jack becker

As close as the series itself [James Coller]

Friday, November 23, 2018

#14 Michigan 1, Wisconsin 1 (2OT, W)

1st period

No scoring

2nd period

Messner goal

UM 0 UW 1 EV 3:01 Assists: Zirbel

Hughes pinches and blows a tire, which allows Zirbel to pick up the loose puck. He has Messner streaking ahead to his left, which is the easy play here. Michigan's in a fairly good situation themselves, though, as they're able to get two defenders back; Lockwood is pictured in the bottom right corner of the frame, and Cecconi got even deeper after seeing his defense partner fall.

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Cecconi plays off, I'm guessing as a way of keeping himself in position to rotate to the weakside winger if Messner passes to his left. Instead, Messner throws a shot on net. Lavigne stops it, and though he allows a rebound it's at least in the best possible position: to the side, almost on the red line.

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Lockwood turns and glides and watches Messner get deeper than him while Cecconi lets Messner cross his face to get to the position below, so this is a defensive miscue by both of the defenders. I put this more on the winger than the defenseman, though, because the defenseman's typically going to take the front of the net to cut off a backdoor feed, which Cecconi does here. Messner gets his own rebound and flips it high on a shot Lavigne shouldn't have had to face to begin with.

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[The guys who could key a step forward for the offense get on the board after THE JUMP]

Quinn Hughes edges
[James Coller]

The red carpet entrance and the spotlight and the microphone pack on his back and the reporters in front of him at the interview table and the handshakes, the endless stream of handshakes, were a month behind Quinn Hughes. The tension of the NHL Draft, with its imposing stage, megascreens, and work area for teams on the covered floor of the rink an amalgamation of a concert and an unwieldy TED talk, ended for Hughes soon after it began, with the Vancouver Canucks selecting him seventh overall. And so, in the midst of Hughes’ Infinite Hockey Summer, the most extraordinary thing about a typical summer day spent at his family’s home in the typical Detroit suburb of Plymouth was its ordinariness. At least, that’s how it started.

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The best thing about the baseball field in the Hughes’ neighborhood was that it was only a baseball field for part of the year. The rest of the time it was an outdoor rink, one fashioned the crudest way possible: flood it, freeze it, use it while it lasts. Quinn and his brothers—Jack, currently on the US National Team Development Program roster and likely to go first overall in next year’s draft, and Luke, currently playing for the renowned Little Caesars program and a Michigan commit— used to walk to the rink, shovel, and play until they couldn’t feel their feet. Frozen feet didn’t deter them, though; the only thing that could stop them from playing was when their mother, Ellen, came down to the rink to force them home to warm up.

Flooded baseball fields were soon passed over in favor of a set of flooded tennis courts in a park they found in Toronto’s Etobicoke neighborhood. The family had bounced around due to Quinn’s father’s coaching career; Jim spent two seasons as an assistant for the IHL’s Orlando Solar Bears; two years as an assistant for the NHL’s Boston Bruins; then three seasons, the last as head coach, with the AHL’s Manchester Monarchs before moving to Toronto for a spot as an assistant coach of the AHL’s Toronto Marlies (2006-2009) and then as the Director of Player Development for the Toronto Maple Leafs (2009-2015). The extended stay in Toronto gave them time to find hidden gems like Wedgewood Park’s tennis courts, which didn’t have boards (lining the rink with shoes worked as a substitute) but did have pipes and thus higher quality ice.

Quinn and his brothers spent every possible moment on the outdoor rink at Wedgewood. Ellen would bring hot chocolate and pizza down for the boys, whose biggest disappointment in life, as it was at the baseball diamond, was when they had to leave the ice. Things were slightly different at Wedgewood, though, as there were two things beyond parents that could force them off the rink: the lights getting shut off (this year it’s at 10 PM, but Ellen says it was usually around midnight when the boys were playing) or the makeshift Zamboni—a John Deere tractor when not working its seasonal job— showing up to resurface the ice. “Like at 2 o’clock they’d come and you’d get off for like five minutes,” Hughes says. “It sucked. It was brutal, because then you got cold again.”

The rink was built across three tennis courts, which left plenty of room for Hughes to take on the neighborhood. “It’d be like me and my brothers and two or three other guys against 25, 30 kids and it’d be really fun,” he says. He also made sure there was quality competition to compete against. “They would have a Friday night game, like a 7 o’clock game, and Quinn would say ‘Can I fit as many kids as I can in the car?’” Ellen remembers. “Whoever was willing to go, because not all of them were willing to go, and after their game we’d drop them off at the outdoor rink until the lights got shut off.”

[After THE JUMP: How a kid from Toronto with deep ties to Boston ended up in Ann Arbor, and why he stayed]

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[Bill Rapai]

Friday, February 9, 2018

Michigan State 1, #19 Michigan 1 (T, SO W)

1st period

No scoring

 

2nd period

HUGHES GOAL

MSU 0 UM 1 EV 5:06 Assists: Porikos & N. Pastujov

Nick Pastujov does a really nice job getting to the puck just before it goes out of the zone. He smacks the puck backwards in an effort to get it deep.

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Pastujov’s hack ends up being a perfect pass, as the puck lands perfectly on Quinn Hughes’ blade.

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Hughes turns on the puck and, upon seeing Ghafari’s stick in his shooting lane, pulls it back and decides to dangle.

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Hughes pulls the puck back and shows one of the more intuitive responses I’ve see in the last few seasons. He has a defender in front of him and feels the pressure of the one encroaching from behind, so he counters the pressure by sliding the puck on a diagonal behind himself.

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Hughes is able to spin on his right foot and get the back of his blade on the puck with just barely enough of an upward flick to lift the puck over Lethemon’s extended stick.

Hughes pulls off a spin in a phone booth with unreal puck skills, and Lethemon does a good job to even get a stick near the shot.

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[After THE JUMP: Quinn Hughes is now illegal in four states]