“We couldn’t match their intensity for a full 60 minutes,” sophomore forward Brent Darnell said. “That ultimately came back to bite us.”

The first period saw a great deal of back-and-forth action with very little whistles and stoppages of play.

The two teams seemed even throughout the first frame, both ending the period with seven shots and no goals.

Ferris State came out swinging in the second when forward Garrett Thompson threw the puck at the net, bouncing it off of MSU freshman goaltender Jake Hildebrand’s pads and into the net.

Hildebrand said he knew the puck was coming his way and, in attempt to put himself in a better position, ended up making a kicking motion that put the puck in his net.

Less than five minutes later, Thompson struck again when he picked up the puck at the blue line, raced into Spartan territory on a breakaway and ultimately found the back of the net once again.

When asked about the play, Hildebrand admitted “he just beat me.”

“If you want to score goals, you have to hit the net — that’s pretty fundamental,” MSU head coach Tom Anastos said. “We missed the net (before their second goal) and all of a sudden, they transitioned really quickly and had a breakaway and scored a goal.”

Anastos said he headed into the third period knowing he had to make a few changes if the team wanted a win. In an effort to generate new sparks of chemistry, he scrambled various lines up, double shifted some players and sat others.

“I started to really mix lines up, took some guys out of the rotation,” he said. “I switched lines up just to create chance, and that created a bit of spark and certainly created some territorial advantage for us. In the end, we still didn’t execute it.”

MSU generated a game-high nine shots that period, but as Anastos pointed out, the Spartans had some good chances but saw no quality shots.

“(Anastos) felt we had more jump once he switched lines up,” Darnell said. “Maybe it was a positive for our team and maybe not, but you’re never going to play with the same linemates for a full season. Whoever you’re playing with, you have to give it your all until things click.”

Thompson completed his hattrick when MSU pulled Hildebrand to put an extra skater on the ice.

Heading into the rest of the season, Anastos said the team needs to focus on the fundamentals of the game: scoring, passing and protecting and receiving the puck.