Final scores in hockey can be misleading, and considering Penn State entered the third period trailing Michigan 2-0, it would be fair to say that the eventual 6-0 final was not entirely indicative of how the game played out over the span of 60 minutes.
In reality, Friday night’s final was just about right. The Nittany Lions came out flatfooted, sloppy and lacked the offensive intensity that has powered lesser Penn State teams through many a win at Pegula Ice Arena.
Despite an ongoing onslaught from the Wolverines in the game’s opening shifts, Michigan didn’t score until the the final four minutes of the period as Peyton Jones stood tall for an 18-save opening frame.
Nick Pastujov made it 2-0 some 7:17 into the middle 20 minutes of play, but it may as well have been 20-0 with Penn State sloppy in transition and disconnected on the rush. While Michigan found speed through the neutral zone, the Nittany Lions struggled to establish any offensive consistency or threatening presence in the Wolverine’s zone. Penn State had two point blank opportunities but neither connected, a bit of bad luck on a bad night.
‘Sometimes the offensive hockey gods aren’t looking too kindly on you,’ Michigan coach Mel Pearson said after the game.
The third period was largely more of the same, the eventual third Michigan goal was much more of formality than a necessity, the following salt-in-wound scores a combination of a 5-on-3 Michigan advantage and the unavoidable indifference by the Nittany Lions of being beat in a game that was both over and entirely finished.
It would be one thing if this was a singular instance. In a season that stretches nearly 40 games, bad performances are a way of life and an inevitable product of a handful of things both controllable and uncontrollable.
Equally true, it might simply be a testament to Penn State’s offensive consistency that scoreless nights look like such an alarming departure from the Nittany Lions’ usual brand of hockey. Plenty of teams are shutout or score few goals during the course of the game. To a larger point there is also a certain truth that for many years opposing teams did not take the Nittany Lions seriously enough to avoid giving up the odd goal or two.
Whatever the case might be, Friday night’s defeat is the fourth time this season, 23 games old, that Penn State has been shutout. Prior to this season Penn State had been shutout four times in the previous 156 games, a stretch that dates back four full seasons (and two additional games in the end of a fifth.)
The cause is difficult to pinpoint, Alaska-Fairbanks was the kind of early season performance that any team can be susceptible to. Notre Dame is as talented a defensive unit as their is in the game and Penn State played fairly well on that night, Michigan State has turned out to be one of the more surprising stories of the year. So each is a result that could be explained away.
All the same, the Nittany Lions didn’t look the Frozen Four team they hope to be, disconnected in ways that go beyond actual goals and with a team that is on paper, the most talented the program has fielded.
‘We’ve lost before, many times, but not because we got outcompeted and outworked,’ coach Guy Gadowsky said after the game. ‘That’s how I feel. This is probably the first night when we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain when it comes to compete level. It’s alarming.’
The good news, as defenseman Kris Myllari noted: ‘There’s always tomorrow in sport.’
There isn’t always, but Penn State takes the ice on Saturday and a chance to back away from the alarm.
