Michigan State had improved slightly each season since Danton Cole was hired as head coach in 2017.
Until last year, that is.
Like many other teams, the 2020-21 season was not kind to the Spartans. There just aren’t many ways to polish a 7-18-2 overall record into anything positive, but with one series remaining in the first half this year the Spartans have an opportunity to carry a winning conference record into 2022 when they travel to Notre Dame this weekend.
“Last year was an incredibly weird year for a lot of reasons,” Cole said on Monday. “COVID, it certainly affected us when our team got it. It all sounds like excuses, but when you step back, I think if we hadn’t had all that hit us early in the year that we might have a little better season last year. We’ve kind of built through in my first three seasons here and got a little better every year and that blip can motivate the players and can motivate the coaches, and I think it certainly did that.”
Cole has referenced the 2019-20 season, where MSU finished sixth in the standings but was only six points behind the champion, before and he brought up that group again in comparison to this year’s squad.
“Coming into this (year) we thought our depth of talent was better and we thought the guys that were coming would be able to contribute right away, and they have,” he said. “We’re better than we were last year, I don’t know considerably, but probably the better comparison is two years ago where we were darn close to winning the Big Ten and I think we’re better this year than we were with that team.”
So far, Michigan State has made last year look like it was just a blip.
The Spartans are coming off a split at Penn State last weekend, one where Cole felt each team lost the game it played better in, and before that they had won four games in a row against Ferris State and Wisconsin.
“We found a way to get through a game where maybe we weren’t at our best or our smartest and found a way to win a hockey game,” Cole said of the victory over Penn State on Saturday. “In the past, maybe we haven’t been able to do that, so that was a good sign. A split on the road, hey, we were looking for a sweep, but a split’s pretty good in the Big Ten.”
A positive series at Notre Dame would make for an extra-special holiday break.
“We’ve done some good work this first half,” Cole said. “The guys, they have an understanding of how we want to play and how we have success. If you’ve got a couple weeks to sit around and think about the results, you want to have something good coming out of it. I’m sure Notre Dame feels the same way.”
Wisconsin looks for another opportunity to get on track
The Badgers had the weekend off from Division I competition last weekend but dropped an exhibition game to the U.S. National Under-18 Team.
The loss itself wasn’t that horrible, the Under-18 Team is 4-3 against Division I teams this season and Wisconsin gave sophomore Ben Garrity his first start in net but getting shutout 4-0 was the continuation of a troublesome trend this season for the Badgers.
Simply put, they’re having a tough time scoring goals.
In the two main offensive categories, team offense and power play, Wisconsin is ranked No. 55 and No. 54 in the nation, respectively.
Back-to-back wins over Michigan and Minnesota when the calendar flipped from October to November have been the bright spot in the first half for Wisconsin, but the Badgers are 0-7-1 since.
It’s been well-documented who was on last year’s team and isn’t present this year, so a balanced and deep scoring attack was going to be the Badgers’ path to success this year. So far, that has yet to happen.
Brock Caufield leads the team with seven points and Tarek Baker leads with four goals. Five players on the team have five or more points. A group of four players, including junior Owen Lindmark who had 17 points both his freshman and sophomore seasons, have played 15 or more games and registered just one point.
Wisconsin hosts Penn State to close out the first half of the season this weekend. After Christmas, they will host the Holiday Face-Off in Milwaukee, facing Yale in the first game and either Bowling Green or Providence in the second.
