Rehash&Analysis: Offensive-charged Michigan State dumps Notre Dame, 5-2
East Lansing, Mich. – This Michigan State hockey team is becoming quite an offensive show. The Spartans lead the nation in goals scored, and on Friday night No. 7-ranked Michigan State peppered Notre Dame with 56 shots en route to a 5-2 victory over the No. 20-ranked Irish at sold out Munn Ice Arena.
Notre Dame is known for having a system which limits offensive chances and pucks on net. But Michigan State raced and scrambled through and around that reputation with five different Spartans scoring goals. Michigan State improved to 11-4-2 overall and 6-1-2 in the Big Ten.
Michigan State is 8-0-1 at home this season. A crowd of 6,555 watched this game as Notre Dame fell to 4-3-2 in the Big Ten and 8-7-2 overall.
The two teams will play again at 6 p.m. on Saturday (BTN+).
HOW IT WENT DOWN
Michigan State, wearing the Gruff Sparty logo on front of the sweater as the team’s alternate uniform, was playing for the first time since Nov. 26, coming off a bye weekend without a bit of rust.
“Coming out of break, you don’t know for sure what you’re going to get,” said Michigan State head coach Adam Nightingale. “I thought we had two good weeks of practice. Our expectation was that we would come out and play well and I thought it was a really tight hockey game.
“We were playing a really quality opponent. I mean the crowd was awesome. The students were into it right away.”
INSIDE THE BOX SCORE
Goal scorers for the Spartans were:
* Fourth-line center Tiernan Shoudy (sophomore, Marysville, Mich.), his second of the year.
* Right wing Joey Larson (sophomore, Brighton, Mich.), his team-leading ninth of the year.
* Defenseman Artyom Levshunov (freshman, Zholobin, Belarus), his fifth of the year.
* Left wing Isaac Howard (sophomore, Hudson, Wis.), his fifth of the year.
* Right wing Daniel Russell (sophomore, Traverse City), his seventh of the year on an empty-netter.
TURNING POINT: ISAAC HOWARD
Leading 3-2, Michigan State’s Isaac Howard poked in a power play goal to give Michigan State a 4-2 lead with 8:17 remaining.
Howard rifled a one-time slap shot from the right point, leading to a goal mouth scramble, with Tanner Kelly and Daniel Russel stabbing at it while Howard came in to finish it.
“Nash hit me with a cross-seam and I had a one-time on net,” said Howard, a transfer from Minnesota-Duluth. “I think it hit his upper chest area and then I kind of was just sniffing at any loose puck that was going to pop out, and it popped out to me and I was able to bat it in.”
Said Nightingale: “They had scored a power play goal. We didn’t panic, stayed with it and got the job done.”
IT WAS OVER WHEN …
When Howard blocked a shot during an empty net situation in the final minutes, leading to a breakaway and easy tally for Russell, giving Michigan State a 5-2 lead with 2:26 remaining.
MOMENTS THAT MATTERED: BIG SAVE
Goaltender Trey Augustine made 33 saves in a battle between two of the better goalies in the Big Ten.
“I thought Trey played really well,” Nightingale said. “The one save that he made in the second when he went east-west there. That was a big-time save at a critical moment.”
Michigan State led 3-1 at the time, with 12:35 left in the game. Augustine went from post to post to kick away a shot from Notre Dame’s Grant Silianoff on the doorstep.
Moments later, Notre Dame cut it to 3-2 on a power-play goal, but the Augustine save stood up as a vital lead-protector.
EYE-POPPER I: JOEY LARSON
Larson’s goal gave Michigan State a 2-1 lead at 11:22 of the second period, with a rebound off his own shot. His initial shot, a howitzer of a one-timer from the left wing, produced a fat rebound off Notre Dame goalie Ryan Bischel.
“A great play by Lebby (Reed Lebster) to get it across, and Joey pounded that first one,” Nightingale said. “It was amazing how fast Bischel was there, and he made that look really easy. On the rebound, Joey did a great job. He didn’t dust it off and it was just on and off his stick and in the back of his net.”
EYE-POPPER II: ARTY LEVSHUNOV
Levshunov, one of the best teen-aged defensemen in the world who is likely to be selected early in the First Round of the NHL Draft next summer, gave Michigan State a 3-1 lead early in the third period.
In a four-on-four situation, he took a pass from senior captain Nash Nienhuis off the boards and sped wide on Bischel, and sniped a Hudini laser past Bischel from a sharp angle.
“That’s one of those where it probably takes a special player to finish it,” Nightingale said. “He could see four-on-four kind of develop and he was able to find some ice and Nash put it to an area for him and he had a full head of steam. That was a pretty neat finish.
“We’re fortunate we got him. He loves being at the rink. He loves being a part of our university. He trains really hard. He does some things that we are never going to teach him. I mean he’s gifted. What I like is he wants our team to be great.”
Levshunov made a defensive impact early in the first period, with the game scoreless, when he chased down Trevor Janicke and poked it away to negate what had been an odd-man rush.
“That play when he caught the guy on the back check, he took three or four strides and was right on top of him,” Nightingale said.
WHAT’S NEXT
Nightingale was asked when was the last time he was part of a game which produced nearly 100 shots on goal.
“I don’t know if I have seen that,” he said. “I am sure they (the Irish) feel the same way. We don’t want to give up as much so we will look at the tape and find ways to cut down on shot attempts.”
Michigan State led just 2-1 going into the third period. But the Spartans outshot the Irish 19-7 in the third, maintaining the home team’s barrage while stifling the visitors.
“That’s not going to happen every game,” Nightingale said of the huge shot numbers. “I thought our D did a good job getting pucks through. There were sequences there when we were hungry around the net. Sometimes those numbers get inflated. There might be some scrambles and all the sudden you pick up four or five (shots). We don’t spend a ton of time looking at it but that was a good number.”
HALFWAY POINT
This game marked the halfway point of the season. After Saturday night, Michigan State will have only two games between Dec. 10 and Jan. 12 – both coming at the Great Lakes Invitational in Grand Rapids, Dec. 28-29.
“The exciting thing as a coach is when you have a group of guys that believe in improving,” Nightingale said. “We still have a ways to go. They come to the rink excited about trying to get better.”
