Penn State Sports Network<\/a><\/p>\nMatt DiMarsico-Charlie Cerrato-JJ Wiebusch
Gavin McKenna-Reese Laubach-Aiden Fink
Shea Van Olm-Luke Misa-Ben Schoen
Lev Katzin-Nic Chin-DeGraves-Braedon Ford<\/p>\n
Jackson Smith-Jarod Crespo
Cade Christenson-Nolan Collins
Carter Schade-Mac Gadowsky<\/p>\n
Josh Fleming
Kevin Reidler<\/p>\n
Michigan comes in with a record of 27-7-1 and finished just two points behind Michigan State for the Big Ten regular season title. The Wolverines easily beat Notre Dame 6-1 in the first round of the conference tournament on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The Wolverines boast eight double-digit goal scorers, the most in the NCAA. Will Horcoff\u2019s 23 goals is tied for the most among Big Ten skaters with Michigan State\u2019s Porter Martone and Minnesota\u2019s Brodie Ziemer. The high-flying offense averages 4.5 goals per game and scored at least six goals twice in the four regular season meetings against Penn State. Michigan is deep, talented, and loaded with speed at forward, and the Nittany Lions had a tough time slowing down their breakout and transition game in the regular season.<\/p>\n
Michigan is not a shutdown defensive team, but freshman goalie Jack Ivankovic has been sensational this season, posting a .923 save percentage and 2.11 GAA. Penn State cracked him a bit without Charlie Cerrato back in mid-February. Michigan is 0-3-1 in their last four games where they gave up at least 4 goals. It\u2019s going to take Penn State\u2019s best effort offensively to win this one.<\/p>\n
Michigan has the top-ranked power play in the NCAA (30.2%) and ranks 40th on the penalty kill (79.3%). With Cerrato back and healthy, the Penn State power play should get a boost in tonight\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
Penn State looked like a different team with Charlie Cerrato back and acclimated on Wednesday night. The lack of center depth burned Penn State in Ann Arbor in February, but that should not be an issue tonight. Michigan has shown that their defense has holes and that a good goaltender can slow down their attack. This one will be close, but I will give the edge to Michigan at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After easily dispatching Minnesota 6-2 on Wednesday, Penn State will hit the road to Ann Arbor to take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,2149],"class_list":{"0":"post-503068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-penn-state-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116227906152653855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}