Sparty has two quality lines that can move the puck well, and appear to be gelling enough to find plenty of scoring chances (a ton against UWO). How those translate into goals is determined by how well they can finish. Last season this team threw plenty of pucks toward the net - but it looks like we'll get off more quality shots this season.
IMO we have two genuine goal scorers (Leveille and Grant), a dangerous play-making forward (Gazley) a first-rate-skating and play-making defeseman (Krug), a pair of hard-shooting defensemen (Josepher and Shelgren) and, so far, not a bad-looking power play. I'm worried about defensive lapses and the consistency of our goaltending.
A couple problems seemed to plague MSU last Friday: Not showing a lot of smarts getting the puck up the ice - it seemed we wanted to move the puck forward from our own end without the patience to set up properly ... like we wanted to light up the scoreboard without regard to how well UWO stepped into passing lanes in the neutral zone. Sometimes MSU got outworked, but more often than not it was carelessness. Also, Palmisano probably saw a couple of those goals in his sleep - soft goals he would want back.
But, as you say, it represented our first competition of the season (UWO had 3 or 4 under their belts), and it seemed Comley was reaching to the end of his 25-man bench to find the right 3rd & 4th line combos to provide some added punch.
It was hard to see much improvement from our sophomores - that's a disappointment so far - although Krug seems (if it's possible) to be better. Eliminate the mistakes and I think this team is in good shape.
I didn't see Maine over the weekend, but it definitely sounds like MSU will have all it can handle and will need to work hard to get 2 points.
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