Couch: MSU's hockey team is a wonderful story. Now with a tangible legacy — as Big Ten champs.

MADISON, Wis. — Whatever Adam Nightingale was feeling deep in his soul after coaching Michigan State’s hockey team to its first-ever Big Ten championship and first conference title in 23 years, he largely kept to himself Friday night.

What would make him visibly excited?

“Maybe like a 30-inch walleye,” Nightingale said, grinning at his own joke outside the Spartans’ locker room after their 5-2 win at Wisconsin, which clinched the outright conference title with a game to spare.

Somebody ought to take Nightingale fishing next weekend during MSU’s first-round bye in the Big Ten tournament just to see him really let loose.

Because what the Spartans’ accomplished Friday night is let-loose kind of stuff. MSU’s hockey program might well rise to greater heights. But a Big Ten championship for the Spartans will likely never again mean this much to this many people.

MSU could have more dominant teams in the coming years, more future pros, more NHL draft picks, more control of games against other quality teams. But it won’t have a collection of folks quite like this celebrating together on the ice and in the locker room.

Everything this MSU team is showed up Friday night:

Senior Jeremy Davidson, one of five holdovers from darker times, scored two goals.

Reed Lebster, a graduate transfer who dreamed of playing at MSU, delivered the game-winner.

Acclaimed freshman goaltender Trey Augustine stood on his head while under siege for two periods and then again against a breakaway chance for Wisconsin in a tie game in the third.

Freshman defensemen Artyom Levshunov, likely MSU’s first top-10 NHL draft pick in a quarter-century, scored the Spartans’ first goal.

On the ice afterward, the coach who was hired almost exactly 22 months ago embraced the athletic director who listened to MSU’s players when they said change was needed. Alan Haller gets credit for bringing in Nightingale. Nightingale deserves kudos for putting together a staff that’s helped him live up to everything he wanted the program to be in May of 2022.

No one in their wildest dreams then thought it could be this good this fast.

“I know probably for a lot of people it feels like a short time,” Nightingale said. “Our guys have been here since July. They've worked really hard and, go back to the year before, that's a long time and some special commitment and making good decisions off the ice. Like all those things add up to a moment like this and it’s good the guys got to capitalize on it.”

Perhaps Nightingale operates in dog years. For the rest of us, who’ve been watching the last decade-plus of MSU hockey, this turnaround was mighty quick. And Spartan fans following along Friday night — on Big Ten Network-plus, the Spartan Radio Network or any bootleg broadcast they could get their hands on — are mighty grateful for it. They couldn’t endure another coach who asked for patience.

This program rise has an air of sustainability to it — the staff, facilities, recruiting momentum, proof of concept on the ice. Many of MSU’s players are young, including several of their most talented ones. Levshunov, though a soon-to-be high NHL draft pick, is likely to return next season, given the position he plays. Augustine is likely a three- or four-year player.

Both of them had legacy games. Levshunov will now forever be more than just a dazzling talent and darling prospect who graced the program. He impacted something tangible, a banner that’ll be raised at Munn Ice Arena.

Augustine is the youngest goalie in college hockey and yet looked entirely unfazed by giving up a goal in the first minute — on a puck he was shielded from seeing — and then stopped 44 shots, including 32 in the first two periods and a breakaway chance in a 2-2 game midway through the third.

“If that one goes in and we're chasing the game, who knows what happens,” Augustine said. “I just kind of try to take over the moment.”

You’d think Augustine was describing mowing the lawn with how calm he is about it all. That’s probably what you want from your goaltender who turned 19 a week ago.

This was a legacy game, too, for Lebster and Davidson and senior Nico Muller and for David Gucciardi, who blocked five shots, and Teirman Shoudy’s fourth line that produced again.

“I feel unreal,” Davidson said. “I mean, it's been a long time coming. And, obviously, two years ago, I wouldn't think that we would be where we're at. But we put in a lot of work and got the right guys here, right coaches and, you know, we're exactly where we should be.”

Collectively, their celebration was nearly as measured as Nightingale’s. They didn’t throw their gloves in the air when they left the bench as the final horn sounded. They congratulated each other. They hugged. They fist-bumped. Then they left the ice. They didn't take a team picture commemorating their title until they were in the locker room. They didn’t behave like this was a culmination of anything.

In that regard, they seem to follow their head coach’s lead. Only twice in two seasons have water bottles been sprayed in the locker room to salute a teammate or victory — after one of Joshua Jagger’s hat tricks last season and when they won their opening-round Big Ten tournament series at Notre Dame, their last win of last season.

This season, for all they accomplished by winning a deep Big Ten Conference over the course of four months, they talked Friday night as if this were something achieved on the way to something more.

“I'm super excited for the guys,” Nightingale insisted. “But I think this is a group that understands that we’ve still got more work to do, we’ve still got to keep getting better and there's hockey left, and we want to try to keep winning games.”

The way the Spartans won Friday leaves one believing they will. They’ll be the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten tournament, picking up play again with a semifinal home date on March 16 at Munn Ice Arena. They’ve got a good chance to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. If the season ended today, they would be, by virtue of their No. 4 spot in the Pairwise rankings.

What made Friday all the more impressive is that they weren’t the better team for two periods. They had the better goalie, they took advantage of a couple Wisconsin mistakes and they held the Badgers to just one goal during a five-minute major penalty in the second period.

And, then, like they did at Michigan in late January and against Minnesota when they trailed 3-1, their conditioning and grit flipped the flow of the game.

“We've had (that change in mindset before) within games, but more times than not, it's been the next night,” Nightingale said. “And that was our conversation after the second (period): 'We’ve got to respond. Now. Let's not wait until we watch video the next day and say, “Hey, we got to do this better.” You’ve got 20 minutes to respond. We're in good shape (physically). This is the reason we train how we train and let's take advantage of this opportunity.' ”

Twenty minutes later, they were Big Ten champs.

“That's something that they'll have with them the rest of their life,” Nightingale said.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU hockey is a wonderful story, now with a legacy — as Big Ten champs