It’s certainly not lost on Sean Patchell that Ohio State is the team that abruptly ended his freshman season at MSU.
The senior left wing and the top-ranked Spartans (25-4-4 overall, 18-4-3 CCHA) will travel to Columbus, Ohio, this weekend to face the team that knocked MSU out of the first round of the 1998 NCAA tournament.
“My first two seasons we had a real rivalry going with Ohio State,” Patchell said. “Maybe some of the younger guys don’t understand what mentality (the seniors) are going to have.
“But there’s no loss of love between us for sure.”
MSU needs only one more point to secure an outright league championship, while the Buckeyes (16-12-2, 13-9-2) are fighting for home ice advantage in the CCHA playoffs.
The teams square off tonight and Saturday.
And MSU is the only team in the country that can wrap up its league title this weekend.
Spartan head coach Ron Mason downplayed his team’s revenge factor, but did note both teams have a lot on the line.
“The rivalry was just that year, basically,” Mason said. “They had a hot goalie and it worked out well for them. I don’t think it’ll have any bearing on this weekend - that was three years ago.
“They’re fighting for home ice and have a lot at stake. We’re in good shape in the league, but the biggest thing we have to be concerned about is staying number one in the Pairwise.”
The Pairwise Ranking is similar to college football’s Bowl Championship Series. It determines a teams’ seeding in the NCAA Tournament.
Mason also noted that the Spartans could use some wins to secure a first-round bye in the NCAA tourney.
The Buckeyes are two points ahead of sixth-place Western Michigan for the final home-ice slot in the league playoffs and are only one point behind the third-place tie between Miami and Nebraska-Omaha.
MSU has not played the Buckeyes yet this season, nor have the Spartans ever skated in OSU’s two-year-old Value City Arena.
“We walked over there the last time we were down there,” said senior left wing Damon Whitten about the 17,500-seat arena in the Jerome Schottenstein Center on campus.
“It’s a gorgeous facility.”
Ohio State is paced by a young, offensively-talented nucleus that boasts three of the league’s top four freshman scorers - centers R.J. Umberger and Dave Steckel and wing Paul Caponigri.
Umberger is rated as the top college hockey prospect for June’s NHL Entry Draft, and he and Steckel are tied for second on the team with 32 points each. Steckel leads the team with 16 goals, the same number as MSU senior right wing John Nail - the Spartans’ leading goal-scorer.
Ohio State is led by Jean-Francois Dufour’s 33 points, while Caponigri has chipped in 26.
Ohio State also plays a rookie in the net - Mike Betz - who has posted a 15-11-2 record, 2.87 goals against average and blocks 90 percent of shots on goal.
