With the win, the RedHawks (22-13-2 overall, 16-11-2-1 CCHA) take a 1-0 series lead in a best-of-three showdown with the Spartans (19-14-4, 14-12-3-2) to determine who earns a trip to the semifinals of the CCHA Tournament next weekend at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

“Very disappointing effort tonight,” Anastos said. “I’m going to give Miami tons of credit. They dominated the game from the first drop of the puck. … I thought we played decent in the first period but not well in the second and the third, and a lot of that had to do with how (Miami) played.”

It took just 12 seconds for the RedHawks to snag the lead on Friday night. With the puck down in the zone, Mullin collected a rebound off a shot by Austin Czarnik, and put the puck past the right skate of sophomore goalie Will Yanakeff to jump ahead of MSU by a goal.

The RedHawks controlled the pace of play for much of the period, but only outshot the Spartans by a 13-11 margin through the first 20 minutes of the game.

“We had a little bit of a slip in the first couple seconds there, and it’s difficult in the way you want to start a game,” senior forward Trevor Nill said. “I liked the way we bounced back the rest of the first period.”

The early portion of the second period had a similar feel to the first, as the RedHawks netted a pair of goals less than a minute apart to seize a 3-0 lead. The first goal came on a rebound shot by defenseman Chris Wideman at 3:44 to increase the lead to 2-0. Moments later, forward Tyler Biggs got loose on a breakaway and beat Yanakeff on his glove side to give Miami the three-goal advantage.

Nearing the end of the period, Mullin notched another goal on a backhanded shot with a delayed penalty to sophomore forward Greg Wolfe on tap. The goal gave Mullin his second multi-goal game of the season and put Miami ahead by four goals.

In the waning moments of the period, forward Blake Coleman added another to cap a dominating period by the Redhawks and go ahead of MSU, 5-0.

“They’re an underrated offensive team and you saw it tonight,” Anastos said. “They made — not just the number of goals — but they made a lot of nice plays through the course of the game. We gave them too much room and, to their credit, they created a lot of it.”

The four goals allowed by MSU in the second was the most it has allowed in any period this season. The period also saw Yanakeff pulled in favor of senior goalie Drew Palmisano — marking the first time this season a Spartan goalie hasn’t finished a start.

The Spartans started the third period with a golden opportunity to make a comeback with a five-on-three power play opportunity. However, shots came to no avail, and the Spartans could not capitalize on arguably their most realistic scoring chance of the evening.

Minutes later and on a power play of their own, the RedHawks buried the biscuit once again to increase the lead to an insurmountable 6-0 margin at the 10:13 mark in the period, which would be where the game would finish.

The Spartans return to action against Miami in game two with their playoff lives on the line at 7:05 p.m. on Saturday at Steve Cady Arena.

If the Spartans hope to live on to play another day, the effort will need to be significantly greater at both ends of the ice during Saturday’s game, junior forward Anthony Hayes said.

“In a situation like this, it doesn’t matter if it’s hard or easy to forget; we have to forget about it,” Hayes said. “We can’t come out tomorrow remembering what happened tonight. Everybody is going to go home, take a long look in the mirror and figure out what we have to do to make sure we don’t get the same results tomorrow.”