November 21, 2008
Rough Spots: Michigan State Struggles Early
by Courtney Lewis/CHN Reporter
When you lose your top three scorers and your new roster includes 11 freshmen, you expect to go through some growing pains. But Rick Comley didn't expect his Michigan State Spartans to have this much trouble putting the puck in the net.
The Spartans currently rank 57th in the nation in goals per game, they're on a four-game losing streak and they've dropped out of the Division I rankings. They're admittedly frustrated, and they've got a tough stretch of road games coming up.
"We not only lost some good seniors, but (Justin) Abdelkader, (Tim) Kennedy, and (MIke) Ratchuk leaving early really disrupted things," Comley said. "I thought there would be some struggles, but I didn't think it would be this extreme. For a while we were not getting enough shots. Now we're generating chances, and we just haven't converted. Hopefully that's going to progress."
Kennedy, Abdelkader and senior Bryan Lerg were Michigan State's three highest scorers last season, and senior Chris Mueller was fifth. The Spartans have just 10 juniors and seniors who have played this season -- nine skaters -- and they just lost one of them. Senior forward Nick Sucharski missed five games with a shoulder injury and then re-injured it last weekend. Comley said Sucharski is done for the semester for sure and may not return at all this season.
That leaves the Spartans (4-6-2, 2-4-2 CCHA) without any centers from last season, which makes faceoffs, in particular, more difficult. Comley said he tried moving some upperclassmen wingers to the middle with "limited success." So now they've got all freshmen and sophomores playing center.
The Spartans are coming off 5-1 and 3-1 losses to Miami. That stretched their losing streak to four--they managed just one goal the week before, when they were swept by Ohio State. The last time Michigan State lost four in a row was 1991, and the last time it was held to three goals in a four-game span was during the 1952-53 season. The Spartans have scored 18 goals in 12 games.
"I think Saturday we had 20 good scoring chances; the puck's just not hopping in the net for us right now," senior forward Matt Schepke said in a press conference this week. "It's frustrating, but I think as long as guys can stay positive, it'll come through eventually. There's no magic formula. It's just it's going to happen or it's not, so we'll see."
The Spartans, who are tied for ninth in the CCHA standings, have been outshot in more than half of their games, but they've done a better job of creating chances lately.
Schepke leads the team with four goals, and he and senior Tim Crowder both have six points, followed by freshman Daultan Leveille with five.
"You can't make too much of it; you can't make it too negative," Comley said. "You can't force things. "We're a victim of the system, and when you lose players early and then have an injury to someone like Sucharski, who's probably one of our top two returning players, you just have to deal with it.
"I'm trying to help them grow, make them grow, but not put too much pressure on them. I don't want them to get too frustrated from that standpoint. I think a couple wins would go a long way."
Wins likely won't come easily in the next few weeks. The Spartans start a five-game road swing this weekend at Nebraska-Omaha. They'll then play single games at Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan before returning home to face Michigan again. Wisconsin is the only one of those four teams that's not ranked, and Minnesota is currently No. 1.
Comley said the freshmen have played pretty well so far. But the Spartans are looking to the few veterans they have to spark the offense.
"That's what you hope--the kids that have been through it," Comley said. "They've all been in big games, won a national championship. You hope they can take the step to be our best players."
Schepke said it's been a learning experience for him and his fellows seniors, too--this is the first time in their careers that the team has struggled like this. They're trying to keep the team from dwelling on the last four games.
"The guys gotta know, especially the young guys, that they can't get frustrated," Schepke said. "Everybody goes through their skids. Everybody loses games. It's how you bounce back the next weekend and perform the following weekend."
Comley said the Spartans have played well defensively. They're 19th in the country with 2.17 goals allowed per game. And Jeff Lerg has been solid in net. So if they can get out of the goal drought, they believe they can still be a threat in the conference.
"There's great pressure to win here, and they feel that," Comley said of his players. "I try to tell them this is the process, and we have to go through it and grow every week. I'm very confident that in the second half of the year, we can be a very competitive team."
