The Huskies come home after a big win against BU to host a series against St Thomas, that’s gotta be two wins right? Well, as we should all know by now, St Thomas is a team that doesn’t give up points easily. Lets get to it.
Friday, January 13th Michigan Tech 2 – St Thomas 0
This game was close on the scoreboard all night, felt close to me while watching it, and the xG graph shows the same story. I had a bad feeling about this game at the end of the first period; St Thomas has a knack for sticking around in games and getting a breakaway before turtling and hanging on for the win. The second period didn’t help me feel any better about how the game was going, but a slick move from Saretsky in the third period gave the huskies the lead and they were able to close it out behind yet another shutout from Blake Pietila
While Tech had a higher quantity of shot attempts on Friday night, the Tommies had the edge in terms of high danger scoring chances. Especially near the end of the second period they got a ton of chances from in close. Everyone make sure to do your civic duty this weekend and go to the polls. For the third straight year Blake Pietila has been nominated for the Hobey Baker and it’s tough to find an argument against voting for him if you ask me.
I didn’t check, but I feel reasonably confident in saying this was the first weekend that Brett Throne played both games and didn’t lead the Huskies in TOI in either of them. Lipe led the team on Friday, and Orr on Saturday. Worth noting when looking at this chart, the Y-Axis can be a bit deceiving as it goes from 20% to 90% because of the dynamic scaling on the axis. So the middle of the chart isn’t actually at 50%, its at 55%. Still not a great night in terms of xG% for most of the huskies, but the chart is a bit visually misleading in this case.
Saturday, January 14th Michigan Tech 2 – St Thomas 3
Well that sucks, not only did we lose but the stupid numbers say we played better on Saturday than we did on Friday so now I’m supposed to say positive stuff even though we lost to St Thomas. Uhhh well you see I ummmm…what’s that, fictional reader who is talking to me while I write this? I procrastinated writing this article so long that St Thomas beat Bowling Green? Well that’s neat. Maybe St Thomas is better than we all thought.
This was a rough one, losing any games at this point in the season is tough but it especially hurts when you looked like the better team overall. Tech wasn’t dominate by any means, but they did have more shots and more shots from high danger areas. Combined that with having Blake in net and that is a game we are used to seeing the Huskies win.
As I pointed out in the chart for this last game, Orr led the Huskies in TOI on Saturday and was very effective during those minutes. That is something that is great to see out of a freshman who wasn’t in the starting lineup at the beginning of the season. Overall, a much better night in the xG% department from the Huskies, it’s just unfortunate that they didn’t get a win to show for their efforts.
No thoughts, just vibes
Why is it whenever we lose to a team that we should beat its always the Tommies
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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