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MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

Spartanforlife4 said:
(4) They've already dropped home games to AIC and Mercyhurst.
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:eek:
Sounds like some letdown goalie play.

Follow-up: if I interpret their stats correctly, it looks like their prime goalie (Jones) has started 12 games and his finished 9 of them. So that could be a bit telling.
 
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owslachief said:
That is interesting news. They're only graduating one. Kinda wondering if he's given to believe there's a forward leaving early.

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I think State can take one of these games this Holiday weekend, given the on-paper reasons: (1) PSU fattened themselves on some pre-Thanksgiving turkey (ASU), (2) potentially sparse student section, (3) MSU's on a bit of a roll and playing with confidence.
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Cole said they are short one forward this year as they chose to wait a year to fill the slot. Said they could take 3 to balance the class sizes.
 
owslachief said:
There will be nights like that. Doesn't help when we're rolling 3 lines and are a very important D-man down.
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I see that Osburn was out all weekend. I wonder how long they expect him to be out.

So close to surpassing last season's win total. Losing a lead late will always be disappointing but it 2 points on the night is a great bounce back.

I also saw our lineup consisted almost entirely of underclassmen. Only Sanford and Gatt were veterans.

And ho boy, it sounds like the team has their work cut out for them with Norte Dame coming to town. Would be pretty cool to bust that winning streak of theirs.
 
Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

Add Daniel Russell in 3 or 4 years. A sniper from Fox U16. Has almost a goal a game.
 
Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

wsummers said:
Add Daniel Russell in 3 or 4 years. A sniper from Fox U16. Has almost a goal a game.
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Nice commit.

Looks like he's a teammate of blueliner and fellow 2020-21 commit Michael Feenstra, and leads his team with 18 points in 12 games.
 
Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

Two loses, but lots of encouraging signs. This is a team that is getting better. The first period on Friday was domination of ND, something I never expected.
 
wsummers said:
Two loses, but lots of encouraging signs. This is a team that is getting better. The first period on Friday was domination of ND, something I never expected.
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Tough weekend. Friday, I thought MSU looked the better team 2 out of 3 periods and we perhaps deserved a win. Last night, ND showed their record. Team defense was suffocating and they were unflappable in every phase of the game.

We're learning that despite Cole squeezing more juice out of this team than we expected he would, the B1G is a hell of a conference this year and tough lessons surely still lay ahead.

We could use a bye week. Milan has been out. Apap and Kaner left last night's game and never returned. Apap fell awkwardly along the boards and Kamer took a shot to the mid-section.
 
Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

Pirateasaur said:
Tough weekend. Friday, I thought MSU looked the better team 2 out of 3 periods and we perhaps deserved a win. Last night, ND showed their record. Team defense was suffocating and they were unflappable in every phase of the game.

We're learning that despite Cole squeezing more juice out of this team than we expected he would, the B1G is a hell of a conference this year and tough lessons surely still lay ahead.

We could use a bye week. Milan has been out. Apap and Kaner left last night's game and never returned. Apap fell awkwardly along the boards and Kamer took a shot to the mid-section.
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So much stacked against MSU coming in. As I approached game time I'd hoped that an early Spartan goal against Morris would flap that unflappable goalie. So task #1 one was accomplished. Unfortunately, he took MSU's best shots (and there were chances aplenty), and just grew with the game.

There's obstacle #1 and a big one.

The other of course is this is a beat up squad right now. If you thought this team was young, it was REALLY young come Friday. Of course, the only senior forward was a no-show - I gather this continues to be a coaches decision; Osburn (junior) was still out, and Milan (junior) was as well. So there's one senior d-man, one junior forward, and the rest.

I don't use this as an excuse for coming away empty this weekend ... we've seen how that class has carried the team so far this year. But with youth comes a little bit of frustration resulting from being stymied time after time, and that frustration revealed itself a bit Saturday. The usual crispness we've seen to date was gone. Some things that we saw last year crept into the Spartans' game Saturday. There wasn't the confidence we have seen. Granted, if you have been following the last couple months you know Notre Dame was capable of lot more and came out rocking the forecheck right out of the gate Saturday, but the first minute and a half was probably the worst MSU's looked this season. I give our boys credit for fighting through it the rest of the game, but they were always chasing, not controlling.

They get no rest this coming weekend, UM is big and fast and skilled, though hopefully, MSU's usual emotion and adrenaline will be a factor and the other squad will make some youthful mistakes. I should mention MSU has a better goalie :).
 
Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

Saturday was frustrating because while ND controlled play, we held in there and had a couple blown chances, especially on 2 on 1's. We just didn't come out to play for the first 90 seconds and it bit us.

Looks like Morris has some competition for the Richter Award, and certainly has a strong defense in front of him to help, but darn if it didn't feel anything but hopeless at times when we were actually able to get the offense set up. The Irish may already have the conference title locked up. Up 9 points, and that's on two teams with two more games played. The next best team with 8 games played is 11 points back.

Time for a couple winnable games this weekend and a chance to get out of the cellar.
 
Re: MSU Spartan Hockey - Episode VII - A New Hope

I see a split this week-end against the West Ypsi, Community College. And I think, MSU has a good shot at GLI. This past week-end was a bit disappointing, but I expected a ND sweep by a lot more goals then what it ended being. Heck of a lot better then last year.
 
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