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Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

owslachief said:
Sieve Chicken maybe in attendance Friday night, did someone step forward to carry on that good fight?

Upon further review ...
12/1: I reckon it's important to score more than 3 goals in a 4-game span, too. Reminds me of Fall '08.
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Sieve Chicken was there, but he wasn't suspended by anything. The students are looking for a used hockey stick to hang him by.

And yes, the lack of scoring was frustrating, but OSU and Miami are both extremely solid defensively, and Hjelle had an excellent weekend for OSU. That said, with Notre Dame and Ferris State coming up, MSU's not going to see softer defense anytime soon.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

owslachief said:
For the record, I'm still optimistic. ;)
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So am I, but I worry that we are digging too much of a hole here with Notre Dame coming up. I am not overly optimistic we will win that series. I was never expecting to compete for the CCHA title this year, but I'd like to see us be somewhere in the general vicinity of it in December here.

It was a tough weekend. OSU played very well and didn't make many mistakes, also their Goaltender was also fantastic. Our team played hard and was right there all weekend. We are just not getting the breaks and it feels like this team cannot win a game unless they completely take it. There will be many, many close games with this team and right now we aren't getting that extra bounce.

This team has to find a way to score goals, though. The last 2 weeks make us appear to be just like the football team. It's pretty absurd to play four straight games allowing no more than 2 goals and to go 0-3-1.
 
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Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Well, we're in a hole now, but not exactly one that we didn't see potentially coming.

Hung in there tough on friday adn then Saturday, played very well at times and got blown up. That's just how things are going for us these days.

I have a feeling that we won't be seeing Yanakeff until the U18 team comes in in a month and a half or so. I don't know if he's in a total rut or is having bad luck and can't do anything about these goals or what, but Hildebrand, whether we have played well or not, has kept us in every single game.

Reimer got dinged on friday as well but it apparently isn't serious. I don't think he will be playing this weekend as Scott Moore said "a couple weeks."

Also, there has been a few games where we have been short a forward and Anastos has chosen to skate 3 forward lines and 2 additional forwards. Isn't Connor Wood still on this team? A freshman forward? Why isn't he dressing?
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Had to go 4 pages back but I found it!

Still got those season tickets.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Hildebrand once again played his tail off and the team couldn't come through. It's like the football team all over again; great defense with a flat out awful offense.

I don't know what was up with that first period. Incredibly physical to start but turned incredibly dirty soon after, and made the second and third periods seem polite in comparison.

Is there a particular reason our guys are scared to shoot on the power play? Watching Tech during the GLI, if they didn't score on the PP they were at least getting great chances because they would put it on net and hope for a screen or a rebound. Last night it looked incredibly obvious these guys are afraid to shoot without the perfect opportunity to do so because they believe they'll lose the puck and not have another chance to set up in the zone. I suppose that is a good reason though since on occasion it's almost a blessing to be able to set up the power play. A prime of example of that was last night when we had the puck in their zone for about 15 seconds on a full 2 minute PP.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Spartanforlife4 said:
Hildebrand once again played his tail off and the team couldn't come through. It's like the football team all over again; great defense with a flat out awful offense.

I don't know what was up with that first period. Incredibly physical to start but turned incredibly dirty soon after, and made the second and third periods seem polite in comparison.

Is there a particular reason our guys are scared to shoot on the power play? Watching Tech during the GLI, if they didn't score on the PP they were at least getting great chances because they would put it on net and hope for a screen or a rebound. Last night it looked incredibly obvious these guys are afraid to shoot without the perfect opportunity to do so because they believe they'll lose the puck and not have another chance to set up in the zone. I suppose that is a good reason though since on occasion it's almost a blessing to be able to set up the power play. A prime of example of that was last night when we had the puck in their zone for about 15 seconds on a full 2 minute PP.
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I actually thought the team played pretty well last night. The game was mostly evenly played and ND is a really, really good team.

I can't figure out why this team can't score. We might score less than that awful 2008 team which is wild since comparing the experience of actually watching the 2 teams shift by shift, this year's team is far better. It is a complete mystery why these guys can do everything well except score a **** goal.

Nevertheless, I think if we play as solid as we did last night, we will get rewarded.

As for the PP, we had a couple good ones and a terrible one. ND was getting in the shooting lanes and the players will not shoot if they think it is going to be blocked. I hate it when you have fans screaming at the players to shoot the puck, so they finally do and it gets blocked which is inevitably followed by those fans getting all ****ed.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

As a Buckeye fan you guys still scare me to death if they meet in a playoff series. All it takes is a hot goalie and a couple of Bounces to win a playoff series. Hildebrand played his tale off in that series in East Lansing and i for one would not want to meet him in a series.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Hey! We got more than zero goals and won! Funny how that works. Being in the student section I didn't really have a good look at the two (three) goals in the second period. I have no idea why they called off the first 5-on-3 goal, but judging by the way Summerhays reacted I can only assume goalie interference. That whole play was odd though as the ref signaled for a goal a good two or three seconds before the goal light went on. I was impressed with the team tonight with the exception of the middle of the third when they couldn't stay out of the box. Hopefully this springs some momentum for Ferris next weekend.

Hildebrand has given up three or more goals twice this season. If this team finds a way to score three times, even just twice on most nights, it's a victory. The problem is that can be a reach for this team sometimes.
 
Spartanforlife4 said:
Hey! We got more than zero goals and won! Funny how that works. Being in the student section I didn't really have a good look at the two (three) goals in the second period. I have no idea why they called off the first 5-on-3 goal, but judging by the way Summerhays reacted I can only assume goalie interference. That whole play was odd though as the ref signaled for a goal a good two or three seconds before the goal light went on. I was impressed with the team tonight with the exception of the middle of the third when they couldn't stay out of the box. Hopefully this springs some momentum for Ferris next weekend.

Hildebrand has given up three or more goals twice this season. If this team finds a way to score three times, even just twice on most nights, it's a victory. The problem is that can be a reach for this team sometimes.
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In response to the waived off goal: the ref signaled that we scored before the puck actually went in the net. When he signals, I guess that is the same as blowing the whistle and therefore the play is dead. So, when the puck actually crossed the line, it can't count as a goal due to ref error. There wasn't any goaltender interference but I thoroughly enjoyed watching Summerhays shove the net at the ref.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Boy, nothing like a good win to get you feeling like maybe the team can go on a sweet run here. Obviously, qualifying for the NCAA tournament is out of the question barring winning the CCHA playoffs but I would love to see us string multiple wins together and move up in the standings. I believe we can definitely do it as we have quite a few home games remaining. We just need to find the back of the net more. How? I have no idea. I thought we played better on friday and we got shut out. I don't doubt this team's ability to skate and compete well but I just hope that whatever we had offensively last night sticks around. If it does, that combined with Hildebrand's unflappably consistent goaltending, can win us some games.

Also, this season feels strange to me. You'd think i'd be pulling my hair out over a 6-13 record but I never have. The most concerned I ever really was was after the first game against Michigan. Then the next night we won 7-2... Maybe it's because we knew that this season was going to involve some rebuilding and I honestly think we are better than our record. Maybe feeling the team is better than the stats will show and already not having any sort of big expectations makes this easy. I honestly believe that we will have a big rebound next year. I am excited about the incoming freshman and as long as guys like Berry, Deblouw Darnell etc.. don't jet in the offseason for whatever reason, then I think we will be a very strong team.
 
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Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

klbaum1077 said:
As a Buckeye fan you guys still scare me to death if they meet in a playoff series. All it takes is a hot goalie and a couple of Bounces to win a playoff series. Hildebrand played his tale off in that series in East Lansing and i for one would not want to meet him in a series.
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He seems pretty unstoppable most nights. However, we can say the same thing about OSU's Jelly.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

I've got to say that's as solid a weekend as I've seen MSU play this season, despite the mixed results. They played defensively as well as they could for nearly six periods. They were rewarded on Saturday for the work they did on Friday, but it could very well have been a 6-5 game on Saturday were it not for some incredible goaltending on both ends. Berry could have easily tallied two of his own were it not for some outright robbery by Summerhays.

Could this be that magic springboard they needed? Probably need to see what happens on Friday to know that for sure. State needs to come right back against a team they looked just pathetic against the previous weekend.
 
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Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

As of today we have the second best goalie in the conference statistically, behind Hjelle. Record wise, however, Hildebrand is the second worst goalie in the conference. Anyone want to guess the worst?


Yanakeff. Hildebrand has double the games played, along with double the wins, double the ties, and 1 away from double the losses. This is all with less than half the GAA (3.88 to 1.82) and an 8% better save percentage. So really, this offense is so atrocious that even if Yanakeff, the worst goalie in the conference in GAA, SV% and wins, was playing we would have the same record (not true probably when compared to our goals scored, but record wise it is true). I find that unbelievable, we can have a guy giving up 2 less goals per game and still can't get any more wins.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

I don't know what's going to happen this week. U-18 team comes in Tuesday, they've beaten UM and PSU among other teams, and even tied Minnesota.

Then there's Penn State. Prior to the season I thought PSU might go winless against D1 competition but they are certainly doing much better than I expected. We can't score, and they're bi-polar. They scare me. I know they aren't as bad as everyone thought they would but it would still be embarrassing to lose or even tie them in Munn during their first season.

We've lost 1-0 three times this year. We've scored more than two goals 7 times this year. What's our record when scoring three or more? 6-0-1. Unfortunately I don't know if we can score more than three, even against PSU. Who knows though, except for Michigan the entire CCHA is ranked in the top half of the nation for defense, so maybe an anemic offense coupled with a good defensive league is what's bringing us these awful results. I'm still keeping hope that Hildebrand can carry this team to an auto-bid, but it gets harder and harder when the offense just can't do anything.
 
Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

I thought I'd post this here for what might be a point of interest to you Spartan fans and alums:

While I was in a doctor's office this past week in Holland, Michigan, an advertisement of sorts popped up on the big screen TV that they have hanging in the lobby which usually tells you about all the great things their network of practices offers you. The advertisement was for a book entitled: Arrogance and Scheming in the Big Ten: Michigan State's Quest for Membership and Michigan's Powerful Opposition written by one of the doctors in their practice, David J. Young, MD who is actually a Notre Dame grad. It has to do with the struggle that MSU had to endure to become a part of the Big Ten. I thought, arrogance and scheming in the Big Ten, that cannot be true. :rolleyes:

Anyway, some of you may be interested, so here's the Amazon link to the book: Arrogance_and_Scheming_in_the_Big_Ten

I have not read this book and am not a shill for or have any relation to Dr. Young. It looked like an interesting read for the Spartan Nation.
 
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Re: Spartan Hockey - Silver Linings edition

Gone for two years! What happened?
 
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