Graduate student Charlie Combs missed his fourth consecutive game, while junior defensemen Cole Krygier missed his second consecutive game. Additionally, MSU was without sophomore forwards Nicolas Müller, who limped off the ice Friday, and Jagger Joshua who was suspended for his hit to Wisconsin’s Cole Caufield in the first minute of Friday’s game.

Wisconsin came out Saturday with another offensive barrage, quickly earning a 7-0 shot advantage. Better defensive play from MSU though resulted in not as many easy scoring chances like Friday night and a locked-in Drew DeRidder kept the Badgers off the board through the first 20 minutes.

As the period wound down, Wisconsin’s Ryder Donovan slammed MSU forward Adam Goodsir into the boards in the Spartan zone and received a five-minute major penalty and game misconduct.

Michigan State held a power play for the final 2:57 of the first period and the first 2:03 of the second period and had another power play midway through the second period, but the Spartans still could not find the back of the net with the man advantage.

MSU’s best scoring chance of the period came just over five minutes in when Wisconsin's starting goaltender Cameron Rowe made a sprawling save off a rebound to rob forward Mitchell Lewandowski of his fifth goal of the season.

Shortly after, Wisconsin broke the scoreless tie off a Michigan State turnover in the offensive zone. Wisconsin’s Cole Caufield, who had two goals and one assist Friday night, raced into the MSU zone for a short two-on-one. Caufield fed a beautiful pass to senior forward Linus Weissbach who tapped it in easily.

Then early in the third period, Michigan State finally scored their first, and only, goal of the series thanks to a snipe by assistant captain Mitchell Lewandowski.

Finally showing a little bit of offensive life, it started to look like the Spartans could possibly steal a win from the Badgers in the third period. They failed to ride any momentum from the goal though and finished the game with just one shot on goal after the goal.

Then, a potentially controversial five-minute major penalty by freshman defenseman Aiden Gallacher with about eight and a half minutes left gave Bucky a long man advantage for an extremely dangerous unit.

All it took was one minute for senior center Ty Pelton-Byce to give the Badgers the lead back.

Wisconsin would score again on the same power play by who else but Cole Caufield.

When the major penalty expired, MSU suddenly found themselves down 3-1 with about three and a half minutes left. DeRidder was pulled from the net with 1:30 left in the game, but the swarming Wisconsin defense and an empty-net goal by Caufield was too much for Michigan State to overcome, ending the game at 4-1.

"The guys battled tremendously hard. As short of a lineup we had, guys jumped in," Head Coach Danton Cole said after the game. "... It was an unfortunate penalty at an unfortunate time and we were not able to kill the whole five. We will take some positives out of that. We got a little time now to heal and hopefully get some guys back and be ready for the next series."

The offense was absent for the Spartans again Saturday, recording just 18 shots on goal. Lewandowski did what he could to help out the team with seven shots on goal to go along with his goal, but the power play struggles continued as they failed to score a power-play goal again this weekend.

Drew DeRidder had a nice bounce-back game making 37 saves while allowing three goals.

Cole Caufield was the star of the series making plays seemingly every time he touched the puck. He finished the two-game series with a total of four goals, three assists and 13 shots on goal.

The Spartans will have a nice long break to get healthy and figure things out with their next game scheduled for Feb. 9 at Michigan.