Couch: MSU hockey with a real shot at Big Ten title in a season made by how the Spartans have responded
EAST LANSING – Even after 20 wins and a number of standing-room only crowds at Munn Ice Arena, even as Michigan State’s hockey team sits atop the Big Ten standings increasingly late in the season, it’s sometimes the small interactions that remind Adam Nightingale of his program's success and the reach it has.
And how meaningful it is.
At his son’s high school hockey game last Wednesday in Jackson, two kids, maybe 9 or 10 years old, asked Nightingale to take a picture with them. As they talked, one of them said, “Hey, Coach, we’re in first place. This is awesome. Keep it going.”
As Nightingale walked away, he thought, “It’s been a while since that’s been said.”
Those two weren’t born the last time Michigan State hockey was winning enough for kids to be excited. Heck, MSU’s own goalie was barely in elementary school the last time the Spartans made the NCAA tournament, 12 years ago.
That streak of despair is coming to an end. It's just a matter of weeks now. The Spartans have a chance to enter this postseason as Big Ten champions — MSU has a five-point lead on second-place Wisconsin, though the Badgers have two more games to play, while MSU is off this weekend. The two teams will meet on the final weekend of the regular season, March 1-2, in Madison, possibly deciding the title.
In Nightingale’s process-driven, win-the-next-game world, winning the Big Ten hasn’t been a regular topic of conversation.
“I like how we're playing our best hockey right now and that's the goal,” Nightingale said Monday, coming off a series sweep of Michigan, his team improving to 20-7-3 overall in his second season at the helm. “Obviously it would be awesome to win (the Big Ten), but we want to keep building and growing.”
For a program and a fan base that has suffered for so long, this is nirvana. Not just the winning. But the state of things.
This isn’t some plucky team having an outlier season. The Spartans are young, with increasing depth and punch. They’ve scored the third-most goals in college hockey with what’s believed to be the third-youngest roster in the sport, and their fourth line just keyed Saturday’s win against Michigan.
Their leading scorer a year ago, Nico Muller, is on a similar trajectory this season — only now he’s sixth on the team in points. Freshman defenseman Artyom Levshunov is about to become MSU’s first top 10 NHL draft pick since Rod Brind'Amour in 1988, with Levshunov slated to go as high as No. 2 overall. Even so, given his age and position, MSU is hopeful it will still have him for his sophomore year next season. Another standout freshman, Trey Augustine, a second-round pick of the Detroit Red Wings last year, is the youngest starting goaltender in college hockey and might be again next year.
So this isn’t a flash. It’s a rise. And there is nothing more fun than the initial rise. This MSU hockey season has 1997-98 MSU basketball vibes to it.
“We’re young. It’s good. But I never bring it up to our guys,” Nightingale said of a roster with 15 new players — 10 freshmen and five transfers. “We’re not going to make an excuse.”
Nightingale thought he had enough veteran leadership, talent and team-oriented players to build on last year’s 18-18-2 season, which stirred hope and left the Spartans one win short of the NCAA tournament. But you never really know about a team until they have to respond. This season, Nightingale believes, has been made by a few responses and reactions — and by a willingness to hold each other accountable.
After a humbling early season series at Boston College, the Spartans went 15 straight games without losing in regulation. And when they finally did again, another humbling defeat, this time at home to Michigan, they bounced back by winning five of their next seven, including three straight against the Wolverines.
The message after that Boston College series in late October was simple: “They’re better than us and we’ve got to get better.”
Today, MSU is No. 5 in the Pairwise Rankings, which largely determine the NCAA tournament field, and is in position to possibly grab a No. 1 seed. Just like Boston College, the top-ranked team in the Pairwise, likely will.
“I think those are moments as a coach when you know there's some character in the room,” Nightingale said.
Same for when, in a recent series against Notre Dame, the Spartans’ most acclaimed young player, Levshunov, stepped on the ice thinking freshman Patrick Geary was coming off. He wasn’t. Levshunov was able to jump back over the boards before the Spartans were penalized.
“Geary got into him,” Nightingale said. “But Arty (Levshunov) was listening to him. There's two sides of it. There's being willing to hold someone accountable and then being able to accept it and humble yourself that, ‘Hey, this isn't good enough.’ I thought that was an awesome moment.”
The foundation of this season, however, began long before then — well before Levshunov decided he wanted to play college hockey and committed to MSU last summer, and even before Augustine chose MSU, showing faith in Nightingale before Nightingale had coached a game at MSU.
Nightingale will tell you the staff he put together was his critical early move — including associate head coach Jared DeMichiel, assistant coach Mike Towns, director of player development Brad Fast and strength and conditioning coach Will Morlock.
Plenty applied to be Nightingale’s assistant coaches. DeMichiel and Towns weren’t among them. They were successful assistants at established college programs, guys who didn’t need to make a move. Nightingale went out and got them.
“You get a lot of phone calls from people that want to come work for you and good people and maybe people that you've had long relationships with and so you’ve got to separate that and do what's best,” said Nightingale, who had most recently been a head coach at the United States National Development Team Program and before that was on the Detroit Red Wings staff. “I knew enough that I wasn't in the college game and recruiting is everything and we needed guys that were in the college game.”
When he called around, people Nightingale trusted told him DeMichiel and Towns were the guys to get. He just had to sell them on MSU.
“I mean, they had people tell them, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ ” Nightingale said. “So I give them a ton of credit for believing in what Michigan State can be. And they've done an unbelievable job.”
Nightingale had worked with Morlock at the U.S. National Team Development Program and knew what Morlock would bring — a reputation that would draw in top prospects and performance training and coaching that’s paid dividends throughout the past two seasons, especially evident late in games.
“We look at our numbers," Nightingale said. "(The players) jump on the force plates (used to measure ground reaction during movement) and they're increasing throughout the year. That doesn't happen in athletics and college. Normally guys are just trying to maintain (during the season). We’re trying to build.”
They’ve got an extra week now to build, to train, to recover before a final stretch that includes a home series with Ohio State, Feb. 23-24, and two games at Wisconsin a week later. Then the Big Ten tournament, which will for the first time include at least a round at Munn Ice Arena. Maybe a bye first, if the Spartans can hold off Wisconsin for the regular-season title. Entering this weekend, MSU is 14-4-2 in the Big Ten, with 46 points, five up on the Badgers (13-4-1), who have series remaining at Ohio State and at Penn State before the Spartans visit.
“This is when it really gets fun,” Nightingale said. “Obviously we always enjoy being at the rink. We're talking about playoff time and trying to play your best hockey and we think we’re getting better.
“I thought that game at (Little Caesars Arena on Saturday) was unbelievable — the atmosphere in the rink. … I’m excited for our fan base and for our hockey alums. I want to make sure they're always proud to be a Spartan. But like, this is different — if you're in first (place) and you walk into the rink and you got a Spartan logo …”
This is different. As good as different can be.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU eyes Big Ten title: 'I like how we're playing our best hockey'
