Michigan
Hockey roundup: Michigan coach Brandon Naurato named to U.S. national team
Detroit Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman answered questions in his season-ending news conference at LCA.
Steve Yzerman answered questions during an end-of-season news conference: ‘We need to improve’
University of Michigan coach Brandon Naurato was named an assistant coach for the U.S. men’s national team, which will compete at the IIHF world championship from May 15-31 in Zurich and Fribourg, Switzerland.
Naurato has led the Wolverines to three Frozen Four appearances in his first four seasons as head coach. He has also guided Michigan to two Big Ten Tournament titles and has 98 career wins, the most by any coach in program history through four seasons.
Michigan’s power play has ranked in the top 10 nationally in each of the past four seasons under Naurato, including No. 1 finishes in 2024-25 (31.9 percent) and 2023-24 (33.6 percent).
The Wolverines have also boasted one of the nation’s top offenses, finishing in the top three in three of the last four seasons: first in 2025-26 (4.53 goals per game), second in 2022-23 (4.17) and third in 2023-24 (4.12).
Naurato is the third former Wolverine to coach at the world championship, joining Red Berenson, who was an assistant coach for Team Canada in 1982 and Vic Heyliger, who was head coach of West Germany in 1962 and 1963 before becoming head coach of Team USA in 1966.
Senators on brink of elimination
Logan Stankoven scored for the third straight game and the visiting Carolina Hurricanes put the Ottawa Senators on the brink of elimination with a 2-1 win in Game 3 of an Eastern Conference first-round playoff series on Thursday.
Carolina leads the best-of-seven series 3-0, and Game 4 is set for Saturday afternoon.
Only four teams in NHL history have come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series. The last team to do it was the Los Angeles Kings against the San Jose Sharks in 2014.
Jackson Blake also scored for the Hurricanes. Taylor Hall had two assists, and Frederik Andersen made 21 saves.
Blake said of Hall, “Yeah, he’s one of the guys driving the bus right now. A huge piece for our group. For me and ‘Stanks’ to play with a guy like that who’s been around for a while and has had so much success in this league, it’s great to have him there.”
Drake Batherson scored his second goal of the series for the Senators, who have yet to have the lead at any point through three games. Linus Ullmark made 25 saves in the loss.
Carolina went 0-for-4 on the power play. Ottawa was 0-for-5 and is 0-for-12 for the series.
“Power play cost us the game,” Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk said. “… It was pretty frustrating, but we’ve got to find a way. We’ve never quit all season. Just got to step up to the occasion.”
Stankoven opened the scoring, giving the Hurricanes a 1-0 lead at 5:13 of the first period. Hall got his own rebound after a shot on the rush, circled behind the net and then passed across to Stankoven, who scored on a wrist shot from the left circle.
Brady Tkachuk got in alone against Andersen early in the second period, but his backhand attempt was stopped.
The Senators had a 5-on-3 power play for 1:28 midway through the second period but did not convert.
Ottawa defenseman Jake Sanderson left the game at 10:07 of the second period with an apparent injury after taking a shot off his left hand. He had earlier taken a hit to the head from Hall.
Senators coach Travis Green said, “It’s pretty obvious why he left the game. I just don’t understand how there’s not a five-minute major called on a hit to the head. It’s a blatant hit to the head, the kind of hit you don’t want to see. It’s ridiculous there wasn’t a review,”
Batherson tied it 1-1 at 16:06 when he received Nick Cousins’ pass in the slot, went to his backhand and lifted it in over Andersen’s pad.
Blake put the Hurricanes back on top 2-1 at 17:29. K’Andre Miller received a pass at the point, skated down to the top of the left circle and passed down across to Blake, who scored past the diving Ullmark from the far post.
“They scored one, the building erupted a little bit there and then just to get that one quick, answer right away, I think that was really big for us as a group,” Blake said. “We had so many (penalty) kills tonight that were really big on the momentum side, and that goal was definitely one of them, too.”
Detroit Red Wings received six A’s in The Detroit News’ final grades for the 2025-2026 season.
Grades and key takeaways for Finnie, Gibson, Seider, Larkin, Raymond and DeBrincat after the Wings’ late collapse.
Michigan added a commitment from 6-foot-10, 245-pound LSU big man Jalen Reed today.
Reed suffered season-ending injuries in back-to-back seasons at LSU, playing 6 games in 2025-26 before an Achilles injury in November and eight games in 2024-25 before an ACL injury.
He is a former top-100 prospect as a recruit and started for LSU in 2023-24, averaging 7.9 points and 4.1 rebounds per game.
Authorities are asking for the public’s assistance to find a missing Oakland County teen who is considered endangered.
Adrianna Smith, 15, was last seen in the 3500 block of South Fenton Road, just south of the city of Holly in northwest Oakland County, according to Michigan State Police.
She is believed to have left her home in a 2002 Jeep Liberty with an adult male, possibly a man named Derek Girtman, MSP said.
Smith is described as having blonde hair and green eyes. She is about 5 feet, 7 inches tall and 160 pounds. She has one tattoo above her right knee and another on her left ankle.
Anyone with information about Adrianna’s whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the MSP Metro North Post at either (800) 495-4677 or (989) 370-8926.
The supreme court on Wednesday sided with Michigan in ruling that the state’s lawsuit seeking to shut down a section of an ageing pipeline beneath a Great Lakes channel will stay in state court.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for a unanimous court that the Enbridge energy company waited too long to try to move the case to federal court.
The case is part of a messy legal dispute about a pipeline that has moved crude oil and natural gas liquids between Superior, Wisconsin, and Sarnia, Ontario, since 1953.
Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, sued in state court in June 2019 seeking to void the easement that allows Enbridge to operate a 4.5-mile (6.4km) section of pipeline under the straits of Mackinac, which link Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Nessel, a Democrat, won a restraining order shutting down the pipeline from Ingham county judge James Jamo in June 2020, although Enbridge was allowed to continue operations after meeting safety requirements.
Enbridge moved the lawsuit into federal court in 2021, arguing it affects US and Canadian trade. But a three-judge panel from the sixth US circuit court of appeals sent the case back to Jamo in June 2024, finding that the company missed a 30-day deadline to change jurisdictions.
The pipeline at issue is called Line 5. Concerns over the section beneath the straits rupturing and causing a catastrophic spill have been growing since 2017, when Enbridge engineers revealed they had known about gaps in the section’s protective coating since 2014. A boat anchor damaged the section in 2018, intensifying fears of a spill.
The Michigan department of natural resources under Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s governor, revoked the straits easement for Line 5 in 2020. Enbridge filed a separate federal lawsuit challenging the revocation.
Enbridge won a ruling from a federal judge blocking the move, but Whitmer, a Democrat, has appealed to the sixth US circuit court of appeals. In March, the supreme court rejected Whitmer’s appeal claiming that she couldn’t be sued in federal court.
It was unclear how the federal ruling blocking Whitmer’s revocation attempt would affect Nessel’s case in state court. The company said in a statement that the judge in the Whitmer case had already decided federal regulators, not the state, are responsible for Line 5 safety and they had found no issues that would warrant shutting it down.
Enbridge also is seeking permits to encase the section of pipeline beneath the straits in a protective tunnel. The Michigan public service commission granted the relevant permits in 2023, but a coalition of environmental groups and Michigan tribes has filed a lawsuit seeking to void state permits for the tunnel. The state supreme court is weighing that case.
Enbridge also needs approval from the US army corps of engineers and the Michigan department of environment, Great Lakes and energy.
The pipeline is at the center of a separate legal dispute in Wisconsin as well. A federal judge in Madison last summer gave Enbridge three years to shut down part of Line 5 that runs across the Bad River Band of Lake Superior’s reservation. The company has appealed against the shutdown order to the seventh US circuit court of appeals, but it started work in February to reroute the line around the reservation.
The Bad River Band and environmental groups have filed a state lawsuit seeking to halt the work, arguing regulators have underestimated the damage the reroute construction will cause. That case also is pending.
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