Two different hockey teams showed up this weekend to play Michigan – one tentative, the other aggressive – both in orange and blue.

The Illini Hockey Club finished the weekend with a split, losing the first game in dramatic fashion 4-3, and slaughtering Michigan 14-1 Saturday night.

The opening game started badly for the Illini and never got any better. Michigan drew first blood on a goal between the legs of sophomore goaltender Mike DeGeorge, ending his streak at 102 minutes.

“I felt like I was fighting the puck all day,” DeGeorge said. “I just couldn’t pull through for the team when they needed me.”

Later in the period, junior forward Steve Krates tied the game for the Illini, and early in the second, Illinois got one more to take the lead.

But Illinois never pulled away.

The Illini never allowed Michigan to sustain any kind of offense, but they did allow Michigan to out-muscle them to loose pucks in front.

In the third period, Michigan capitalized on the lackadaisical Illini and scored twice to take the lead.

“It’s tough when you control the game like we did, and they come down and take one shot and score,” Illinois head coach Chad Cassel said. “We have to battle through that and pick Mike (DeGeorge) up because everybody has off nights.”

The Illini caught a break when a Wolverine player intentionally knocked the net off its moorings, leading to a penalty shot.

“I thought it was a power play, so I went out there, but I was the only guy on the ice,” said junior forward Mike Roesch. “I’m looking around saying, ‘I guess I am taking a penalty shot now.’ It was kind of a surprise.”

Roesch took the puck from center ice and scored top shelf to tie the game once again.

The momentum looked to be back in Illinois’ corner, but everything fell apart with 30 seconds left in the game.

DeGeorge tried desperately to tie up the puck, but he got no help from the defense, and the Wolverines punched in a rebound to win the game.

“Friday night we were just terrible defensively, but it wasn’t just our defensemen – our forwards weren’t helping out. We just weren’t concentrating,” Cassel said.

The Illini were 0-for-5 on power plays, which they controlled the entire time. They also fired 41 shots at the Wolverine goaltender with just three goals to show for it.

“We weren’t really shooting well because we just thought it was going to happen for us,” Roesch said. “We came out thinking that because we killed them last year, we were going to beat them handily this year, and I don’t think we had the urgency to bury the puck on every shot.”

Saturday night it became apparent Michigan awoke a sleeping giant, and there was no mercy.

Within the first nine minutes, Illinois scored four times and never looked back.

The passing was crisp, the Illini were delivering punishing hits to anything in maize and it was 9-0 before Michigan was able to score.

Roesch said the point of Saturday’s game was to make a statement and to prove the team can score goals when it wants to.

“We didn’t play well Friday night, so before the game we talked about going hard for 60 minutes, and that’s what we did,” Cassel said.