What ensued was an inspired UW jumping out to a 2-0 lead in the second period, and MSU not having enough time to fix their slow start. The Spartans outshot their opponent 33-18, but head coach Tom Anastos knew MSU’s effort merited its result.

“We’re not a good enough team to win games against anybody if you don’t have 20 guys going every night,” Anastos said. “We left too much on the table tonight, we weren’t able to score when we needed to score and as a result, we got what we deserved.”

Anastos was pleased with how the Spartans responded in the third period, but perplexed as to why it took so long to play their game.

“I thought we played fine [in the third period], but why did it take so long?” Anastos said. “Do we have to wait to score a goal to get going? That’s not good enough and that’s what’s disappointing to me.

“While we’ve been talking about it all week that this team is very capable of beating us, we’re on the road; apparently, we didn’t get that message through and as a result, we learned it the hard way.”

MSU took that lesson and used it on Saturday night against the Badgers. Junior goaltender Jake Hildebrand recorded his fourth shutout of the season and second in four games as MSU rebounded with a 3-0 victory.

Junior forward Ryan Keller tallied two first period goals and Hildebrand made 31 saves for his eighth career shutout.

“Played our game tonight right from the start of the game to the finish of the game,” Anastos said. “It was a very good rebound from where we were last night and it’s an important three points to climb back in it.”

The Spartans juggled their lines early in the game and it paid off in the long run, even though it wasn’t necessarily on purpose. Due to a penalty kill midway through the first period, Anastos was forced to shuffle some players around in order to get his penalty killers some rest.

Senior forward Brent Darnell replaced sophomore forward Joe Cox on the first line, and Keller scored on their very first shift together. After the same line combination scored another goal less than five minutes later, Anastos decided to stick with the new lines for the remainder of the game.

“Sometimes, dumb luck pays off,” Anastos said of his in-game decision.

Dumb luck or not, the Spartans came away with three pivotal points in the Big Ten race and remain just two points behind first-place Minnesota. However, the Spartans should not expect luck of any kind when they travel to Minneapolis this week to close out their season series with the Gophers.