Junior goaltender Ryan Miller is trying to inject his fellow Spartans with his personal postseason motto - national championship or bust.
“You want to win and you have the will to win and you express that and hold it as an ideal,” Miller said. “The worst you can be is wrong, and the best you can be is a champion, so you might as well strive and put that mind-set forward and take a shot.”
Miller will get a chance to help his cause at 4:30 p.m. today, when MSU starts its quest for its first NCAA title since 1986. The No. 3 seed Spartans (27-8-5) will tangle with No. 6 seed Colorado College (26-12-3) at Yost Ice Arena in Ann Arbor. The winner faces No. 2 seed Minnesota (29-8-4) at 4 p.m. Saturday for a Frozen Four berth.
MSU has been to two of the last three Frozen Fours, losing 2-0 to North Dakota in the national semifinals last season. Retiring MSU head coach Ron Mason wants to improve on that finish, but he is trying to keep the Spartans focused on the task at hand - which is beating the Tigers today.
“I really like their balance,” Mason said. “Every player they got on their team looks like they skate well, handle the puck well, play well together. That impressed me as much as anything. They’re a formidable opponent.
“Last year, we felt we could win the national championship and we should. This year, we’re going in and we know it’s more of an outside chance.”
A loss this weekend would end Mason’s 36-year coaching career. He announced in January that he’s stepping down after the Spartans’ season to become MSU’s next athletics director.
And while MSU isn’t necessarily favored to advance to the Frozen Four in St. Paul, Minn., the Spartans will have a built-in advantage over the Tigers and Golden Gophers this weekend.
Yost’s NHL-sized rink is 15 feet narrower than an Olympic-size sheet, which is used by Colorado College and Minnesota in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. The smaller ice, which MSU has at Munn Ice Arena, could help the Spartans’ grinding, defensive style cramp the fast, offensively skilled Tigers.
“It just takes a half a second away every time you have the puck,” senior defenseman Jon Insana said. “They like to play a pretty wide-open style game and I think we match up real well against that with our defensive play.”
Colorado College was picked to win the WCHA in the league’s preseason poll, but started the season 0-5 in the conference. Still, the Tigers finished fourth in the regular season and third in the league playoffs - beating St. Cloud State 2-1 in the WCHA Final Five consolation game last Saturday.
St. Cloud received a No. 5 seed in the West Regional and will play No. 4 seed Michigan at 8 tonight at Yost.
The Tigers are led by forwards Mark Cullen (14 goals, 36 assists) and Peter Sejna (25, 24), both of whom have helped the Tigers become the 12th-best offense in the nation at 3.49 goals per game. That’s the exact same offensive average as U-M, which beat MSU in the CCHA Tournament championship game on Sunday.
In fact, both Miller and junior forward Troy Ferguson compared Colorado College to the Wolverines this week.
Tiger head coach Scott Owens said he can understand how people would make the comparison based on the teams’ offensive capabilities. But the Tigers have hit lean times in goal-scoring lately, with only six tallies in their last four games.
“In general, we’re an up-tempo, skilled transition team,” Owens said. “That’s how I would characterize our team, but that’s not how we are right now. In the last three games, we’ve played pretty good defense, chipping the puck along the wall and grinding it out.
“(MSU is) as good as any bye team in the tournament, that’s what we’re looking at. But we don’t necessarily consider ourselves a six seed either.”
