After 58-plus minutes of scoreless hockey, Michigan State’s John Nail scored at 18:34 of the third period to send the Spartans to a 2-0 victory over the Lake Superior State Lakers at Taffy Abel Arena Friday night.
On the play, Andrew Bogle passed to Nail, who sent the puck past Laker netminder Jayme Platt for his eighth of the season, the game-winning goal for the Spartans.
The Lakers pulled Platt in favor of the extra attacker with 52 seconds remaining in the game, but they were unable to generate a goal. Instead, with four seconds remaining, Bogle scored an unassisted empty-net goal, his sixth of the season, to give the Spartans the margin of victory.
MSU extended its unbeaten streak to 19 games, as Spartan goaltender Ryan Miller recorded his 13th career shutout. Miller has allowed two or fewer goals in 19 of his last 20 starts.
“Obviously that is a tough goal to give up, but in the first two periods, and the first period in particular, I thought [Platt] played well,” said LSSU coach Scott Borek. Platt stopped 27 Spartan shots.
The Lakers have now gone scoreless for 189:58 and have been shut out for three games straight after suffering a pair of losses at Michigan last weekend (2-0, 5-0).
“We passed up some shots from the point a couple of times and we needed to get those to the net. On the power play we need to get more shots to the net, but I thought we got around their net a lot. We had some great opportunities, but we just didn’t have enough of them,” said Borek.
The Lakers went 0-for-5 on the power play, as did the Spartans. The Spartans improved to 10-1-3 in the CCHA and 17-1-4 overall. MSU is ranked No. 1 in the national polls and is first in the CCHA with 23 points.
LSSU dropped to 6-12-0 in the CCHA and 10-15-0 overall.
