Spartans Fall to Minutemen in Last 10 Seconds of Game Two, Split Opening Series
Tack one loss and one win onto those numbers for the Michigan State Spartans who split their series opener with the Massachusetts Minutemen, winning their first 5-3, and losing the second 3-4 in the final seconds.
“This one was almost in our lap,” center captain Michael Ferrantino said. “This one definitely stings, but we wanted to get the sweep at home in front of our fans. It’s tough right now, but we’ll battle back.”
The Minutemen’s young, aggressive team managed to score two goals late in the first, yet in between UMass’ two goals a Matt Berry goal kept the lead within reach for the Spartans as the period came to a close.
“After the first period I told our guys, ‘Good news is, we have 40 minutes,’” MSU head coach Tom Anastos said.
In the second period, just before Berry changed lines, the senior forward scored again and tied the game up 8:44 into the second while clearing the puck from the center ice. The puck took a few skips and slid into the UMass goal to bring the game to a 2-2 tie.
Within a minute into the third period, Berry handed the puck off to left winger, Mackenzie MacEachern, who slid the puck across ice to Ferrantino, who wrist-shot it into the back of the net for the Spartans’ first lead of the game.
With 14:30 remaining in the third, the Minutemen tied the game with their second goal from forward Steve Iacobellis.
“We got what we earned, I thought that because I didn’t think we were ready to start the game,” Anastos said. “How can you not be ready in the second game of the season? You just beat a team, you know they are going to come at your hard and we didn’t match that intensity when we were at home so I was very disappointed in that.”
With just 3:49 left to play and the score tied 3-3, MSU right wing sophomore, Justin Hoomaian, was penalized with a contact-to-the-head and game misconduct which put the Spartans in penalty kill position the rest of the evening.
“We took some bad penalties that obviously ended up costing us and that made it tough to dig out of,” Anastos said. “We dug ourselves out of a hole, put ourselves in a decent position, only to dig ourselves a hole again. It’s an opportunity for this team to learn some valuable lessons.”
The Spartans had six penalties at the end of the night, which ended up giving the Minutemen multiple scoring opportunities and their final goal at the end of the game.
“Once they scored to tie it up, I thought we came out kind of harder the next shift but then we unfortunately took a penalty which brought us down and then we had to try to penalty kill the rest of the game,” Berry said. “Ended up letting one up which hurt us.”
With 9.9 seconds left in the third, the Minutemen scored the game winner on the Hoomaian power-play.
“Don’t let up in the third period,” Berry said. “We had the lead with five minutes left and we got to find a way to get the job done. We can’t give up two in the end and lose that game.”
The large momentum shift in the last five minutes of the game caused the Spartans to split the series with a 3-4 loss Saturday.
“I think the moral of the story is: it’s 60-minutes here, we got to be ready,” Ferrantino said.
