I figured I would throw that tagline out there... There are stories that Gerard Butler, aka King Leonidas from the film 300 had visited the MSU campus to stir things up at homecoming weekend by visiting pretty much every sporting event at MSU this past weekend--except for the MSU hockey games against Maine. Butler even watched 300 with the MSU football team, which I find ironically hilarious, since the film basically goes from the Spartans valiant strategic resistance, thwarting thousands that attack them, then eventually ends with the Persians stomping their massive proverbial foot on Greece...
This weekend, the Nanooks are the Persians. MSU, resistance is futile.
Michigan State had a couple impressive outings against Maine last weekend, albeit they lost their exhibition opener 5-3 to Western Ontario University. I'm going to assume Western Ontario is just like the University of Windsor (they are only 120 miles apart), so with that logic we should score somewhere between 9 and 11 goals against the Spartans.
OK, maybe not, but in all likelihood, its going to be whichever squad can capitalize on their man advantage situations. Both UA and MSU aren't so hot on the power play, and both will have to use those man advantages to their advantage to be successful. MSU is a very stingy team, they have been for some time. MSU scored a total of 7 goals against the best team in Hockey East whose name doesn't have Boston in it, which is no slouch effort. We saw Maine come in to the Carlson Center and take down Alaska in forceful fashion. Although there weren't many penalties in that game, there sure were between them and MSU last week...
A combined 36 penalties were called between the two teams, resulting in a combined 30 power play opportunities each way. MSU is 2-15 so far, while the Nanooks are just 1-15, with our lone power play goal coming on a 5-on-3 chance against North Dakota.
What I would like to see improve this weekend is shots. The guys have got to put the puck on net this weekend. Take chances, crash the net, and get the goal.
While I'm fairly confident in saying that MSU won't put up 7 goals this weekend against us, the obvious challenge here is scoring more than they do. We'll see how well this plays out this weekend from Munn Ice Arena in Lansing, Michigan.
If all goes well, I'll have lines up and posted before the game. But we'll see how well that goes. The Friday game will be on TV starting at 3:30PM, the Saturday game will require schilling out money to msuspartans.com to watch online. Granted, I'm against doing such things, but will probably do so anyway...
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