Two minutes and 27 seconds. That amount of time is all that separated the Michigan State Spartans hockey team from a perfect 4-0 start to its Big Ten season and a second consecutive series sweep.

Unfortunately for one of the youngest teams in all of college hockey, some hard lessons had to be learned Friday night against Penn State, about how to close out a game you are controlling and to never let off the gas, especially against a team that leads the country in shots on net.

As disappointing as losing the lead was on Friday night, this young team also showed it has the mindset that head coach Adam Nightingale wants to see, coming back and rebounding after a slow start Saturday night to secure a regulation win, and a total of four points out of six on the weekend.

Let's recap both of MSU's games this past weekend against the Nittany Lions.

Friday night saw a theme of the weekend emerge early, and that was that Penn State would come out dominating possession and being all over the Spartans. Frustrating for the Nittany Lions, while they outshot the Spartans 13 to seven, the lone goal in the period belonged to the Spartans when freshman defensemen Patrick Geary, took off on a full ice rush, on a penalty kill mind you, leading to beating Penn State goalie Noah Grannan on a shot low blocker side.

The weekend was a strong showing for Geary, who has rounded into form the last couple weeks, and with a pairing with sophomore Matt Basgall, has for now pretty safely found himself a spot on the second defensive pair.

Past the midway point of the second period, the game looked in control for the Spartans. They added a goal from Daniel Russell, after he scored essentially an empty-net goal as Isaac Howard forced Grannan into a turnover behind the net.

Howard added his own goal a little over three minutes later as the Spartans were gifted another easy goal when a Penn State turnover gave Howard the puck alone at the top of the goal crease, and then he went backhand over Grannan to give the Spartans a 3-0 lead.

Everything was looking great as the Spartans were once again rolling, as the second best offense in the country is capable of doing, but the goal-scoring would stop there and the Spartans would play the remainder of the game struggling to counter the Penn State attack.

First Penn State got on the board at 17:33 of the second period when Tyler Paquette hammered home a shot from the top of the slot, after a scramble where the MSU defense collapsed down low and as the puck popped out high they had no one to get in the shooting lane of the Penn State defensemen.

The second goal was a little unfortunate for the Spartans as after the Nittany Lions won an offensive zone faceoff, working it to Jimmy Dowd, who shot a low hard wrister from the point that deflected off an unaware Xander Lamppa into the net.

The Spartans held on, with no real pushback almost enough to see the whole game out, but as mentioned previously, it was not enough. Matt DiMarsico took the puck off the stick of Redmond Savage behind the Spartans' net and was able to catch goaltender Trey Augustine by surprise as he went net front and sent a wrister into the net. The goal was a breakdown and felt like a long time coming as MSU was just holding on for over 10 minutes at that point since the previous goal.

The score was tied 3-3 at the end of regulation, and the game would head to a 3-on-3 overtime period.

In overtime, the Spartans had the better chances, especially a chance from Karsen Dorwart that was turned away by Grannan, meaning as the horn sounded this game would go down as a tie nationally.

A shootout for an extra B1G point followed, with Lamppa and Howard each scoring for their team in the first three rounds, but round four is where Penn State won the extra point as Ryan Kirwan scored, while Tanner Kelly could not for the Spartans.

It didn't take long Saturday for Kelly to shake off that last save on Friday night, as he opened the scoring for the Spartans just 30 seconds into the game Saturday. That would be one of the few good moments for the Spartans in the first 20 minutes Saturday as the Nittany Lions led in goals 2-1, and shots 17 to seven after the closing of the opening period. It was a flat effort from too many players in Green and White, especially the top lines, as the Spartans looked disengaged to start the game.

Whatever was said the locker room between periods shook something loose as a different team came out for the middle frame. The Spartans flipped the script, holding the Nittany Lions to just six shots on goal(though one shot did find it's way into the net after the Spartans had worked themselves to a 3-2 lead). Nico Muller scored at 9:43 of the second period with a backhand goal on a rebound, and then Freshman Gavin O'Connell continued his hot streak of play scoring at 17:58 with a rebound goal himself.

It was a weekend on a cliff as the third period started. The Spartans had allowed a tying goal, and a late tying goal at that, in the second period just 43 seconds after they had taken the lead. This was enough of a cumulation of body shots in the game that could have knocked out recent Michigan State teams. However, as this program has shown in the early going under Nightingale, the spine of this program is strong.

O'Connell scored a power-play goal at 4:12 in the third period (first of the weekend) to put the Spartans back on top and the team played with great discipline, drawing Penn State into more crucial penalties and iced the game when Artyom Levshunov potted an empty net goal with 39 seconds to play (also on the power play, due to aforementioned a lack of discipline from Penn State).

Overall the weekend saw more good than bad, just some growing pains to iron out, but you have to like the response on Saturday, both from the Friday loss, and even within the game itself from the loss of a lead so quickly.

This is a young team, that is finding its depth scoring and rounding into a matchup this coming weekend with the newly minted No. 1 team in the country, the Wisconsin Badgers, at Munn Arena.

Additionally, photographer Kelly Branigan was at Munn Arena this past weekend to capture the action. The gallery below contains 23 images.

All images are credited to Kelly Branigan/Spartans Illustrated.

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