The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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goals per game. They finished 51st (3.25 goals allowed per game) in scoring defense even with Racine's stellar play late in the season. However, Michigan's blue liners developed an identity in February and March, and five of eight defensemen are expected back. Trouba's departure, and Merrill's as well, will place the onus on rising senior Kevin Clare to play his best hockey after three roller-coaster campaigns, while juniors-to-be Brennan Serville, Michael Szuma and Mike Chiasson seemed to be putting the pieces together when the season ended and need to keep progressing. "When you lose two of your top three defensemen, you don't replace those players with freshmen," Berenson said. "Next year's question will be: who are our top four defensemen going to be? Can the defense be as good as we need it to be? "Our forwards should be good, and we have depth there. We have three freshman defensemen coming in and how ready they are will be key to our team." Offensively, junior-to-be Alex Guptill was a source of angst much of the year, even being left at home for a weekend because of a poor work ethic, but he flourished late, scoring five playoff goals in finishing as the Wolverines' top goal scorer (16 markers) for the second straight year. Classmate Phil Di Giuseppe is equally talented and has shown flashes of brilliance, but netted just nine goals (down from 11 his rookie year) and must, like Guptill, become less of an enigma. There is good news throughout the rest of the offensive lineup, however. Nieves has the potential to be a dominant centerman, accumulating 29 points as a rookie, while DeBlois had a career-high 11 goals and Copp came out of nowhere to center Michigan's No. 1 line in the postseason; he had 11 markers and 10 assists on the year. U-M also welcomes a rookie class high on skill and character. "I'm just so excited for the program," Moffie said. "Obviously, it's a sour taste being the class that didn't get us to the tournament, but … it's Michigan, and the future is so bright for this program." Championship Contenders Once Again Berenson confirmed he will return for at least one more season — he is signed through 2016, but admitted he contemplated retirement during the tumultuous parts of the Wolverines' campaign, feeling maybe he was a deterrent to success — and he knows that out of this year's loss next year's team could possess the makeup to contend for titles. "We're going to be in a tough conference and I don't know if we'll have the team that can say we expect to be in first place ahead of Minnesota, but I wouldn't be surprised," he said. "I think some of our incoming players will be impact players. Some of it might depend on our goalkeeping, but I'm excited about next year's team. "I'm excited about what our team did in the last two months of the season, and that we made some prog-