3 – Ferris State 3 (Ferris wins in shootout)
Ferris came out on Saturday looking like a much better team. Honestly, knowing who was in net for both teams and looking at how the skaters played we should probably be happy to have come out of that game with a pairwise tie. The Bulldawgs had that dawg in em on Saturday, and had a slight edge over Tech most of the night.
Watch this gif, then go back and watch the gif from Friday, then watch this one again. Holy wah what a difference in terms of quality shots from Ferris. The Huskies are honestly pretty lucky to have come out of that game with a pairwise tie. Not how you want to follow up and excellent game on Friday night.
No thoughts, just vibes
idk raise the roof or something
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
