No. 6 Penn State Shutout by Michigan State, 2-0
For Immediate Press Release – Friday, November 8, 2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – No. 6 Penn State fired everything and then some at the Michigan State net, but couldn’t light the lamp as the Spartans earned the 2-0 shutout victory on Friday night in Big Ten Conference action at Pegula Ice Arena.
Penn State falls to 6-2-0 on the year and 2-1-0-0 in conference action with the loss while MSU improves to 3-4-0 this season and 1-0-0-0 in Big Ten play.
HOW IT HAPPENED
- After a scoreless opening twenty minutes, the Spartans broke the tie in the second period as Patrick Khodorenko slipped a puck past the right pad of PSU senior net-minder Peyton Jones (Langhorne, Pa.) thanks to a fortunate bounce of the end boards for the 1-0 advantage at 13:39 of the frame.
- Michigan State then added an empty net goal for the final score as Logan Lambdin tapped home a bouncing puck at 17:58 of the third period for the 2-0 victory.
GOALTENDING
- Jones was strong again stopping 22 shots, but falls to 6-1-0 on the year with the setback.
- Spartan goaltender John Lethemon had a career night between the pipes for the visitors stopping all 48 shots fired in his direction, a new career-high.
GADOWSKY POSTGAME
Opening Statement:
“Look, I really liked a lot of things that happened tonight from our standpoint. You got to give Michigan State a lot of credit for playing a great road game and [for] a great win. I got to tell you, I thought we played very, very well.”
Q: What’s your message to your team after the first period, which you dominated in?
A: I think it’s a little bit of a mental toughness thing not to say ‘Oh geez, we’re flying.’ I don’t think the guys relaxed. We had 19 shots in the second, too. Look, we did a lot of really good things. Obviously, Lethemon was fantastic. You got to give their defense credit, but it’s hard to be disappointed after that. It really is. That’s hockey.
Part of the message after the game was not to be frustrated and to say we got to change some things because I thought we did a lot of things really, really well. Obviously, we’d like to have a couple chances back to bury some that we didn’t but all in all I thought we played very well. They obviously played great defensively and that’s hockey. But I would rather you see what you saw tonight than squeaking one out like we did against Sacred Heart, playing really poorly in the third. So that’s how we feel as a coaching staff.
Q: Obviously you guys had no penalties. That’s pretty impressive. What do you say to your team?
A: Up to today, [Michigan State has] scored 47% of their goals on the power play. And I thought our guys did a really good job of playing hard without getting in the box and you got to feel really good about that. Like I said, there’s a lot of things, that’s one of them, that we should be really happy with. We just didn’t, in the end, win the game. But as a coaching staff, I got to tell you, we’re pretty happy.
NOTES
- Penn State held the commanding 48-24 edge in shots, but went 0-for-4 with the man-advantage including a full 2-minute 5-on-3 advantage early in the second period.
- The Nittany Lions didn’t commit a single penalty all game for the first time since a 5-3 loss at Notre Dame on November 10, 2017.
- Michigan State had an eye-popping 31 blocked shots while Penn State had 10.
- The Nittany Lions fall to 13-10-4 all-time against Michigan State, 7-3-3 on home ice.
- This marks just the third time in program history Penn State has been shutout at Pegula Ice Arena, but the second time this season after not being shutout during the entire 2018-19 campaign.
NEXT UP
Both teams return to Pegula tomorrow evening to conclude the two-game series as Penn State closes out its season opening nine-game homestand with a 6 p.m. puck drop.