With their last series coming in Madison against the University of Wisconsin Badgers, the Michigan State Spartans have gone over two weeks without hitting the ice in Big Ten play, including a postponement against Michigan. Now, Head Coach Danton Cole and Michigan State are set to take on the Arizona State University Sun Devils. Coach Cole spoke to the media Tuesday, talking about the Sun Devils and their first five official recruits to the Class of 2021.

Coach Cole started with an opening statement. “It was a week off. Coming back from Wisconsin, we were a little banged up, we had guys out of the lineup, and we also had several guys playing in the lineup with the number of games and travel. I think the week off came at a good time, we were able to mix some rest in and had some good practices, we weren’t real physical during the week, we intentionally did that, worked on some things we needed to work on mentally and physically get ourselves ready… I think the guys are excited and ready to keep moving.”

Michigan State has not faced Arizona State since the first series of the season on November 19 and 20. In that series, the Spartans and Sun Devils tied at one in the first game, while Drew DeRidder backstopped Michigan State to a 2-0 shutout in the second game. They have had an interesting season as they have been included in the Big Ten, playing all their games on the road. They have been a strong team who has stayed competitive in a tough conference.

“I think they’ll be similar to what we saw earlier in the year. Through the middle, they had several guys out with some COVID situations and some injury situations where they were really shorthanded. I know at one point probably their top two defensemen were out, and they had forwards back playing defense, and a couple of their goalies were out. They were missing some real main players. In this year, there’s a lot of that stuff going on where you have to dig below the surface to try and figure out what the team’s really like. They are better than some of those games indicated and they’re not a bad team at all. They were a pretty highly-ranked team, one of the higher percentage of returning scorers back from last year. Their goaltending is good. They’re a pretty good team, and right in the middle they got hit with some odd situations and playing all their games on the road. They were home, they rested, they played the USDP last weekend, I expect they’ll come in, it’ll be a tough series. This is our fourth series in the last three years against them and they’ve all been tough grindy games, they play with speed and they come at you and we’ll have to be ready for them.”

Starting this week and continuing on for the final stretch of the regular season and into the playoffs, Cole wants to work on a few things in particular. “I think the first thing and most importantly for us is just the consistency and playing with the pace that we need to to be successful… when you do it for the whole game, you do really well… it’s not really that we don’t have guys working, it just that they’ve got to be working as five, and when we do that, we do it pretty well. We’ve been emphasizing that, and that’s an action thing. When you have a problem that has to do with action, you don’t have a problem. That’s an easy fix. The other part of it, we look at scoring, there are lots of different ways and we’ve been in lots of tight games. The power play at some point, we’ve put a lot of work into it and we don’t get a lot of attempts at it, but that has to start producing. We spent a decent amount of time with that, the personnel are starting to get back.”

On Tuesday, the Spartans signed the first five official recruits in the Class of 2021. One player that Cole is very familiar with is Erik Middendorf, whom he coached in 2016-17 with the USNTDP. Middendorf is from Scottsdale, Arizona, close to where Michigan State’s opponents this time around in Arizona State resides. “Erik is a good young man, he played for me for one year at the NTDP, was out at Colorado College for a bit, then decided to make a change, which guys do, and went back to Chicago (Steel of the USHL). He’s had a really good run there, and I think that his game has developed. He has good size, skates well, he’s an interesting player, he could play on a real talented line and bring some grit, and he could play on a real gritty line and bring some talent. His leadership, he’s the captain there, has been outstanding, he’s putting up a lot of points this year, and I think that’s something that he’s had in his game, and he’s worked hard to continue to polish that. We look forward to his contributions on and off the ice here, he’s going to be a valuable addition to us.”

The Michigan State Spartans and the Arizona State Sun Devils face off today at 5 P.M. EST on BTN+ and tomorrow at 3 P.M. EST on BTN+.

SEF