Similar to their building neighbors, another Spartan team with high B1G Tourney aspirations forgets to show themselves and is sent home early. Just like the basketball team, the hockey team will now await the fallout of this loss and how it affects their NCAA tourney standing. There is not much to say about how bad this loss was. The Spartans have been looking shaky the last few weeks minus the Minnesota blow out game. The uneasy play could not be showing itself at a worse time as a team, talented as they are, are not playing like a team that will contend for a title.<\/p>\n
Aside from the opening five minutes where MSU looked pretty good, jumped out with an early goal and seemed to be setting a tone, the rest of the game was pretty mediocre. The Spartans consistently failed to get anything going. There were way too many turnovers in the neutral zone due to sloppy passing. Then, when it matters most, they get out shot in the third period and overtime. The defense, including Augustine, need to shut the door when a lead is achieved in these one and done games. They have not been able to hold a one goal lead for about a month now. As I mentioned in the preview, Karabela was going to be a problem and State had no answer for him as he was involved in every score for OSU.<\/p>\n
Penalties felt like they were a problem, but they actually weren\u2019t too bad. Yes, they gave up a power play goal. I think the bizarre stat of this games penalties was that two kicked off the start of two periods which makes it very tough to come out of intermission and get to work on the game plan. Face offs were dead even and MSU led in blocks too. OSU has just been a weird kryptonite to this team, which has lost three, won one in a 13 round shootout and one outright. State does seem to play better against better teams but they need to fix their mojo before this season turns into a frustrating \u201cwhat could have been\u201d.<\/p>\n
I will admit, I am not disappointed, I\u2019m angry. When it comes to all MSU athletics I am definitely a pessimist first. It is hard to make this Spartan fan a believer. This hockey team though, it had me. Now, I am hoping I haven\u2019t been bamboozled. There are a few things that need to get fixed quickly. The first, I already mentioned, and that is holding onto a lead. For all of Augustine\u2019s accolades and brilliance, he needs to shut it down even more. He needs the defenders to take care of the puck when clearing the zone. The next, better neutral zone play. MSU has looked pretty bad in the neutral zone recently. Sometimes over skating the puck, misplaced passes, and playing out of position are all elements that need to be cleaned up. The top line has got to get back to its dominance from earlier this season. Stramel has been cold lately and MSU needs him back to finding the net again. Lastly, the killer instinct needs to resurface. The feeling that this team is not going to be stopped. The swagger. The blue collar work ethic that will hit you in the mouth with how much they will outwork you. The fact that they will have to watch the team down the road likely win the tourney and go into the NCAA as the overall 1 seed is enough to make me scream and I\u2019m not putting on skates. Let\u2019s hope MSU finds their magic again. At least by the next time they play we\u2019ll be out of Mercury Retrograde. Yeah, that\u2019s right. I\u2019m blaming Mercury. Who are you blaming?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Similar to their building neighbors, another Spartan team with high B1G Tourney aspirations forgets to show themselves and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[5,1104],"class_list":{"0":"post-504033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-michigan-state-spartans-hockey"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504033","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=504033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}