With six weekends remaining in the Big Ten regular season, it would be foolish to say that the conference title is anyone’s to win.
Michigan State tops the league standings with 34 points, Wisconsin is in second place with 30, and no one else is capable of catching the Spartans with a single-series sweep at this moment.
The Spartans and Badgers are the only two teams in control of their own destinies right now, at least in terms of finishing first in the conference – but it’s a tenuous control at best.
If Michigan State wins its remaining 10 games, the Spartans will be the Big Ten regular season champs regardless of what anyone else does. With two games in hand over the Spartans, Wisconsin needs to win 11 of its 12 remaining games to take the regular-season title.
The Spartans play the Badgers on the road to end the season, and the title – and the first-round Big Ten playoff bye – may come down to that. Clearly, though, there is too much hockey to be played between now and then to get into every possible scenario, including tiebreakers should Michigan State and Wisconsin end the season tied in points.
Technically, there is only one team incapable of finishing in first place, and that’s Ohio State. With seven points and one Big Ten win, the Buckeyes are not part of that conversation.
It’s nearly impossible for sixth-place Penn State to reach the top of the standings, and it feels only possible – not probable – that Notre Dame, Minnesota or Michigan will make things interesting in the end.
But we can start with possible. And we can start with this weekend’s series between Minnesota and Michigan State.
The Gophers earned their first Big Ten sweep of the season last weekend, besting Ohio State 5-2 and 6-3 at home.
“We had a good week,” said Gophers coach Bob Motzko after the Saturday win. “We’ve had a good feel since Christmas. I’ve liked us the last three weeks and I liked us all weekend. Overall, I couldn’t be more pleased with our effort throughout our entire lineup.”
The wins extend Minnesota’s current streak of victories to five, dating back to a 6-2 win over Colorado College Jan. 8 and including a sweep of Robert Morris.
On “Gopher Hockey Weekly” Monday with Wally Shaver, the radio play-by-play announcer for Minnesota hockey, Motzko countered the notion that the Gophers – who ran away with the Big Ten regular-season title a year ago – were uneven in the first half of this season.
“Someone said, ‘Minnesota’s been inconsistent.’ No, we haven’t,” said Motzko. “If anything, we’ve been consistent. We’ve been winning games every weekend but one. We just haven’t strung some games along in the first half, but we were close. All those tight games on Saturday, shootouts. So you knew it was there.”
In their current streak, Motzko said, “I know that we had an advantage against Robert Morris,” but added, “Ohio State is a lot better than their record. I like their group. They’ve got depth through their team.”
There are plenty of reasons for the strong start to Minnesota’s second half, including the maturation of a young defensive group and a number of banged-up players returning healthier after Christmas.
One statistic that’s hard to ignore, though – whether coincidence or correlation – is the play of Rhett Pitlick. Pitlick netted his first career hat trick Friday against the Buckeyes and added another goal Saturday, bringing his total number of goals to 15 this season, 14 of which have been scored in clusters in the last 14 games. Pitlick had 11 goals in 40 games last season.
Pitlick plays on one of the most dynamic lines in college hockey, along with center Oliver Moore and right winger Jimmy Snuggerud.
Snuggerud had a hat trick of his own in that win over Colorado College, and the trio has scored 12 of the 25 goals that Minnesota has scored during this win streak.
After the sweep, Motzko said that every line is playing well and that the entire team is sustaining a high energy from game to game.
“We’ve played like that all year long,” said Motzko, “but not for five games in a row. You kind of hope second half that we’ve learned some lessons.”
In addition to energy, Motzko said that the Gophers have a patience now they lacked before.
“We’re not trying to always score every time you enter the zone,” Motzko said. “Wear a team down. Possess it. Good things will happen.
“I think that was one of the things early in the year. We were just in a rush to try to score a goal. Be in a rush to play good hockey. Be in a rush to have a good 30-second shift then see what happens from it.”
Motzko and his Michigan State counterpart, Adam Nightingale, are each aware of the role reversal at play in this weekend’s series.
“This is a deep lineup and very offensive,” Motzko told Shaver. “We have to be on our toes. Great trip for us and kind of measure where we are right now because they are, I believe, one of the best team in the country.”
In his weekly press conference, Nightingale said of the Gophers, “They’re a team that’s obviously had a ton of success in our conference and obviously there’s a lot of pride in that, so we know we’re going to see their best.
“I think that’s great for our guys’ development right now. We’re not sneaking up on anyone, and that’s new for some of our guys. I think that’s an unbelievable experience, to understand how ready you’ve got to be to play.”
That’s a lesson the Spartans are still learning, said Nightingale. Last weekend, Michigan State split a home-and-home series with Michigan, each team winning on the road. In Friday’s 7-1 loss, Michigan State allowed four power-play goals.
“We let emotions get the best of us,” said Nightingale. “That’s my responsibility to teach the guys how to control them, and obviously I didn’t do a good job of that.”
The following night, the Spartans trailed 4-1 midway through the second, after Rutger McGroarty scored his second power-play goal of the weekend for the Wolverines, but Michigan State scored four goals within the span of seven minutes to take a 5-4 lead into the third period. Isaac Howard’s goal from Daniel Russel at 10:53 began that deluge 40 seconds after McGroarty’s goal. Michigan State went on to win 7-5.
“Hopefully, we learned the lesson,” said Nightingale. Teams need to “get right to that edge,” he said, but there’s a balance. “Sometimes things like that have to happen. You don’t want it to happen, but when you lose control of your emotions, our game’s so fast, it can happen quick.”
The Gophers and Spartans last met in Minnesota Nov. 24-25, a 3-3 tie with an extra shootout point for Michigan State the first night and a 6-5 Minnesota win the second night.
“A big weekend for us here,” said Nightingale. “We’ve only got four home games left and I want to take advantage of playing at Munn. Having Minnesota in town, we’re looking forward to it.”
