With the completion of a 5-3 win over (at the time) top-ranked Minnesota on Saturday night, the Michigan State Spartans hockey team completed its first semester of the season, earning time off until the Great Lakes Invitational (GLI) kicks off December 29th.

In a season where expectations were the highest they have been in decades, the hockey team has met the expectations placed in front of them, and will enter the second half of the season with all of their goals in front of them.

MSU will begin play after the break as the No. 1 ranked team in the country, 2nd in the Big Ten with two games in hand (trailing Minnesota by 5 points, so the heat will be on still), and looking like they will once again be a top seed in the NCAA tournament. The first half of the season has seen limited injuries with freshman defensemen Vladislav Lukashevich seemingly being the sole exception having been out now for multiple weeks. Somehow, Trey Augustine has taken his play up to another level. There are offensive contributions up and down the lineup, impacts from freshmen and transfers, and the Spartans have acquitted themselves very well against elite competition: they hold a 2-1-1 record against Boston College and Minnesota, the other teams who are in the top 3 in the national polls.

A hockey season can go sideways very quickly, and the Big Ten this season is as expected, chocked full with a ton of talented teams, so there is a lot to monitor still for the Spartans.

With the break in the schedule this week, let's take a look back at what has been done, and what lies ahead for the Spartans.

A little of this is likely some recency bias, coming off a weekend where Trey Augustine metaphorically stood on his head to allow the Spartans to take advantage of a depleted Gophers' forward lineup taking five of the possible six points on the weekend.

However, when your sophomore goaltender - who is still the youngest starting goaltender in the country during their second season on campus -has a .930 save percentage and a goals against average below 2.00, they have to be the headline of any analysis. The ceiling on this team is non-existent right now, but without Trey Augustine a ceiling absolutely appears (and that is not a knock on sophomore Luca Di Pasquo, who has played well in his appearances).

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Augustine playing at this level means you get four breakaway saves in a tie against Minnesota last Friday night. Augustine playing at this level means you hang around Saturday night into the third period, trailing just 3-1, allowing your team to still find a way to use their superior fitness to put home three goals in three minutes to grab the lead. Augustine is far from winning these games alone, but he is not former MSU goaltender Jake Hildebrand having to hide a team full of deficits in a competitive league race. Augustine is absolutely the X factor for this team to run so smooth, and is an ironclad insurance blanket.

The Spartans will be without Augustine at the GLI, as well as the home game against Wisconsin on January 2nd and the Wrigley Field game on January 4th, as he will be defending his gold medal run with Team USA at the 2025 World Junior Championship in Ottawa.

Technically, he could be home for the Wisconsin series or the game on the 4th, but with the US as heavy favorites to make the gold medal game on January 5th, I would expect the next four games to all go to Luca Di Pasquo.

Di Pasquo has been excellent in his two starts this season surrendering just one goal in 33 shots against him. The competition against Wisconsin and possibly Western Michigan in the GLI will be a definite step up from Lindenwood and Canisius, but the biggest thing to watch is Di Pasquo playing four straight games, a long stretch for him that he hasn't had since the 2022-23 season in the AJHL with the Brooks Bandits.

The Spartans, at a minimum, need to hold serve winning at Munn in the Wisconsin series to be where they want to be in the standings when Augustine returns for the road series at Penn State on January 10th.

Through the first three games of the season, head coach Adam Nightingale had kept lines very similar to how they were constructed last season. Outside of Karsen Dorwart missing the opening series of the season, Isaac Howard was still with Daniel Russell, the Shoudy-Mannisto-Kelly line was fully together, and O'Connell-Savage-Larson as a second line was fully together.

That meant eight of nine guys were in the same spot as they were for the final game last season in terms of linemates, with the only exception being transfer Charlie Stramel filling in on the top line for Dorwart.

In the opening weekend against Lake Superior State, the Spartans were carried by their first line, with Howard and Russell combining to score the first five goals of the season. When Dorwart returned to the lineup for week two against Boston College, there was a shakeup down the center of the lineup. Stramel bumped down to second line center, Red Savage down to the third line center, and Shoudy line moved down to the fourth line together. The Spartans were shut out by the Eagles and the next night saw a shakeup that has led to lines much closer to what is the current construction.