The second half of the Big Ten men’s hockey season starts Sunday, with Michigan State preparing to take on Penn State in a two-game slate at Munn Ice Arena, the home of Spartan hockey. Head Coach Danton Cole addressed the media on Wednesday, as the Spartans kick off the second half strong.

Cole began his press conference with his opening statement regarding the preparation of the team heading into the second half. “With no games, there’s not a lot to report, our guys got out of town, got to spend some time with family. We had a couple guys who weren’t able to get anywhere, and they went with their teammates to their houses, so everybody was covered. It was good to get away for a week, the guys have been back for a couple days now. We just had our third (COVID) test today so we’ll jump on the ice this (Wednesday) afternoon. Dr. Kovan had it set up where guys had to pass a certain number of tests. We’ll get four practices in before Penn State, they’ll be a good challenge, they play fast and they’ll be coming at us, so it’ll be a good way to get going in the second half.”

With regards to the short break that the team had during the holidays, Coach Cole said it was nice to get right back to work. “It’s good to be back. You get into the (holiday) season, get two or three days home, and then the World Juniors started and you start watching hockey and you start to miss being around the rink, but it is good to get away, more mentally than physically, you just need to check out for a little bit and reset, come back with some energy… the guys have got a lot of energy, seem really happy to be back, want to play some games. It’s usually like this way after Christmas break, the guys come back just to play hockey, and we don’t have classes for about three weeks and we can just play hockey.”

There are some aspects of the Spartans’ game that Coach Cole would want to improve on heading into the second half, as well as some keys to success. “With a spotty schedule to start, the easy answer is everything. The way I’ve always approached it is you get a little better at all your things as the season goes on and if you can chunk it up that way, you can find yourselves, individually and as a team, a lot better. One thing overall is that I don’t want us to do things from a thinking-based a little faster. If you look at the last Notre Dame game, we had two periods where we defended extremely well but spent way too much time (defending) in the third period, we opened up a little more and played a little bit faster.”

With it being a tougher season with all the COVID-19 protocols and regulations set up with the Big Ten, not only have the current leadership group of Tommy Miller, Tommy Apap, Mitchell Lewandowski, and Dennis Cesana been highly leaned on, but the Senior Class, plus graduate transfer Charlie Combs, want to make this year a special one despite the uniqueness of it all.

Looking at Penn State, they have made a lot of changes, primarily in their forward group and in goal. “They’re still a handful. (Head Coach) Guy (Gadowsky) does a good job, they generate a lot of shots. You can look through some of their games, the record being what it is. They played at Minnesota to start, and that’s not an easy place to get going. If you watched the second night there, they played a really good hockey game. They played Michigan tough two games. They lost the first one then won 9-5 the second one, then they played Arizona State and they played a couple of interesting games, getting two overtime wins out of that, so they’re learning as they’re going. It’s the same style, though. You’ve got to be vigilant in the way you play defense, how you recover, and how to close. It seems like a broken record, you have to do that in a lot of the Big Ten, but their style is pretty similar, it’ll give you a lot of problems if you’re not attentive to detail and if you get too loose, they’ll make you pay, and we’ve seen them do that to teams this year.”

As was previously mentioned, their goaltending tandem shakes out differently as in past years. In every Michigan State matchup with Penn State since Feb. 15, 2019. Since then, they have faced Peyton Jones, who is now playing for the Utah Grizzlies of the ECHL. Their current tandem is junior Oskar Autio, who they played in that last game, and freshman Liam Souliere. Cole said that Assistant Coach Joe Exter will prepare a scouting report on both goalies and will go through tendencies, but the approach will stay the same in the offensive zone.

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