Big Ten Media Day: Is a young Wolverines squad ready to take Michigan back to the NCAA Tournament?

By @MichaelCaples –

DETROIT – If you take a scroll through the Wolverines’ 2014-15 roster, you’re not going to find many upperclassmen.

Seventeen players on Michigan’s list of players fall into the freshman or sophomore category – eight of those being true freshman just learning their way around Ann Arbor.

In coach Red Berenson’s opening remarks at today’s Big Ten Media Day at Joe Louis Arena, he acknowledged his youthful roster.

“You hear the coaches talk about young players coming in,” Berenson said. “We like our freshman class coming in. We’re really a freshman-sophomore dominated team by numbers, but we’ll talk about that later.”

Those eight freshmen are led by forwards Dylan Larkin (Waterford) and Dexter Dancs, along with 17-year-old Zach Werenski (Grosse Pointe) on the blue line. Werenski will be expected to contribute immediately for the portion of the Wolverines’ team Berenson said needs to improve the most.

“Well, if you looked at our season last year, we thought we were competitive offensively, but defensively we weren’t, and I think it starts there with our team,” the Wolverines’ bench boss said. “We have to be better defensively. We were below the middle of the pack on goals against, and that wasn’t just our goalies, that was our team, whether it’s your penalty killing or your back checking or your defensemen or whatever.

“But we have to be better defensively. But I think we have some young players that will be more productive this year, as well, and I hope that we’re not a one-line team. I hope we’re a team that has balance in scoring just like Minnesota was last year, and we’ll see where that goes. But I think guys like J.T. Compher will be ready to be a bigger role on the team, and Andrew Copp led our team in scoring last year, and he’s our captain going in along with Zach Hyman. I think Zach is going to have his best year this year. I really like the way our team is coming together off the ice as well as on the ice, but we haven’t played a game yet.”

Berenson also said that he’s feeling more comfortable with his goaltending situation, as both Zach Nagelvoort (Holland) and Steve Racine showed in the latter half of last season that they are capable of performing at the Big Ten level.

“Well, I like the improvement in both of our goalies,” Berenson said. “I think Steve Racine, two years ago, went on a 10-game winning streak at the end of the year and showed he could be better than he was the first half of his freshman year, and last year Nagelvoort came in when Racine got hurt and he picked up the slack. This year I feel like we’re going to be strong in that position, and I can’t tell you how many games either one will play, but I feel a lot more confident, and I think our team does, as well, in our goalkeeping. It shouldn’t be a question. You’re always having question marks going into the season, and that shouldn’t be one.”

Wednesday marked the start of a season full of Big Ten hockey activity at The Joe, as well. In their second year of operation, the new hockey conference will host their championship weekend in the heart of Hockeytown from March 19-21. Berenson said that he has liked what the new conference has meant for college hockey.

“You know, the one thing I’ve always said, and this is years ago, is I like to play like schools, and I think our fans do, too,” Berenson said. “I mean, they’d rather come to a game, and no offense to some of the nearby schools, but they’d much rather see us play a Big Ten school or an Ivy school, whether that’s just the attitude of our fans, our university, but they love those games, rather than play maybe some of the schools that we played more in the past. The fans love it. They’re the big benefactors, and our players. They go into Wisconsin every year now. That’s a good feeling. A Minnesota. This is serious college hockey, as good as it gets, and it’s where we’d like to be. I think that’s the main benefit.”