For the first time since the 2000-2001 season, the Michigan State Spartans hockey team has won the regular season league title for their conference. For the first time ever that conference is the Big Ten Conference and, with a 5-2 win at Wisconsin tonight, the Spartans have ended the league title race on the penultimate night of the season.
Adam Nightingale in just his second season has taken this program to heights even the most diehard could not have seen coming so quickly. There is a Big Ten Tournament (in which MSU will be able to host the championship if it gets there, for now they host a semifinal game after a bye during quarterfinals weekend) and a NCAA Tournament after that, but this accomplishment needs to be savored.
In a 24-game league season, you don't avoid anyone. You play them home and away, and the Spartans, in YEAR Two of the Nightingale era (with their best recruiting class in decades on the horizon), just won the title. Suffering was what this program had done for over 10 years, with no light at the end of the tunnel - and now it feels like we are staring straight into the sun to catch this rocket taking off.
Wasn't Pretty
How they clinched the championship tonight wasn't how you draw it up.
Wisconsin took the lead just 47 seconds into the contest with a point shot that snuck past Trey Augustine, who I don't think ever saw the puck. The Spartans would tie it in the first period with a lucky goal -- Artyom Levshunov with a harmless point shot that somehow went through the glove of Wisconsin goaltender Kyle McClellan. Soon after the Spartans pounced on a loose Puck -- caused by two Badgers skating into each other --and on the ensuing 2-on-1, Reed Lebster fed Jeremy Davidson who ripped home a one-timer.
It was 2-1 after one period and the shots were almost three times in the favor of the Badgers (19-7). The second period didn't see any improvement for the Spartans, and it saw the game tied on a Badgers power play goal, while the Spartans were killing a 5-minute power play from a careless boarding penalty taken by Maxim Strbak. It was fortunate, and all thanks to freshman goaltender Augustine, the Spartans could enter the third period tied.
Shots were now 34-14, Badgers.
The third period though iswhat I call Will Morlock time, in honor of the strength and conditioning coach who followed Adam Nightingale to East Lansing. This team plays their best hockey late, when other teams slow down. While MSU looked a step slow all night, when it mattered the most, their fastest set of wheels on the team, Reed Lester, was there.
Lebster committed to the Spartans as a 15-year old living in Grand Rapids -- to Tom Anastos way back in 2015. After Anastos was fired, he reopened his recruitment and ended up at UMass, winning a national title with now Spartan assistant coach Jared DeMichiel. Lester came home to Michigan State as a result of an extra year of eligibility thanks to covid to complete the circle that began in 2015.
Lebster took off down the boards through the neutral zone and had so much heat going no Badger could keep in front of him or get a body on him. He cut to the middle of the slot, with Jeremy Davidson crashing the net and slid a puck underneath the pads of McClellan with just 7:10 to play.
The Spartans would add some empty net goals (Davidson, Tiernan Shoudy) and some more saves from Augustine to see the game out, but this game was won by rising from the depths of a game in which they were being shelled, fighting through self-made adversity, and coming out the other side with an in-state kid who has been waiting nine years to be a Spartan, finishing the job on a magical season.