Seeing his team struggle to a .500 record entering this weekend’s series with Alaska-Fairbanks made Michigan State head coach Rick Comley a little more tired than usual.<\/p>\n
“I wake up and my eyes hurt,” the Spartans first-year head coach said. “I’m trying so hard to sleep.”<\/p>\n
Rest should come a little easier this week for Comley after MSU beat Alaska-Fairbanks 6-2 on Saturday to sweep the weekend series after winning 5-2 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
It was MSU’s first series sweep since defeating Lake Superior State twice in October, and it vaulted the Spartans from 10th place in the CCHA into a tie for seventh.<\/p>\n
Sophomore Mike Lalonde had two goals, sophomore Ash Goldie had a goal and two assists, senior defenseman John-Michael Liles had a goal and an assist, and freshmen Nenad Gajic and Colton Fretter each added goals for the Spartans (11-9-1, 7-6 CCHA).<\/p>\n
“We’re playing every game the rest of the way like it’s a playoff series,” Comley said. “If we want to move up in the standings, we have to play with desperation.”<\/p>\n
With 11:13 left in the first, MSU took 1-0 lead on a UAF power play when Liles broke up a potential Nanook 3-on-0 at his own blue line and then skated in free to the side of Nanook goalie Preston McKay, beating McKay for a shorthanded goal.<\/p>\n
The Spartans went up 2-0 with 9:20 left in the first when Fretter tapped home an easy rebound off a shot by sophomore center Ash Goldie.<\/p>\n
It was about as bad as it could get for the Nanooks in the first, as they fell behind 2-0, gave up a shorthanded goal and had a pair of too-many-men on the ice penalties.<\/p>\n
The Nanooks cut the MSU lead to 2-1 at the 1:42 mark of the second on a power play when senior Blaine Bablitz took a rebound off of a shot by freshman Russell Spence and fired the puck past MSU goalie Matt Migliaccio.<\/p>\n
It didn’t take long for MSU to regain its two-goal edge, as senior Mike Lalonde took a bouncing puck behind the Nanook net and fired a wraparound that beat McKay for a 3-1 Spartan lead at 2:16 of the second, just 34 seconds after Bablitz’s goal.<\/p>\n
With 5:53 remaining in the second, Gajic gave MSU a 4-1 lead on a goal that was simply too easy.<\/p>\n
Just as a Spartan power play ended, Gajic skated from behind the net right in front of McKay and had time to deke the Nanook goalie before slipping the puck under his glove.<\/p>\n
At that point, head coach Guy Gadowsky pulled McKay for senior goalie Lance Mayes.<\/p>\n
With 13.1 seconds left in the second, MSU struck again shorthanded when sophomore Jim Slater poked a puck at the Nanook blue line past two UAF defenders to Lalonde, who skated in untouched and beat Mayes on a backhand deke.<\/p>\n
MSU made it 6-1 on a power play exactly one minute into the first when Liles fed a wide open Goldie in front of Mayes. Goldie make no mistake to earn his second point of the night.<\/p>\n
Bablitz rounded out the scoring with another power-play tally with 8:19 left in the game to make it 6-2 MSU.<\/p>\n
The Spartans are still a far cry from catching first place Ferris State — the Bulldogs lead MSU by nine points in the conference standings — but Lalonde said MSU still feels it can make a run.<\/p>\n
“We’ve always felt that,” he said. “We were just waiting for a series like this that would lift us.”<\/p>\n
For Fairbanks, fatigue seemed to set after being on the road since Dec. 29.<\/p>\n
The Nanooks (8-9-3, 5-8-3) were lethargic in their defensive zone coverage all night and gave up two shorthanded goals in their eight power plays.<\/p>\n
“You can’t use that excuse,” Gadowsky said of the fatigue factor. “Michigan State made us look like a struggling hockey club.”<\/p>\n
The one bright spot for the Nanooks was that they outshot the Spartans 35-33.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seeing his team struggle to a .500 record entering this weekend’s series with Alaska-Fairbanks made Michigan State head coach Rick Comley a little more tired than usual. “I wake up and my eyes hurt,” the Spartans first-year head coach said. “I’m trying so hard to sleep.” Rest should come a little easier this week for […]<\/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\/3954"}],"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=3954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3954\/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=3954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3954"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}