MSU hockey finishes at home against Penn State, a tough comparison
EAST LANSING – Five years ago, first-year Michigan State hockey coach Tom Anastos had the Spartans bound for the NCAA tournament. Meanwhile, Penn State wasn’t even playing Division-I hockey.
This weekend, as MSU closes out its home schedule against Penn State, the Nittany Lions are likely headed to the 16-team NCAA tournament. The Spartans, on the other hand, are 34 spots out of the field in the Pairwise Rankings.
As Anastos has asked for patience in recent years — and even as he’s begun run out of patience himself this year — Penn State has made his timeline for a turnaround look unnecessary.
Penn State won eight games in its second season, 18 games in its third, 21 last season and, this winter, is 18-8-2, sitting at No. 11 in the Pairwise Rankings, with six games left in the regular season.
MSU, which won 17 games two years ago, won just 10 last year and has six victories this season.
The comparison of the two programs’ trajectories isn’t entirely fair. Anastos inherited a mess and honored previous recruiting commitments. Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky began with a blank slate. Still, Gadowsk’s shown, from scratch, building a program doesn’t have to take a decade.
“I do compare to try to see how things are built in different places,” Anastos said. “It’s different when you’re starting from scratch and you can try to align your class sizes, your scholarship allocations. It’s just different. You can kind of pick and choose how you’re going to go about it. Whereas in my situation, that’s not how it was. You have certain dynamics that exist, and you’ve got to go figure out how you’re going to make the best of those dynamics. I think Guy’s done a very good job.
“I’m sure others can look at things from that perspective. Those weren’t the cards that we were dealt here, so I try to deal in the realities of where we were. If I could go back and do a few things differently, I would with the hindsight of 20/20. Because some of the moves we made I thought were really good strategic moves that for other reasons didn’t necessarily play out because of early signings and injuries and redshirts or whatever.
“I could see how people can compare the two. But I really think you’re comparing apples and oranges with where we first started.”
SENIOR WEEKEND: The Spartans will honor their senior class Saturday night. For the second straight season, the ceremony will take place after the game to allow for more time for players and their families on the ice. Anastos said the players prefer it this way.
It worked well last year after a shoot-out victory. The danger, of course, is the mood is dark in defeat. MSU’s basketball program experienced this in 2012, when it lost the outright Big Ten championship in a loss to Ohio State on senior day, during which freshman Branden Dawson suffered a serious knee injury.
SENIORS STILL HOPEFUL: Despite a 6-19-3 record and long odds of winning the Big Ten tournament, senior forward Joe Cox said reaching the postseason remains the goal for this class.
“I think our game has come a long way from the beginning of the year (with) a bunch of one-goal games (recently) against the best teams in the conference,” Cox said. “If we string together three good games (in the Big Ten tournament), we’re in the (NCAA) tournament like that.”
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.