It certainly wasn’t a team ridding an 11-game winless streak. It truly was a performance that MSU hockey fans had been dreaming of.

But the lovely dream quickly turned into a nightmare on Sunday night in the championship game of the Great Lakes Invitational.

And it was a reoccurring nightmare for the Spartans.

A nightmare filled with Maize and Blue.

For the third time this season, the Spartans fell to the Wolverines and the 5-1 loss was eerily similar to the 6-1 loss the Spartans suffered at Yost Ice Arena on Dec. 5.

Just like the first meeting between the two teams, MSU senior forward Matt Schepke scored the first goal of the game and made it seem that it would be the Spartans night.

Then the Wolverines got a taste of blood and didn’t let the Spartans up – no matter how loud they yelled “Uncle!”

Saturday’s game could have easily been 10-1 if not for senior goaltender Jeff Lerg and a little help from the posts – which were the Spartans best friend tonight.

Lerg faced 54 shots in the game and most of them were high quality scoring opportunities. In fact, the Wolverines shot chart is so condensed to the area around the crease that it’s virtuously impossible to decipher who was responsible for which shot.

While the Spartans kept the game competitive in the first period – recording 15 shots, compared to five shots the rest of the way – they simply ran out of gas after the first intermission.

The puck was in the Spartans defensive zone so much that it looked like the Wolverines were on a constant power play.

And when the Spartans took a handful of frustration penalties it appeared as if the Wolverines were on a 5-on-3.

The power play is definitely an advantage of the Wolverines – capitalizing twice and moving the puck patiently and effortlessly against the Spartans. It looked like they had the puck on a string, thus adding to the Spartans exhaustion.

But can the performance be blamed on tired legs?

The last time the two teams met, the Spartans outplayed the Wolverines the entire game, but slipped in the last three minutes of the game and U-M was able to steal the victory 5-3.

That MSU team showed its face in the upset victory over No. 18 North Dakota in the semifinal game, but it wasn’t the team that took the ice in the championship game.

MSU head coach Rick Comley acknowledged Saturday’s game as a much better performance from his team. But he wasn’t sure if it was tired legs or the resilience and skill of Michigan that lead to the very one-sided game.

“Last night I thought we played a more mature game and tonight we played a very young game,” Comley said.

Regardless of the reasoning, the Spartans need to play the way they did on Saturday night during the second half of the season or they could be staring at another losing streak in the face.

And that’s enough to give every MSU hockey fan enough nightmares to seek mental help.