Couch: For MSU hockey's seniors, this renaissance season has been a joy. They saw it coming right away.
EAST LANSING – The Michigan State hockey players who’ve endured the most over the years, the seniors, are the ones who probably knew it first — that this season would be different, that this team could compete in ways the program hadn’t in ages.
“I think that first week, in Bowling Green, I knew that this wasn't the same team or the same culture as before,” MSU senior forward Jagger Joshua said. “That second night (Oct. 8), when we dominated that whole game and finally got a couple (goals) at the end there … I thought about it on the bus ride back. ‘Last year, we were that Bowling Green team. We were that team that maybe scored one goal and was trying to hold on for the whole game.’ You could tell right from the get-go …”
From Day 1 in practice, even, Jagger said. Others realized it then, too.
“I knew it, just the way we competed,” senior Christian Krygier said. “I knew just walking out of the rink after the first day. I was like, ‘This is going to be a different year.’ ”
We all know it now. It’s in plain sight. The overall record (15-13-2). The Pairwise ranking (14th). The style of play under first-year coach Adam Nightingale and his staff. The response by MSU’s team the night or weekend after something goes wrong.
If the season ended today, the Spartans would be in the 16-team NCAA tournament field for the first time since 2012. They’re essentially in a four-way tie for second place in the seven-team Big Ten, a league with four teams in the top eight in the Pairwise Rankings, which largely determine the NCAA tournament field. MSU’s nine Big Ten wins include a sweep of No. 18 Notre Dame last weekend, two wins each against No. 5 Penn State and No. 8 Ohio State and one win over No. 4 Michigan, whom the Spartans host again Friday night in their final scheduled game at Munn Ice Arena this season.
Of course, if MSU finishes in the top four in the conference, they’ll host a first round Big Ten tournament series for the first time since Big Ten hockey became a thing a 10 years ago.
This is all new territory. Fun stuff for fans and for a group of seniors, who are no longer regularly raising their sticks to acknowledge the Spartan faithful at a half-empty Munn after another defeat. These days, Munn is buzzing and they can feel it.
RELATED: Couch: Michigan State hockey has Munn buzzing again, back on track for NCAA tourney bid
This senior class has some scars, especially the four who’ve put in four or more seasons — Jagger, Nicolas Muller and Christian and Cole Krygier. But they’ve also got a chance now at a legacy. An opportunity to be seen as the foundation of a new era, to be able to come back to Munn years from now with a sense of accomplishment.
“I've thought about that,” Cole Krygier said. “Obviously, since I've been here, we haven't had the opportunity (to reach the NCAA tournament). It would be really special. I couldn't imagine being there two, three years ago.”
“Me and Nico Muller, we came in together and I think that was one of our goals — we wanted to lay that foundation,” Jagger said. “I mean I committed to Michigan State in the dark days (before even Danton Cole was hired). I knew what I was getting myself into somewhat and I wanted to be the change. I wanted to be the cause and effect. So it was always my goal to be that piece.”
After last season, though, that goal was just about dead for Jagger, who didn’t see the program as the best fit for his development, and for Christian Krygier, who was in the transfer portal and ready to accept being separated from his twin brother.
“I think what a shame it would have really been to not be part of this,” Christian Krygier said, “like to spend four years here, to put so much work in and to be so invested in this city and in these people and this university and this team — to leave it short would have been really a shame. So I'm nothing but blessed to be back and to be able to experience it.”
The program’s rapid transformation is multi-layered, beginning with the energy and acumen of Nightingale and his on-ice staff, Jared DeMichiel, Mike Towns and Brad Fast. Some of it has been an infusion of new talent, including five graduate transfers — goalie Dylan St. Cyr and captain Miroslav Mucha among them — and several impact freshmen, notably forwards Karsen Dorwart and Daniel Russell, who are two of the team’s top three points leaders and are second and fourth, respectively, in goals scored. MSU's freshmen know only this version of Spartan hockey, which should benefit the program going forward. The seniors who’ve been around, they’ve seen another side of things.
“This year has been incredible, just having Nightingale come in and just change our team,” Cole Krygier said. “Like how we work, how we practice. I think the older guys have done a really good job, kind of carrying that pace and allowing the younger guys to be comfortable.
“In the past couple years I've been here, we just didn't have as good of a culture. Like guys would say, ‘Oh, like you're doing extra? Why?' Too cool to do it almost. That was kind of where we were at. This year, everyone's just here to work. ... It's hard transitioning into a new system, especially as a 22-year-old, 23-, 24-year-old guy. And obviously we're older, but we're still very young in development.”
Nightingale made that clear when he was hired that he thought even his most veteran players had room to grow. It’s showing on the ice. This senior class is full of guys having their best seasons. Jagger, for example, has 12 goals, four more than he had in the previous three seasons combined. He credits the addition of new strength and conditioning coach Will Morlock, along with the opportunity to be on the top line and the power-play unit.
Morlock’s name comes up a lot when you talk to MSU’s players. He’s got a parade of pros and prospects who work with him in the offseason, including St. Cyr before he even arrived at MSU.
“He’s been such a crucial part. And I don't think he gets enough credit for the work that he's done here,” St. Cyr said.
It was the sessions with Morlock last summer that first made Muller realize this could be a different type of season and group.
“It was so much harder,” Muller said. “And I think that’s what gets a group together, when you have to work really hard to get through some tough stuff (in conditioning). It gets you together. Thats when I thought it could be something special.”
Muller is another senior having his best season by a ways. His team-leading 25 points and 20 assists are both more than he had in his previous three seasons combined.
“I think the biggest key is I’ve been able to play with confidence and play with more joy on the ice. And that’s got me rolling, I guess,” Muller explained. “That comes from really hard work and building that confidence by doing things well in practice.”
Those practices, players says, are behind a lot of what’s transpired. A former MSU coach recently described one of the best features of a Nightingale practice as being how he constantly puts players in drills that force them to make decisions in tight areas. They also never stop.
“The biggest thing that we're doing different is using each other,” Christian Krygier said. “Like, we're competing harder against each other than we do against the other team, which can be a curse at the same time. But if you're on a team and you want to build a culture and you want to develop guys and create something, you have to do that.”
“I can say, my last four years here, every game I've been (exhausted),” Cole Krygier added. “I haven't been able to compete the whole game, I've been cramping up. This year, I can play 22, 23 minutes and not feel it. And I feel like the games are so much easier than practice. And that's why we're in the position we are.”
And perhaps why they struggled out of the gate after the holiday break.
“After those two weeks or 11 days off without team skates, I think that really hurt us,” Cole Krygier said. “We’d been in a rhythm where we're practicing super hard.”
Cole Krygier, like Jagger and Muller, is having a career year by a mile. His nine goals this season are one fewer than his total in his first four seasons altogether.
The other component that’s new is the degree in which they use video to analyze themselves.
“Even from practice,” Mucha, the Spartans’ graduate-transfer captain, said. “They break down every practice and watch clips with us, which I feel is a great way to learn, when you actually see what you did, because you know how you felt in that situation.”
Mucha has NCAA tournament experience (at Lake Superior State), like two other graduate transfers in St. Cyr (Quinnipiac and Notre Dame) and Michael Underwood (Clarkson). That brings value, at least in terms of coming from winning cultures.
For most of this senior class, however, this new territory. They're trying to leave their mark and have a remarkable experience with a program that’s been mired beneath mediocrity for a decade. And, for part of that time, with them in it.
There don’t appear to be any regrets.
“I have to look back on the last four years and think that’s going to help me in the future,” Christian Krygier said. “I think there's never struggle and not something good that comes from it. And the struggling that this program and the teams that I was on went through, I think that was all for the greater of this program.
“Those guys that played on those teams and contributed and worked hard and still kept the people in the building and still kept the life alive on the team are still a huge part of this organization.
“There was never a question here whether the guys were working hard or whether we wanted to win. I think it was just, to be a great, it takes special things. And as you can see, when you train special, when you do things in a special way, working harder and doing things that are different than other people, that's how you get success.”
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Michigan State hockey: MSU seniors saw renaissance season coming early
