Different location, different game, different result.<\/p>\n
After struggling to score goals against Michigan goaltender Al Montoya in a 3-1 loss on Friday in Ann Arbor, Michigan State beat Montoya four times in the rematch at Munn Arena on Saturday en route to a 5-3 win and a split of the weekend home-and-home series.<\/p>\n
Senior defenseman John-Michael Liles scored twice and had an assist and Jim Slater, Corey Potter and Brian Maloney each added a goal as the Spartans (17-11-2, 13-8-1) hung on to fourth place in the CCHA standings with 27 points.<\/p>\n
Michigan (21-8-1, 15-6-1) remained in third with 31 points.<\/p>\n
“It was fun,” MSU head coach Rick Comley said. “The crowd was fun — they hung around until the end — last night their crowd was fun and the series lived up to its billing.”<\/p>\n
With Michigan paying its only visit of the season, the 7,113 fans — the third-largest crowd ever at Munn — who showed up made the arena an unusually lively place and seemed to inspire the home team to a stark turnaround from the previous night.<\/p>\n
The Spartans have relied on offense from defensemen all season, so it was fitting that that would be true Saturday.<\/p>\n
Liles, who leads the Spartans with 34 points, opened the scoring 48 seconds into the second period on a power play when he fired a shot from the point through traffic and past Montoya for a 1-0 MSU lead.<\/p>\n
Liles struck again 1:47 later when he got loose in front of the Michigan goal and slipped a shot underneath Montoya’s glove for a 2-0 MSU lead.<\/p>\n
After Michigan sophomore forward Dwight Helminen scored to cut the MSU lead to 2-1 with 12:15 left in the second, Liles helped MSU regain its two-goal lead when his point shot was tipped in by Slater with 17:40 left in the game.<\/p>\n
“They took me away pretty well last night and I said to myself, ‘If I get more chances, get it on net and eventually one will slip through,'” Liles said.<\/p>\n
The Spartans seemed to put the game on ice when Potter fired a shot from the point that eluded Montoya for his third goal of the year and a 4-1 MSU lead with 11:33 left in the game.<\/p>\n
But on came the Wolverines.<\/p>\n
Freshman sensation and Michigan leading scorer Jeff Tambellini scored two goals in a span of 30 seconds — the first on a power play — as he personally cut the lead to 4-3 and sent the MSU faithful into nail-biting mode.<\/p>\n
Tambellini had four goals in the series and now leads the Wolverines with 22 goals.<\/p>\n
With 1:47 left, Michigan head coach Red Berenson pulled Montoya with the faceoff in the Spartan zone, a decision that backfired after the Spartans won the draw and saw Maloney make it 5-3 on an empty-net goal with 1:37 remaining.<\/p>\n
Berenson, who said that he pulled Montoya so early basically because his best offensive players were rested, said it wouldn’t have mattered if his team could have contained Liles and Slater.<\/p>\n
“We knew this weekend that if they’re best players were leading their team, we’d be in trouble and that’s what we saw tonight.”<\/p>\n
Berenson also praised the home-and-home format, saying it gave fans on both campuses a chance to see compelling hockey, and admitted it was strange coaching a game at Munn without former MSU head coach Ron Mason on the opposite bench.<\/p>\n
“I know Ron wore his green jacket whenever we played and I guess Rick finally wore it tonight,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Spartans and Wolverines will meet at least twice more this season — on Feb. 28 and in Ann Arbor and on Mar. 1 at Joe Louis Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Different location, different game, different result. After struggling to score goals against Michigan goaltender Al Montoya in a 3-1 loss on Friday in Ann Arbor, Michigan State beat Montoya four times in the rematch at Munn Arena on Saturday en route to a 5-3 win and a split of the weekend home-and-home series. Senior defenseman […]<\/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\/4178"}],"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=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/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=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}