Coming off last weekend’s road series on an Olympic-size ice rink in Alaska, the Spartans will turn around and do it all over again tonight and Saturday at Northern Michigan.
But stakes are a little higher this weekend, considering the Wildcats (8-3-1 overall, 6-3-1 CCHA) are ranked eighth in the nation and are a prominent contender for the CCHA crown.
No. 5 MSU (10-3-2, 8-3-1) is the league leader heading into its last action before a 20-day break, but a slip-up against the Wildcats can change things in a hurry. Game time is 7:05 p.m. both days at Berry Events Center.
The series wraps up the Spartans’ stretch of four consecutive contests on the wider Olympic ice - the only four on their schedule.
“I think it’s good for us that we’re not switching back and forth (in rink sizes),” junior forward Troy Ferguson said. “I think we’re going to benefit from this scheduling, even though they’re long road trips for us. We’re lucky to be playing in Olympic-size rinks back-to-back weekends, so it won’t be a very big change for us.”
The team left for Marquette on Thursday afternoon and was scheduled for at least one full practice at the Berry Center before Friday’s game.
Northern split a home series with MSU last season and owns a 5-4-1 all-time record over the Spartans in Marquette. Michigan is the only other CCHA team with a winning home record against MSU.
The leaves the Spartans hoping that Northern’s 5-1-1 home record, MSU’s 1-3-0 road mark and the uncommon Olympic rink doesn’t add up to a recipe for disaster in the Upper Peninsula.
“They’re going to be well-prepared, hyped up and emotional,” MSU head coach Ron Mason said. “They’re very disciplined, they have great intensity in 1-on-1 battles around loose pucks and they’re a tough team to play against because of their tenacity.
“If you look at the stats, these teams are as close in the stats as any two teams in the league. They’re clones of each other, they really are.”
The Wildcats are paced by forwards Chad Theuer (7 goals, 11 assists) and Chris Gobert (4, 10) and goaltender Craig Kowalski, who has posted a 2.10 goals against average and .916 saves percentage in 12 games this season.
Senior left wing Joe Goodenow said he looks forward to playing Northern every year because the matchup is a battle of two teams with comparable physical ideologies.
“They play kind of a feisty style and it’s kind of fun to play them - at least for me,” Goodenow said. “They play tough in the corners, it’s kind of a rough game and they play a similar style that we do. It’s a war of our style, basically.”
No matter what goes on physically, Ferguson said the team needs to maintain psychological focus to win on the road this weekend and the rest of the season.
“We don’t want to make excuses - our mental preparation has to be better than it was,” Ferguson said, referring to MSU’s 2-1 loss to Alaska-Fairbanks last Friday.
“We have to put the travel out of our minds and just play.”
