ESSENTIALS

WHAT	#5 Michigan State vs #10 Michigan
WHERE	Munn Ice Arena  East Lansing, MI
WHEN	Saturday, 8:00 PM EST
KRACH Prob.	Michigan State (60.0%)
TELEVISION	BTN

OVERVIEW 

For the third straight year, Michigan is playing for the Big Ten Hockey Tournament championship. The last two went pretty well, so why not do it a third time? In 2022 Michigan rolled into the Twin Cities and scored four goals in the first half of the game before allowing two late goals with the net empty that briefly made it close before ultimately holding on to win. Last year they rematched with Minnesota and played a back-and-forth game that was eventually won with Dylan Duke’s third period goal. Like the last two years, Michigan is playing the B1G Regular Season Champions in the title round, but this year that champion is a new team, the Michigan State Spartans. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: the preview]

 

[Bill Rapai]

THE US 

Michigan has started to heat up after their NCAA Tournament hopes were in peril in mid-February. They are 6-1 in the last seven games, sweeping Notre Dame twice at Yost (one of those series being the B1G quarters) and then taking two of three from Minnesota, splitting in the regular season (Michigan’s win was in OT) before defeating them last weekend in the B1G semifinals. It’s been a little while since the Wolverines played anybody outside the Irish and the Gophers. 

Last weekend’s game against Minnesota was probably the best hockey game that Michigan has played in a long time. They’ve had some flashier efforts where the puck goes in a lot (the first meeting with MSU stands out), but Michigan has never been as coordinated and in-sync as a team as they were on Saturday night. And they certainly have not been better defensively at any other point this season. Michigan scored once early, got a goal disallowed on a frustrating offsides review, and tacked on one more later. Otherwise it was the defense that did the trick. It was Michigan’s best checking game, their most structured game, a masterful defensive effort that gave Minnesota almost nothing in the dangerous areas and routinely hemmed in the Gopher D with overwhelming cycle pressure. 

The stakes in this game for Michigan are pretty B1G focused, since the NCAA picture is more or less set in stone. Michigan is going to be a 3-seed and is almost certainly going to draw one of Quinnipiac or Maine in the first round no matter what happens against MSU. So, the desire to win this game is the “get another ring/raise another banner” thing and the “win a title by beating MSU in their building” thing, which is more than enough motivation. 

 

 

[Bill Rapai]

THE THEM

The turnaround story of the last few years in the B1G has been Michigan State, who went through a dark ages period that made Michigan Football from 2008-2014 look like a winning operation. They made the NCAA Tournament in 2011-12, the first year of Tom Anastos, but then declined into oblivion as Anastos proved himself to be one of the worst coaches/hires in NCAA hockey memory. He went 59-105-20 in five seasons following that first year, before finally being replaced by Danton Cole. Cole flashed promise in his third season but the two years post-COVID were also Anstos-quality and Cole was fired after five seasons, having compiled a 58-101-12 record. 

The last games of the Cole era were also the most recent time these two teams met in the BTT, a first round series at Yost when Michigan was the 2 and MSU was 7th (dead-last). That series consisted of two of the most humiliating hockey games I can remember watching, as Michigan swept MSU, outscoring Sparty 12-1. Add up the Cole era and State went 117-206-32 in a decade between Anastos and Cole, a seemingly impossible mark for a program with MSU’s resources and history. 

After firing Cole, MSU hired Adam Nightingale from the USNTDP (same place Cole had been). Nightingale also had ties to the school, having played at MSU from 2003-2005 after starting at Lake State. Nightingale steered the Spartans back on track immediately, going 18-18-2 in Year #1 and doing something neither Cole or Anastos did, which is win a B1G series. They then lost to Minnesota in the semis, but going into the offseason you knew that MSU was a team on the rise. 

 

[Bill Rapai]

Nightingale then hit the portal as aggressively as any coach in college hockey and then got a major gift. Late in the offseason it was announced that defenseman Artyom Levshunov, a highly prized NHL Draft prospect from Belarus, had decided to play college hockey. Levshunov picked MSU, who could offer him #1 defenseman minutes and a role on the top power play, again raising the talent level of his team. This MSU team was projected by your author to be among the B1G’s top three squads this year in the preseason and indeed they have been, wire to wire one of the top teams in the conference and top eight or so in the country. They edged past Wisconsin to win the regular season crown in the final weekend and then knocked off Cinderella Ohio State last week in the semifinals. 

As for MSU’s personnel, their star talent begins with Levshunov. The defender is tied for the team lead in points with 32 and is the team's far-and-away best from a +/- standpoint, with a +25. He plays on the top pair with captain Nash Nienhuis, a duo you can expect to log a lot of minutes against the Wolverines tomorrow night. Levshunov also mans the top power play unit for the Spartans and from a professional standpoint, he is their most attractive player to the NHL scouts who will be in the building. 

Outside of Levshunov, MSU's roster of skaters is roughly characterized as being a group of deep but not necessarily star-studded scorers. No one has more than 15 goals but six have scored in double figures and nine have notched at least 8 goals. Isaac Howard was a first round pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning who struggled at Minnesota-Duluth, transferring to MSU in the offseason and he's found a groove in EL. Howard's 32 points is tied with Levshunov for the team lead and this title game brings a fun storyline for Howard, as he was one of Team USA's best players at the World Juniors over the holidays, where he was on a line with... Gavin Brindley and Frank Nazar. These teams know each other in several ways! 

 

[Bill Rapai]

Michigan State is a high scoring team and the rest of their scorers are the various dimensions of college hockey. There's undrafted Joey Larson, the team's leading goalscorer, who transferred in the offseason from much smaller Northern Michigan, an example of how a big brand like MSU can flex their muscles in the portal era. There's Nicolas Müller, a fifth-year player who endured the depravity of the Cole era and has stayed to see MSU's return to glory. There are talented underclassmen who Nightingale recruited, like Gavin O'Connell and Karsen Dorwart. And there's Red Savage, a former Red Wings draft pick who came over in the portal after two years at Miami. Nightingale used every tool available between recruiting, the existing roster, and the portal, to build a team with three legitimate scoring lines that tests the depth of their opposition. 

We should also talk a bit MSU's playing style. They play very high event games, with lots of shots both directions where scoring is not at a premium. Only three teams in college hockey put more shots on net per game than MSU, but only five allow more shots on net against than MSU. Both goalies get tested often in the games the Spartans play and MSU likes to cheat in defensive integrity for chances. While defending in their own zone, they like to leave a forward high, waiting to bust out for a rush chance if the puck gets turned over. It has its downsides from a defensive standpoint, but also its upsides from an offensive angle. 

Early in the season it felt like Michigan State's systems left them in good position to gobble up most teams in college hockey, but vulnerable to getting ripped apart by teams with elite, NHL skill. They'd gotten pummeled by Boston College (11 goals against in two games) and Michigan hung seven on them in the first game and had four through 30 minutes of hockey in the second game. However, to the credit of Adam Nightingale, the tide has turned some as the Spartans made savvy adjustment. I thought MSU played a much tighter and more defensively responsible game against Michigan the second time these two teams met for a series and I'm curious to see what playing style they show against the Wolverines tomorrow. Will they open it up a bit more and play their aggressive, gambling ways? Or focus more on defending Michigan's high skill and pouncing on opportunities when they get them? I'd lean more towards the latter. 

 

[Bill Rapai]

SPECIAL TEAMS 

Two of the top five power plays in college hockey will be on display on Saturday night, Michigan's historically great unit as well as MSU's 5th-ranked unit. The only other teams in the top five are the Boston powers (BU/BC), who are currently #1 and #2 in Pairwise, and then weirdly, Princeton (10-16-4 this season). Michigan leads the country at 35.3% on the power play(!!), which is the most efficient clip of the past ten seasons by over three percentage points. #2 of the past decade is also a Michigan team, the 2015-16 Kyle Connor-led squad that clocked in at 32%. Only a few other teams have even surpassed 30% in a season. To be up at 35% through nearly 40 games is completely crazy, but Michigan's PP refuses to cool off. 

The Spartan PP is also good at 26.7% and will provide a challenge for Michigan's PK unit. The Wolverines were once among the country's worst penalty killing operations but have since improved considerably, up to 78.1%. That's still only 41st nationally but it has come a long way, a dramatic improvement in the back-half of the season. MSU isn't anything to write home about on the PK, registering at 27th with a clip of 80.9%. Both PK units will have their work cut out for them against the opposing power plays, but the challenge will be significantly greater for MSU, who has to deal with the deadly shooters Gavin Brindley and Rutger McGroarty on the wings in between the wizard up top, Seamus Casey. In the season series, Michigan has unsurprisingly had more success in the special teams battle, going 6/14 on the PP to MSU's 1/9, with a PPG in three of four meetings. 

 

 

[Bill Rapai]

GOALIES 

Well, here we go. The much discussed Trey Augustine will play in goal for the Spartans, the freshman netminder and one-time Michigan commit. As is well known, Augustine reopened his recruitment after Mel Pearson's firing and committed to Michigan State, where he had more familiarity with his former USNTDP coach, Adam Nightingale. Augustine, a Detroit Red Wings second round draft pick in the most recent NHL Draft, has a .919 SV% this season in college play, as well as a clean 4-0 record with a .936 SV% at the World Juniors, where he backstopped Team USA to a gold medal.

Augustine was not the best goalie in the conference this season (Ryan Bischel was), but he probably will be next season. The flashes of what gives Augustine a legitimate shot to be an NHL goalie are very much there and Michigan got a taste of those in their last meeting, when Augustine stopped 65 of 68 shots on the weekend in an MSU sweep. Augustine's not invincible, having given up 4+ goals eight different times this season, including twice to Michigan earlier in the season, but he does seem to have some of the Dawg In Him. His best efforts have been in the biggest moments, including that WJC effort, the Duel in the D against Michigan (36/38), the win over Wisconsin to clinch the regular season crown (44/46), and last weekend over OSU in the B1G Semis (37/38). 

As for Michigan, Jacob Barczewski will be in net like usual. Barczewski currently sports a .909 SV% which is fine, far from the worst case outcome and more or less what I expected when Michigan fished Barczewski out of the portal in the offseason via Canisius. There have been some really good moments, including a 50/51 weekend against Notre Dame in February that helped turn Michigan's season around, but also some very not good moments: over three starts from Mar. 1 to Mar. 9, Barczewski allowed 12 goals on 70 shots (.829). Barczewski isn't the biggest goalie and he is not necessarily the best in high-danger moments, but he's generally been solid against lower and medium danger chances. He had a get-right, easy peasy game against Minnesota last week where Michigan's defense did the work for him and hopefully both he and the defense can keep that going as much as possible against State's prodigious offense. 

 

 

[Bill Rapai]

KEYS

Get traffic in front of Trey Augustine. Something I thought Michigan didn't do very well in the last series against Sparty (the MSU sweep in February) was get bodies and commotion in front of Augustine. Michigan got some top notch chances against Augustine in the two games, but they were solo chances, 1-on-1 between the shooter and the goalie. We interpret breakaways or those sorts of looks in the OZ as being A++ chances but sometimes when you face an elite goalie on his game, those chances are not how you beat him. A hot goalie is going to save most of those he can see and has a chance to save. If Augustine comes out hot tomorrow night, Michigan should focus on taking more shots from the point with bodies in front, looking for deflections and taking away Augustine's vision. Shooting for rebounds and crashing the net hard are also ways to beat hot goalies, not necessarily high percentage chance creation but playing in ways to legitimately solve the goalie because he doesn't have a chance to stop it. 

Own the special teams battle. As we mentioned in the special teams section, Michigan has decisively won the special teams battle in the season series against MSU this season, even as the outcomes of the games haven't gone their way on the whole. Michigan needs to continue to do what they're good at, which is ruthlessly punish opponents who give them PP opportunities and increasingly, frustrate opposing power plays as well. If Michigan can hold MSU 0fer on the Spartan PP opportunities while popping in at least one goal on the PP themselves, that goes a long, long way to coming home with hardware. 

Have Jake Barczewski be good. I know... this isn't much of a key for the team to focus on, but a lot of this matchup, as it often does in hockey, comes down to goaltending. I want to see Michigan play a good defensive game, I want to see them replicate a good bit of what they did against Minnesota in this one, controlling shifts in the offensive zone and choking off rush chances against in the neutral zone, but MSU is a better and deeper offensive team than the Gophs. It probably won't be as complete of a muzzling, especially if/when MSU gambles to create off the rush. I hope Michigan doesn't fall victim to MSU's aggression much, but it'll probably happen a few times. MSU will probably get a handful of A-grade chances even if Michigan plays a stellar defensive game. They will need their goalie to be at his best and rise to the occasion to win this game, because MSU will likely have pretty good goaltending in the other net to boot. 

PREDICTIONS

are stupid for a one game hockey playoff