Spartans win Round 2 in weekend home-and-home with Wolverines
By Alyssa Girardi –
EAST LANSING — The opening minutes of Saturday’s matchup between MSU and Michigan had the feel of a repeat of Friday’s 7-1 blowout by the Wolverines.
The Wolverines scored two quick goals, similar to Friday’s game in which they went up 2-0 before the first period was eight minutes old. However, Saturday the Spartans managed to fight back from a pair of two-goal deficits and come from behind to defeat the No. 11 Wolverines, 4-2.
“You talk about turning the page, looking ahead, and then the game starts the way it did, and we hadn’t turned the page yet,” MSU head coach Tom Anastos said. “For whatever reason, we started to climb back in. How we fought back says a lot about the perseverance that they have played with all season, really.”
After allowing three goals in the opening period, Spartan netminder Jake Hildebrand was pulled from net for the second-straight game. MSU opted for Will Yanakeff (Jerome) after the second period Friday, and he took the net again for the final 40 minutes Saturday.
Anastos said after the first period, he went in the locker room and told the team to “put it on the line for Will.”
Yanakeff has experienced a rough road the past two seasons after being elected backup, but he turned away 24 shots to shut out Michigan and earn him his second win of the season.
“It was really emotional, I’m not going to lie,” he said with a smile. “It’s been a while since I felt like this. I gotta say I’m really happy that things worked out this way.”
MSU headed into the second period down 3-1, but scored four goals spanning the second and third periods with the game-winner coming from Troy’s Mackenzie MacEachern.
Michigan’s Luke Moffatt scored 1:15 into the game from the top of the left circle, and Cristoval Nieves skated circles around a handful of MSU players and backhanded the puck into the top shelf at 4:43.
About midway through the period, the Spartans had a stroke of luck. MSU captain Greg Wolfe chased a clearance deep in the Michigan zone and threw the puck into the crease from behind the goal line. It hit off the skate of St. Clair native Tyler Motte and deflected into the upper left corner.
“I really liked the way our team started,” Michigan head coach Red Berenson said. “We knew they would bounce back. I thought we kept them on their heels half the game. You give up the first goal was a flukey goal, so you just have to accept that.”
However, Michigan caught a break of its own later in the period when a slapshot by Phil Di Giuseppe hit Spartan Chris Knudson before sailing past Hildebrand.
With four minutes remaining in the second period, Lee Reimer tipped in a shot by Matt DeBlouw (Chesterfield) from the point for a power-play marker, the only goal of the middle period.
At 7:34 of the third period, Michael Ferrantino (Plymouth) dove at a rebound from John Draeger’s shot from the left faceoff circle. Ferrantino swatted at the loose puck in front of Steve Racine and found an opening inside the right post.
Just more than a minute later, MacEachern, a freshman, scored the game-winner with a wrister into the lower left corner.
“You talk about (going to the net) all the time, but you gotta pay a price to get there,” Anastos said. “And oftentimes, you go there and you’re not rewarded. It was really nice to see those guys step up in those situations.”