Very light weekend in terms of games in the Big Ten, but here are three things I saw in the three games.
Kerdiles makes up for mistake in a big way
At the end of a very long shift on the power play, Wisconsin sophomore Nic Kerdiles attempted a long cross-ice pass. Instead of finding the stick of a Wisconsin teammate, the puck was picked off and soon found itself in the back of Wisconsin’s net.
“I made a bonehead play there,” Kerdiles said. “I was tired and usually you make more mistakes when you’re tired, so I’d definitely credit that to not getting off the ice and it was definitely my fault.”
Kerdiles made up for the play late in the in the second. He scored the eventual game-winning goal in the Badgers 4-1 victory with two seconds left in the second period.
“When you make a bonehead play like that you real owe one to the team,” Kerdiles said. “That’s what I focused on and Coach [Mike] Eaves gave me that opportunity to go out there and play with my line.”
Wisconsin starts slow on Saturday, but finishes with a bang
The Badgers’ game on Saturday wasn’t an easy one. Wisconsin fell behind 2-0 after the first period and battled back to take a 3-2 lead in the third period before giving up a game-tying goal with less than two minutes left in the third.
“We put the onus on the players,” Eaves said. “It was not the start that we talked about and we found ourselves behind. This is an upperclassmen team and we said ,’you gentlemen need to take the reins and you know what to do and they went out and did that.'”
Tyler Barnes scored the game-winning goal less than two minutes into overtime.
“It was a good [break] out from the defenseman and Brad [Navin] got the puck, got it to the net and it came off the back wall to me and I just threw it towards the net,” Barnes said.
Michigan State’s offense doesn’t show up against Ferris State
Michigan State managed to hold Ferris State to two goals and 22 shots on Saturday night, problem was that the Spartans only mustered 16 shots and none of them found the back of the net. The Bulldogs are now unbeaten in in their last 15 games.
“It was a really tough game to play,” head coach Tom Anastos said. ”There wasn’t a lot of room out there. We made a couple big mistakes and they ended up in our net and we weren’t able to create anything to change the momentum, offensively.”
