The beginning of Adam Nightingale’s time at Michigan State University was met with excitement. Nightingale was handed a program that had been without meaning as of late. He nearly led MSU to the NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament. Michigan State finished No. 16 in the final Pairwise rankings and was the "second team out" behind Alaska.
Both Canisius and Colgate won their conference tournaments, moving the tournament's cut-line to 14 and eliminating Michigan State.
The last time that MSU actually made the 16-team NCAA Tournament was in 2012. During Nightingale’s first season, the Spartans advanced in a conference tournament for the first time since 2013. MSU defeated Notre Dame in a three-game series.
Nightingale achieved success in his first season without much use of the NCAA transfer portal. Besides notable additions in goaltender Dylan St. Cyr from Quinnipiac and left wing Miroslav Mucha from Lake Superior State, MSU added talent to fill holes, not to rely on it.
What the Spartans didn’t anticipate was newcomers having sizable impacts.
St. Cyr finished the season with a .915 save percentage, ranking fourth in the Big Ten. Meanwhile, Mucha tallied seven goals and 10 assists, finishing eighth on the team in points.
Freshman forward Daniel Russell and freshman center Karsen Dorwart led MSU’s top line in scoring. Russell finished with 30 points and Dorwart finished with 27. Others, most notably freshman forward Tiernan Shoudy and freshman defenseman Matt Basgall, have shown that they have real potential on an elite squad.
Even legacy players such as senior left wing Jagger Joshua and senior center Nicolas Müller have taken new roles under Nightingale. Müller previously averaged 7.3 points per season and had 34 over this past season. Joshua also took a jump. He averaged 6.7 points per season and had 24 during the 2022-2023 campaign.
Fifth-year senior defenseman Cole Krygier took an added step in leadership, too. He elevated his scoring and helped MSU during some of its biggest moments. While Krygier has historically been a two-way defenseman, he scored a career-high 16 points.
Michigan State transformed from a really bad hockey team to a true competitor with a promising future. And it’s not just the players who are currently on the roster.
According to Puck Preps, Michigan State has the No. 5-ranked class for 2006-born players right now. That list includes Christian Humphreys, ranked No. 20 overall in his class by the publication. Lucas Van Vliet and Austin Baker are also set to arrive for the 2024-2025 season.
Last August, Michigan State landed a commitment from 2005-born goaltender Trey Augustine, a product of the Team USA National Team Development Program. Augustine, with the under-18 squad right now, has a .927 save percentage this season and has not lost a game in regulation. Augustine represented Team USA for the World Junior Championships this past January, where he was the youngest player on the roster at 17 years old.
His sole loss in the WJCs was to eventual champion, Team Canada. The Americans earned a bronze medal.
Augustine initially committed to the University of Michigan until his decommitment in September. However, the South Lyon native let Michigan know of his disinterest a week following head coach Mel Pearson’s firing.
Another superstar arriving in East Lansing this summer is Slovakian defenseman Maxim Strbak who faced Augustine in the World Junior Championships. Strbak is a “world class talent,” according to several scouts and is a potential first-round pick in the upcoming 2023 NHL Entry Draft.
Just this month, MSU received a commitment from right wing Gavin O’Connell, who previously pledged his commitment to Minnesota State before flipping to the Spartans. O’Connell has 34 points in the USHL this season for Waterloo.
Recruiting is on the rise and so is the team’s coaching. Nightingale’s coaching has made the difference in several scenarios already.
Against Notre Dame early in MSU’s campaign, the Spartans fell 5-0. The team’s response was a 1-1 tie and a shootout victory. Michigan State swept Ohio State and had a 7-1 record during the month of November, but a bump in the road during and after the Great Lakes Invitational put the program’s season in jeopardy. MSU responded by sweeping both Penn State and Notre Dame to keep its season alive.
Michigan State was literally one win away from a tournament appearance. Whether it was during the GLI when MSU was ahead 2-1 with 90 seconds remaining only to take a penalty late and fall 3-2 in overtime against Michigan Tech, or the Duel in the D when Michigan’s Luke Hughes scored the game-winning goal in overtime with less than one second left, MSU is likely not going to make excuses for its season.
While talking to NTDP under-17 coach Nick Fohr who worked with Nightingale over the last several years, one of Nightingale’s better qualities is his ability to achieve buy-in.
In talking with him and listening to his media appearances, Nightingale doesn’t seem like he’s the type of coach to use luck as an excuse for under-achieving. Just in the GLI, Ferris State scored quickly only after having five or six shots. Some analysts would call that “puck luck,” including the Bulldogs’ head coach Bob Daniels. Nightingale refrains from that.
It’s the same mindset that allows teams to victimize themselves for being on the wrong side of a foul or penalty. It’s also the same mindset that has allowed MSU to skate for years as an underperforming hockey institution. If Michigan State wants to hold itself to a high standard, the program is off to a decent start.
While MSU is only in its first season under a new regime, the future could not be brighter in East Lansing.
- DT
- RB
- WR
- CB
- OLB
- PRO
- OLB
- CB
- OT
- TE
