After giving up a trio of goals in the second period, MSU fell in a 3-0 shutout for the first time since March 2023. The Spartans were not outmatched; they were outplayed.

MSU revealed neutral zone struggles early, unable to connect passes, which plagued its scoring opportunities and created turnovers to give the Eagles passage to the net. After breaking through, the Eagles remained the aggressors throughout the contest, intercepting passes and winning forecheck battles by a significant margin.

The Spartan hockey MSU fans have grown accustomed to under head coach Adam Nightingale was absent, as the Spartans repeatedly made plays that created offensive struggles.

"It looked like we wanted to be cutesy and that’s not our game," Nightingale said postgame. "We are a blue collar hockey team and if we try to play white collar, we’re not that good of a hockey team."

"Cutesy" likely won't bode well against a college hockey powerhouse like Boston College.

In front of a home crowd for the first time this season and six months removed from winning the Big Ten Championship, senior forward Red Savage said the loss was "embarrassing."

"We’re playing in front of our home crowd for the first time in six months. It’s embarrassing going into the third period down three nothing," Savage said. "We just had to play our game. We got way too cute out there, way too white collar, and when we played like that, they’re a better team than us."

Nightingale said the message in the locker room was one of understanding the need for a positive response. He knows that's how a team can truly develop. 

"I liked our response and thought we started to get to our game a little bit. I give BC credit, they did a good job making it hard on us," Nightingale said. "It’s an opportunity to learn and grow for our group. We have a young group and sometimes when things happen like this you have a little more teeth to talk to the group about."

Even after a sloppy effort and playing outside their identity, the Spartans' lines will look similar going forward, Nightingale said.

"You can think you can change the lineup and all of a sudden it’s going to change when you’re not playing to the identity you want to play with," Nightingale said. "I don’t want to give our guys an out to say the lines didn’t work. I think it’s almost hard to find many bright spots of guys on our team."