Michigan Hockey has spent the past year trying to become a different kind of team, and the results are showing in a third straight Frozen Four trip. Brandon Naurato’s group moved away from the old model of loading up on elite names and leaned instead on depth, chemistry and experience as it upset North Dakota and rival Michigan State to get back on the sport’s biggest stage.
That is a sharp turn for a program that, last March, missed the NCAA Tournament, lost ground on key top recruits from the OHL and watched more than half its roster turn over. The slide had been building for years, with wins falling each season since 2022, and it left Michigan searching for a way back before Naurato’s first full run could even begin.
The backdrop makes this latest run harder to miss. In 2022, Michigan reached the NCAA Tournament with four top-five NHL Draft picks on the roster — Owen Power, Matty Beniers, Luke Hughes and Kent Johnson — plus three additional first-round picks in Mackie Samoskevich, Brendan Brisson and Johnny Beecher. Thomas Bordeleau was the reigning Big Ten Freshman of the Year. On paper, it looked like a roster built to stay at the top. It did not.
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Michigan lost to Denver in the 2022 Frozen Four even though Denver had no first-round picks and only three players selected in the second round. The Wolverines returned to the Frozen Four in Naurato’s first season at the helm, but that year carried an interim label after the Mel Pearson fallout, and the team was led by a returning Luke Hughes and Samoskevich while Rutger McGroarty, Frankie Nazar and Adam Fantilli gave the lineup more firepower. Quinnipiac beat Michigan 5-2, scoring three goals in the third period to end that push.
After that season, Hughes and Samoskevich left for the NHL, and the roster began to thin again. Seamus Casey and Gavin Brindley hit their stride halfway through the following season, and Michigan was expected to roll past Quinnipiac after beating the Bobcats 7-4 in the NCAA Tournament the year before. Quinnipiac had three NHL Draft picks of its own, none selected higher than No. 177, but Michigan’s advantage did not hold. Even a demoralized matchup with Boston College followed the run to the Frozen Four.
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The shift now is deliberate. Michigan had been trying for more than a decade to assemble high-end talent on the roster, but the latest version is built to be harder to unmake. That does not erase the turbulence that came before, especially a 2022 team loaded with talent and still left without the title it was built to chase. What it does is give the program a chance to argue that the path back is not through another star collection, but through a roster that fits together well enough to survive the spring.
