Junior forward Justin Abdelkader attempts to block a shot by Colgate defenseman Nick St. Pierre during the third period of Friday night’s game at Munn Ice Arena. The Spartans beat the Raiders, 6-3, and won, 2-1, Saturday to complete the sweep.
Although the No. 8 MSU hockey team rebounded this weekend with two wins over Colgate, there is still room for improvement — particularly in regards to penalties and turnovers.
The Spartans committed 16 penalties in the two games against the Raiders, and, according to head coach Rick Comley, gave the puck away over 60 times on Friday and over 40 times on Saturday — while the average number usually lies somewhere in the 30’s.
“The turnovers are my biggest concern for sure,” Comley said.
“We think we’re a little bit more talented back at defense. I want them trying to make plays. It’s just some decision making with the puck and that’s part of the evolution of a team is (trying) to make something good happen versus forcing something. That’s going to be a learning curve.”
While the turnovers have a broad overall effect on the entire team, it’s the penalties that affect individual players.
“Sloppy penalties hurt the ice time of other players and that creates frustration,” Comley said. “Good players play all the time in every situation, but when you’re killing penalties, then those guys who get ice time 5-on-5, that’s diminished.”
Not only are individual players being hurt, the penalties are detrimental to the cohesiveness of the team as lines get broken up for long stretches at a time as bits and pieces of a line go to kill penalties.
“Especially for our team, we’re best when we roll four lines,” senior forward Chris Mueller said. “If you look at the line charts, look at some of the ice time, the top two lines get almost double, closer to maybe triple than what the fourth line gets.”
Senior defenseman Daniel Vukovic said that while the turnovers will happen early in the season, the penalties can be helped.
“We’ve taken too many,” Vukovic said.
“The thing is: They haven’t been aggressive penalties where it was a real good hit that was called a charge or something like that but it’s been a lot of stick penalties, I’ve noticed, including me. When you’re using your stick a lot, it means you’re not outworking the other guy to get into the better spot to get the puck.”
Luckily for the Spartans, Colgate wasn’t able to fully capitalize on MSU’s mistakes, and they get another week of practice to hammer out the issues prior to next weekend’s CCHA-opening series against Northern Michigan.
“I thought Colgate was a very good team but not a tremendous offensive team,” Comley said. “So they didn’t take some of their opportunities and get them back on our net where a better team offensively might have done that.”
In the ranks
With the weekend sweep over Colgate, the Spartans moved up one spot from No. 9 to No. 8 in the USCHO.com poll.
Other CCHA teams in the rankings include No. 2 Miami, No. 3 Michigan and No. 12 Notre Dame.
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