Senior defense Jeff Dunne looks to move the puck out of Spartan territory during Tuesday night’s exhibition against the University of Windsor Lancers. Dunne had one assist on a goal in the third period of the exhibition helping the Spartans shut out the Lancers 6-0.
Get ready North Dakota — the Spartans are coming.
In its only exhibition tilt of the season, the No. 3 MSU hockey team knocked off Windsor, 6-0, Tuesday night at Munn Ice Arena and can now look full-speed ahead to Saturday’s regular season opener against No. 1 North Dakota.
“I never judge these games very harshly or anything,” MSU head coach Rick Comley said. “You never know how long the Canadian schools have been on the ice and for your guys, you’re not sure about the motivation. What we showed early was that our good guys weren’t very good and then they got a little better.
“Thank goodness we played a game prior to Saturday.”
The Spartans converted 3-of-6 times on the power play, a promising beginning, numbers wise, on an area that Comley said he’d like to see the team improve on. “That’s not bad,” senior defenseman Daniel Vukovic said. “It wasn’t a bad job today at all.”
MSU took an early 1-0 lead off a beautiful passing combination from two freshman forwards. Joey Shean found Dustin Gazley at the side of the goal, who hammered it home.
“He makes things happen,” Comley said of Gazley.
Then, MSU’s power play kicked in, as the Spartans scored three in a row with the man advantage. After junior defenseman Brandon Gentile gave MSU a 2-0 lead late in the first, MSU went nearly a period without scoring until Vukovic fired a slap-pass to junior forward Tim Kennedy who was all alone at the side of the goal for the slam dunk.
Vukovic struck again, scoring one of his own on a one-timer from the point to give MSU a 4-0 lead at 5:31 of the third period.
Then, freshman forward Corey Tropp took over, scoring the Spartans’ last two goals.
On the first, Tropp picked off a rebound and took advantage of an out of position defender to give the Spartans a 5-0 lead.
The second was set up skillfully by senior forward Chris Mueller.
Mueller blew past two Windsor defensemen and, even though he took a tough one-handed slash, still managed to deliver the pass to Tropp who stuffed it in.
Tropp said he didn’t feel comfortable until the third period.
“I felt like I got a little bit stronger and I took it from there,” he said.
Outside of the offensive firepower, the Spartans put on a solid performance defensively, allowing Windsor just 11 shots on goaltenders Jeff Lerg and Bobby Jarosz — none coming in the third period, while the Spartans pounded Windsor with 48 shots.
“We did a good job covering up in front of Jeff and then Bobby,” Vukovic said. “Jeff really made some nice saves so when he had those 11 shots, which weren’t the easiest shots, he came up when we needed him to. We did a decent job of keeping it down to 11, but on Saturday it’s going to be a lot harder.”
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