Michigan State 5, Northern Michigan 4
10/26/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Ice Hockey
Oct. 26, 2007
Michigan State Coach Rick Comley
On the third period...
The puck was jumping all over the place. The pucks bouncing like crazy, but maybe in the end, that's another game we need. Because right now, they're too loose in my mind. We got it 5-1 after two and it just looked over. We moved the puck so well up until that point and then things got sloppy and we started turning the puck over. They came at us hard, to their credit, and we lost the battles in the hash-mark in the defensive zone, instead of getting pucks out they got kept them in. They went to the net with the puck and got sticks on it.
On the passing...
They were sharp, but then in the third it just seemed we tried to do too much. Instead of just chipping it, or keeping it soft, we starting to try and pass through feet, under sticks and they were aggressive and coming at us, to their credit.
On the play of the freshmen...
Tropp needed to score to get some confidence. He played pretty well today, other than the hash-mark play in our zone. And I thought our defense played really well until that third period. Their second goal kind of got them going a little bit, and everyone in this league competes and battles and if you open the door for them, they're going to walk through it.
On playing a team like Northern...
We have to look at ourselves right now, too. They are a defensive team and they don't give you many easy chances but the puck went in their net quite easily in the second period. Which maybe sent the wrong message. You got to play 60 minutes, you must be able to win the third period, if you're going to be a good team. So they're leaving the building with an awful lot of confidence, winning the third period 3-0, so that should set up a good game tomorrow night.
Michigan State Freshman Forward Corey Tropp
On his first collegiate goal...
I didn't really see it but the after-effect was pretty good. Mueller won the face-off clean, Vukovic let a big shot go from the point. I just went to the net to try and screen the goalie. It ended up hitting my stick and going in.
On Northern Michigan's comeback in the third period...
We need to play hard for 60 minutes, I think we kind of got away from ourselves there in the third. We made some bad decisions so we've got to keep grinding away for an entire game and make sure we finish it out. We're definitely capable of being a lot better, we just need to stick to our game plan.
Michigan State Junior Forward Tim Kennedy
On Northern Michigan's comeback in the third period...
I think that they came out and played a good period and we came out kind of lax. That's not the kind of period we want, so that's one of our flaws that we are working on right now. I thought we fixed that last week with a good third period against Colgate but I guess we didn't. We need to get back to the drawing board on that one and have a good third period.
On Michigan State's play in the second period...
I thought we did a good job of getting pucks to the net. We didn't get many shots on their goalie in the first period so we knew we wanted to get more pucks to him. I think in the third period we stopped doing that.
On his second period goal...
[Jeff Petry's shot] hit the goaltender's shoulder and popped up in the air. I was standing there and I looked down and the puck was right on the line. I just tapped it in.
