Hard hitting no problem for Michigan

It all started with a little spray of ice.

Lake Superior center Jeff Attard, charging hard while following the puck into the glove of Michigan goaltender Josh Blackburn, stopped a little short and abrupt, leaving a few shavings of the Yost Ice Arena surface on Blackburn's jersey and in his face.

Bad move.

Just as Attard stopped his momentum, it started up again. But instead of skating to the faceoff circle, Attard found himself plunging to the ground, a victim of Michigan defenseman Bubba Berenzweig's rage.

WARREN ZINN/Daily The Wolverines were able to dish out as many hits as they took yesterday. The Lakers used a physical strategy to try and bully Michigan.

Berenzweig, upset about the near-collision with Blackburn, grabbed Attard by the head and threw him to the ice. Both players were penalized, but in Berenzweig's mind, Attard got off easy.

"It was a pretty dumb thing to do," Berenzweig said of Attard's near-miss. "He's pretty lucky that I didn't rip his head off because I was pretty pissed off."

The scrum at the end of the second period summed up the flow of yesterday's 2-0 Michigan victory over Lake Superior. The game saw two rivals going mano-a-mano, tit-for-tat, in a struggle to establish who was the bigger, badder team.

If Joe Louis was alive, he would probably be proud of last night's action.

Although yesterday's action still falls in the category of hockey - the players were still using ice skates and sticks - the gloves might as well have been of the boxing variety. Michigan coach Red Berenson seemed to concur with the boxing symbolism, describing the game in Al Bernstein-like terms.

"We aren't a team of angels either," Berenson said. "When you get in a back-alley brawl, you have to fight like a back-alley fighter. I'd rather see the game played the way it should be played, but sometimes it gets out of hand."

While there may have been a little chippiness in yesterday's game, the most brutal casualty of the Laker-Wolverine war came on a legal hit.

During the third period, Lake Superior defenseman Blaine McCauley planted Michigan center Scott Matzka's head into the glass, causing Matzka to plunge to the ice.

A bloody Matzka lost consciousness and received stitches in the head. Still woozy, Matzka was escorted off the ice after lying on it for a few.

Despite the injuries and hits after the whistle - nine players received penalties for roughing after the whistle - Lake Superior coach Scott Borek thought the action was well within the rules. The hard checking was Lake Superior's strategy to bridge the talent gap between itself and the Wolverines.

"I think both teams played tough and played hard," Borek said. "We have to slow Michigan down, and I believe that playing physical has to be the way."

Berenson was well aware of the Lake Superior strategy, as he spent the week before the game talking about the Lakers' hard-hitting style. He said he expects many other teams to follow Lake Superior's lead as the season wears on.

"They are a tough, physical team," Berenson said. "You are going to see that every night in this league. We expect teams to come at us hard."

With this physical play likely to become the rule instead of an exception, Michigan's record may hinge on how they handle the roughness of their opponents. While Berenson was down about how many retaliation penalties the Wolverines received, Berenzweig was happy about how the Wolverines handled themselves.

"We had a couple retaliation penalties that we possibly could have held back on, but that's hard," Berenzweig said. "When our team is playing physical, penalties are going to come, but I didn't think they were all that bad."

10-12-98