MINNEAPOLIS — The No. 1 Michigan hockey team’s sweep over Minnesota shouldn’t feel like a big cause for celebration.
The Wolverines were the clear favorites going into the series. This is far from a vintage Golden Gophers team, who, with eight wins on the year, are on track to becoming the first Minnesota team since 1998-99 to win 15 or fewer games in a season. Still, Michigan had its moments where it looked to be playing down to the level of its opponents, needing overtime to close out the second game of the weekend.
But considering what happened last weekend, the sweep looks like cause for a deep sigh of relief.
In the second period of the Wolverines’ clash against Notre Dame on Jan. 10, what was prospectively a season of dreams turned into a nightmare. Fighting Irish forward Danny Nelson slammed into Michigan freshman goaltender Jack Ivankovic. Unable to put any weight on his leg, Ivankovic had to be helped off the ice by his teammates. Wolverines coach Brandon Naurato confirmed postgame that he would “be out for a long time.”
To say that Ivankovic’s loss was catastrophic would be an understatement. He has lived up to every bit of the billing that comes with being an NHL second-round pick and stalwart for Team Canada at the U-18 and U-20 levels, making Michigan’s net his own while only being a freshman. Both his .927 SV% and 1.92 average goals allowed ranked him among the conference’s and country’s best. He continued to show he could elevate his game for the big occasions against then-No. 2 Western Michigan and then-No. 3 Michigan State. And now, at least for the time being, he is gone.
This was a young Michigan team that had already vastly exceeded preseason expectations, ascending to the No. 1 rank thanks to a scintillating first half of the season. Michigan had an arsenal of attacking firepower, elite special teams and one of the best goaltenders in the country. But without that said netminder, things suddenly looked very grim. One could’ve assumed that without Ivankovic, the Wolverines wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the Spartans, or No. 2 Wisconsin or No. 8 Penn State, all of whom they will face again without him. This was going to be yet another year lost to the annals of history of a proud program, one that has watched 27 years and counting of talented teams slip by without a national championship.
And that can still happen — the future is always in motion, and none of those series have been played yet. But this past weekend could be reason for the Wolverines and their faithful to believe that it won’t.
Into Ivankovic’s young but already big shoes stepped freshman goaltender Stephen Peck. Peck is a talented goaltender in his own right, having spent last season with the USHL champions Muskegon Lumberjacks, but he didn’t have quite the pedigree of Ivankovic. Unexpectedly thrust into the net against Notre Dame, Peck was far from perfect — allowing three goals, with a save percentage of .857 — but he did enough to hold on and secure a victory.
This weekend, against the Gophers — his first series as a starter — Peck showed enough to suggest that he could be a steady pair of hands down the long road ahead.
“Tough atmosphere for Pecker, but he was confident,” senior forward T.J. Hughes said. “I thought he played unreal. He was the backbone of the weekend for us, and credit to him, fought through it, got the nod to go with Jack going down, and he did unbelievable. So I’m so happy for him.”
Peck kept his save percentage above .900 both nights. He allowed three goals and made 43 saves across the series. He came up with crucial plays when he needed to, notably at the points in the game on both nights where Minnesota had leveled the score and were knocking on the Wolverines’ door with shot after shot. While he wasn’t perfect — in particular, he struggled on the penalty kill, allowing two goals off Gophers power plays — he was certainly strong enough to help win both games.
His presence also meant that Michigan doesn’t need to totally rethink its team-wide approach just yet. The Wolverines, up until this point, have relied on an aggressive forecheck to generate relentless offensive pressure because they knew that Ivankovic would be there to come up big if anything goes wrong in transition. And Michigan very much played the same style of hockey this weekend, racking up 100 shots across the two games. Thanks to Peck’s performance, the Wolverines could stick to the same script they drew from with Ivankovic.
“He’s a good hockey player, and that’s why depth is so important,” Naurato said. “It’s just next man up, and he’s been doing great.”
Of course, this can all be caveated pretty easily. There’s no sugarcoating the fact that this is not the usual caliber one can expect from a Minnesota team, and Michigan needed overtime to beat it tonight. And while the Wolverines have consistently generated offensive pressure this season, it seems a bit unlikely that they’re going to average 50 shots every game.
But shots are shots, no matter who they’re coming from. At the end of the day, Peck did a great job at keeping the puck out of the net. Michigan may not generate pressure at quite the same rate in every game going forward, but it at least has a template that it knows it can rely on — if the Wolverines can get their offense the puck as much as possible, they just need to trust Peck to clean up whatever’s left over. And as poor as this iteration of Minnesota is, this is still a place where the Wolverines haven’t come away with a sweep since 2018. The Gophers are among the most storied brands in hockey, and beating them will always at least carry symbolic weight — for a team that’s just lost one of its cornerstones, it could be a confidence booster.
And there’s still a lot of hockey to be played. It’s possible that Peck won’t be this consistent every weekend going forward, or Michigan’s high offensive production will be unsustainable and that Ivankovic’s loss will prove to be what derails a promising season.
But for the time being, there’s a sample size to suggest that, just maybe, there’s still a reason to hope for the Wolverines. A reason to believe. A reason to dream.
