No. 1 Michigan had its opportunities against visiting Michigan State, but it was the sixth-ranked Spartans who made their chances count.<\/p>\n
Outshot 31-13 by the unbeaten Wolverines, Michigan State used the flawless play of netminder Ryan Miller to hold Michigan scoreless and win 1-0.<\/p>\n
“Miller played a great game,” Michigan State coach Ron Mason said. “He made some key saves and didn’t give up rebounds and that’s the kind of goalie he is.”<\/p>\n
The shutout win was the first for the Spartans against their intrastate rivals since 1988.<\/p>\n
The game’s only score came with three minutes left in the first period as Spartans forward Rustyn Dolyny fired a shot that beat Michigan goaltender Josh Blackburn and found the right corner of the net. <\/p>\n
Dolyny’s goal, his fourth of the year, came on a power play after Michigan’s Andy Burns had been called for holding. Positioned between the circles to Blackburn’s right, Dolyny took a feed from John-Michael Liles before blasting the game winner in front of a standing-room-only crowd of 6,521.<\/p>\n
Blackburn kept the Spartans off the board for the reminder of the game, but the Michigan offense couldn’t manage more than a few close chances through the second and third periods. Nevertheless, Michigan coach Red Berenson found little fault in his squad considering the superb play of Miller.<\/p>\n
“I can’t ask any more of my team,” Berenson said. “I thought we played as well as we can play. It was one of those nights when the puck wasn’t going in. I can name a half-dozen point-blank chances that didn’t go in. But I like the way our team played and obviously Michigan State got what they needed to play on the road, they got a goalie and they got their power play goal that held up for the game.”<\/p>\n
Miller, already the CCHA leader in both goals against average (1.81) and save percentage (.935), saw his numbers improve with his 31-save performance. Conference-leading Michigan saw its first setback this season.<\/p>\n
Despite taking only 13 shots, Mason said his team’s objectives were to force Michigan to take low-percentage scoring chances while capitalizing on their own opportunities to score.<\/p>\n
“We could’ve had more shots if we would’ve taken them,” Mason said. “That wasn’t our goal, to generate a lot of shots. In the third period the shots we pretty even and that’s where it really counts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The opening round in this classic rivalry goes to Michigan State and their goalie Ryan Miller, as Michigan suffers its first loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}