It's analogy time! For question No. 1, fill in the blank with the most appropriate answer.
1. Oxygen: Human life as : Recent MSU hockey success.
If you wrote "the power play," you get a 4.0 on this quiz.
Scoring goals with a man-advantage has been vital to MSU's livelihood as of late. Since Christmas, the Spartans are 20-for-63 on the power play, an astounding 31.7 percent success rate.
MSU leads the CCHA in power-play success during league games, clicking at 29.2 percent. Overall, MSU's 25.4-percent clip is second only to Northern Michigan.
That's not to mention the Spartans have at least one power-play marker in each of the last nine games - a span during which they went 7-1-1. In those contests, 40 percent of MSU's goals came on the power play.
"It's been critical," MSU head coach Rick Comley said. "You know you can always get back into games. Obviously, you want more (5-on-5) scoring, but everybody in the world does."
The Spartans' power-play surge has been the biggest reason for their second-half turnaround. MSU suffered through a 5-for-40 power-play swoon to close the first half of the season, and the team was only 3-5-1 during that stretch.
As the power play picked up steam after the holidays, so did the Spartans. MSU rose from 10th place in the CCHA on Jan. 3 to fourth place entering this weekend's matchup at Bowling Green.
The Spartans (15-10-2 overall, 11-7-1 CCHA) and the Falcons (7-16-2, 4-13-2) get the back end of their two-game season series underway at 7:35 p.m. Saturday at BGSU Ice Arena. The 11th-place Falcons shocked visiting MSU, 3-2, on Nov. 22.
MSU went 1-for-6 on the power play that night.
"They stole two points from us there," said sophomore left wing Kevin Estrada, who was a healthy scratch in the loss. "It was awhile ago, but I know they were a hard-working team and they capitalized on their opportunities. They had their fans behind them and it was one of the best games they played this year, from what I heard."
Estrada is back to being a regular in MSU's lineup nowadays, and he is even getting some power-play minutes under Comley's new personnel philosophy. Instead of forming five-man power-play units, as he did earlier this season, Comley has taken to rotating through his top three forward lines in man-advantage situations.
Whichever line is up in the rotation usually joins senior defensive duo Brad Fast and John-Michael Liles on the ice. Fast and Liles are the "quarterbacks" of the power play.
When a Spartan forward has the puck in the offensive zone on a power play, his first option is to pass to either Fast or Liles at the point. From there, the defensemen have a ceaseless green light to shoot if they see an opening. Comley granted them the freedom because Fast and Liles almost always put their shots on target, which creates the possibilities of redirections or rebounds.
Liles has five power-play goals this year, while Fast has four.
If there is no room to shoot, the defensemen read the opposition to find open forwards in either the faceoff circles or at the side of the net.
"We don't really have many set plays," Liles said. "Coach has given us free reign to be creative out there and get scoring chances any way we can.
"Special teams come and go. When things are going right, as they are now, it doesn't seem like anything can go wrong."
Some opponents have started to move their penalty-killing forwards up toward the blue line to try to block the passing lanes back to Fast and Liles. When that happens, MSU's forwards will pass, take the puck to the net themselves or start cycling the puck in the corners to draw the forwards away from Fast and Liles.
Depending on what the defense does, the Spartan power play is designed to be ready to react.
"For the most part, you just want to control the puck in their end and get your shots when you can get them," said sophomore center Ash Goldie, who has scored four of his five goals this season on the power play. "You have to always be thinking and making quick decisions, but it all just kind of falls into place out there."
