EAST LANSING, Mich.<\/b> — When Michigan State junior defenseman Travis Walsh scored his first collegiate goal in his 81st game, he did more than record a personal milestone. <\/p>\n
According to Spartans’ coach Tom Anastos, the goal helped fuel the team en route to a 4-1 win over Ferris State and a split on the weekend with the ranked Bulldogs. <\/p>\n
“Scoring that goal was good for ‘Walshy’ because he hasn’t scored, and it was good for our team,” said Anastos. “I thought that was a real confidence boost.”<\/p>\n
Beginning with Walsh’s goal at 16:50 in the first, the Spartans scored three unanswered goals in a nine-minute span of play to take a 3-0 lead over Ferris State into the third period. <\/p>\n
With the Spartans cycling low, Walsh shot from the left circle and beat FSU senior goaltender C.J. Motte on the short side, and then at 18:08, Mackenzie MacEachern picked up Brent Darnell’s rebounded shot for the 2-0 Michigan State lead.<\/p>\n
At 5:50 in the second, Villiam Haag netted his first of the season for Michigan State when he took a cross-crease feed from J.T. Stenglein. <\/p>\n
Motte had quite a workout in the game and the weekend, stopping 31 shots tonight and 36 in Friday’s 1-0 Ferris State shutout. <\/p>\n
“He played fine,” said FSU coach Bob Daniels. “He played well all weekend, and he has played well all year.”<\/p>\n
Daniels said that the issue for the Bulldogs was puck possession. <\/p>\n
“I thought we were hemmed in a lot,” Daniels explained. “I thought we spent a lot of time in our end of the rink. I thought we did last night, too, more than I’d like to see. I thought as the game went on, though, we got better at that. I thought we got more engaged and I thought we spent less time in our end and consequently, we started drawing some penalties. Actually, I was optimistic in the second and third period in how we played.”<\/p>\n
At 4:17 in the third, Justin Buzzeo scored to cut the Spartans’ lead to two, but at 13:20, Matt Berry’s power-play goal cancelled any momentum the Bulldogs may have gained from Buzzeo’s goal. <\/p>\n
“I thought it was probably our best game of the season, and I thought we played pretty well last night,” said Anastos. “What I liked as much as the play and the result tonight was that I thought our guys came in very business-like today and believed in each other and in the process of getting better and stayed with it. <\/p>\n
“I think coming out of the weekend, there’s a lot of growth in our team, and that was a positive. Very positive weekend, even though I would have loved to have two wins.”<\/p>\n
Daniels, too, saw a lot of pluses from the split. <\/p>\n
“As long as we’re developing opportunities and chances and I thought the power play looked better tonight than it has in a while,” said Daniels. “We didn’t capitalize on it, but I thought we had the possession in zone, we had some time, we had some shots, but didn’t convert on them. <\/p>\n
“We’re 3-4, so we’re not overly excited about that, but by the same token, I like what I see.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
EAST LANSING, Mich. — When Michigan State junior defenseman Travis Walsh scored his first collegiate goal in his 81st game, he did more than record a personal milestone. According to Spartans’ coach Tom Anastos, the goal helped fuel the team en route to a 4-1 win over Ferris State and a split on the weekend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19483,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19482\/revisions\/19483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19482"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}