MSU (8-13-4 overall, 2-5-3-3 Big Ten) still is chasing its first road victory, but put up two respectable showings this past weekend against the top-ranked Golden Gophers.

MSU earned two points on Friday with its second shootout victory of the season against Minnesota, and fell the following night in a one-goal game.

Anastos said his program isn’t settled with losing results, but was proud of the Spartans’ effort in the two-game series.

“Defensively limiting that team to three goals on the weekend was a very good defensive effort,” Anastos said. “… And we had a number of scoring opportunities, we just have to get better and get more experience at finishing these things off.”

Anastos added that the team experienced growth and learned from their mistakes from the previous series against No. 10 Michigan.

Back to full strength?

The injury bug has been a problem for the Spartans all season, but it appears MSU finally is reaching full strength.

Anastos said the team is in “pretty good shape” on the injury front, with exception of sophomore forward David Bondra, who is out for the season with a shoulder injury.

Sophomore forward Ryan Keller also will have the opportunity to compete for a spot in the lineup this weekend against Ohio State (14-9-1, 4-5-1) after missing the last six games because of a concussion.

Anastos said Keller probably could have played this past weekend against Minnesota, but he didn’t want to throw Keller back in the lineup against a high caliber team, such as Minnesota, after missing that many games.

Blocking shots

All season long, MSU has been able to help sophomore goaltender Jake Hildebrand through blocked shots. However, the season-long identity has hit new highs as of late.

MSU nearly matched its season high for blocked shots on Friday, preventing 25 Golden Gopher shots from reaching the net. Just one game before against U-M on Jan. 24, Spartan skaters were able to block a total of 26 shots. MSU ranks No. 1 in the country in shot blocking.

One of the players sacrificing his body for Anastos to block the shots is senior forward and captain Greg Wolfe. The self-appointed identity of blocking shots isn’t considered fun by Wolfe, but has proven to be a common denominator for success.

“It doesn’t feel good, actually it hurts most of the time,” Wolfe said. “We were looking for an identity at the beginning of the year and we didn’t exactly know what it really was, and we started having success when we were blocking shots.”