As Jimmy Connelly and I lamented in the last TMQ of the first half of the season, once upon a time in the college hockey world, there were many significant and highly anticipated holiday tournaments.
While the number of these tourneys has dwindled, the impact that any interleague play has on those who participate remains the same. Some teams get a bounce and much-needed confidence heading into the second half. Some teams, though, get the kind of gut check that they hope will lead to improvement as they resume conference play.
The Big Ten team that experienced the biggest disappointment in holiday tournament play is Michigan State, who lost twice at the Great Lakes Invitational Tournament Dec. 27-28 in Grand Rapids, Mich. After a 4-2 loss to Ferris State in the opener, the Spartans dropped the third-place game 3-2 in overtime to Michigan Tech, their cohost for the tourney.
Michigan State sat at eighth in the PairWise Rankings heading into the tournament, and the loss to the Bulldogs – who were nowhere near the proverbial PWR bubble – dropped the Spartans to 13th. Additionally, the loss to the Huskies extends the Spartans’ losing streak to three.
“Not the result we wanted at the GLI,” said coach Adam Nightingale. “I thought we had two really great practices coming back out of break. I really liked us in the Ferris State game. I think if we play that way, we’re going to win a lot of hockey games. I thought the Michigan Tech game, we gave ourselves a chance to win. I think they’re a really good team. They’re a top 20 team for a reason. We got in some penalty trouble at the end.”
The Spartans return to Big Ten play this weekend with a road series against Ohio State. Nightingale said that the key to success in Columbus depends on this week before the games.
“It’s about responding,” said Nightingale. “Games is what the fans see. We’re more concerned about our response in practice. We’ve had four really good practices and looking forward to the weekend.”
Wisconsin also played in a holiday tournament that it hosted, the Kwik Trip Holiday Face Off in Milwaukee Dec. 28-29. The Badgers opened that tournament with a 4-0 win over Lake Superior State but lost the title game to Clarkson 3-1.
“It’s special to have a tournament that you can be champion in in the middle of a season,” said Granato. “They came out to this tournament to win. They were ready. They played hard. They were physical on the boards. Their goaltender was really solid. If you look at it, it was a pretty darned even game. They made the most when they got the lead of making it hard on us. I’m real happy with our effort.”
Beyond the games themselves, Wisconsin coach Tony Granato said that the tournament gave the Badgers’ players an opportunity to gain some perspective about what their team means to the state.
“This tournament’s great for all of us, but for the Wisconsin kids, there’s a special thing for them to go into a different place in Wisconsin and see the brand of what we mean to different communities in our state and realize that we’re not just, you know, Madison hockey team,” said Granato. “We’re the state-supported program. I think that’s really cool for our guys.”
The struggling Badgers have an 8-12-1 overall record this season and just one win in Big Ten play, but Wisconsin enters the second half with two more wins at midseason than the Badgers had at this time last year. Wisconsin travels to Notre Dame for B1G play this weekend.
Three additional Big Ten teams played games during the holiday “break,” including the Badgers’ next opponent. The Fighting Irish are another team that, like Michigan State, took a bit of a hit by losing to a team lower in the PWR. Notre Dame split a pair of home games against Alaska, losing 3-2 Dec. 31 and rebounding with a 2-0 win New Year’s Day.
The other two Big Ten teams in action last week were the top two teams in the conference, Minnesota and Penn State. The Golden Gophers won a pair of exhibition games and the Nittany Lions swept RIT in a home-and-home series.
Minnesota’s wins in games that don’t actually count were hard fought and well earned against tough opponents. First the Gophers beat the U.S. National Development Team 3-2 Dec. 29. This U.S. NTDP team has an overall record of 24-5-0 and is collectively 10-3 in exhibition against D-I opponents this season, with wins over Michigan State and Notre Dame in October, a month in which the USNTDP team went 7-0 in exhibition against D-I teams.
“I like how we played,” said Minnesota coach Bob Motzko. “They’re hard games sometimes to play in. You’re playing everybody. We just kept rolling it, but our guys stuck with it. It’s getting the rust off. It’s getting the s— moving again. That’s what we’re doing.”
On New Year’s Eve, the Gophers beat Bemidji State on the road, 2-1. The Beavers are knocking on the door of the PWR at No. 19 and are tied at the top of the CCHA standings with Michigan Tech. Before returning to Big Ten play on the road against Notre Dame Jan. 13-14, the Golden Gophers – who are currently first in the PWR – play a home-and-home series this weekend against St. Cloud State, the No. 5 team currently in the PWR.
In their two-game sweep of RIT Dec. 30-31, the Nittany Lions outscored the Tigers 9-2. Penn State had ended the first half of the season with a loss to Notre Dame Dec. 10 and doesn’t play against until Jan. 13-14 when the Nittany Lions travel to Michigan State, but coach Guy Gadowsky wasn’t looking at the Tigers as any kind of warm-up before resuming conference play.
“First of all, we’re looking at this series as this series,” said Gadowsky after Penn State’s 6-1 in Rochester to open the series. “RIT is 18th in the PairWise and a great team and having a great year. We’re not approaching this as something that’s getting us ready. We’re approaching this as that’s it, there’s nothing after this. This is a big series. We’ll cross the next bridge when we get to it.”
And that focus on the moment may be the reason why Gadowsky’s team is 17-5-0 at midseason.
Neither Michigan nor Ohio State played during the holiday break, but the Buckeyes did end their first half with a home-and-home sweep of an old CCHA and intrastate rival, Bowling Green Dec. 16-17. That means that Ohio State plays Michigan State this weekend after a 20-day hockey hiatus.
The Wolverines, though, have the longest midseason gap in play that counts of any Big Ten team. They face the NTDP in exhibition Jan. 6, but their first D-I action of the new year is a home series against Ohio State Jan. 13-14. As Michigan last played in a home-and-home split against Michigan State Jan. 9-10, that’s 34 days between games that matter with one warm-up just before the second half begins. Given the number of players missing from the Michigan roster for the IIHF World Juniors – five for Team USA, one for Team Canada – that is a smart bit of scheduling.
