Spartans score five in season-opening win over UMass
By Nick Barnowski –
EAST LANSING – It took the Michigan State Spartans four games to score five goals last season.
This season, it took just one.
Senior Matt Berry (Canton) and sophomore Mackenzie MacEachern (Troy) led the offensive attack for the Spartans, who beat Massachusetts by a score of 5-3 in Friday night’s home opener at Munn.
Berry scored twice and added an assist while MacEachern had one goal and two assists.
“Yeah, it felt good for us to put some goals on the board tonight,” Berry said. “We worked really hard as a team, I thought, and just got lucky I guess to get some goals.”
Berry led off the scoring for MSU. Just 3:37 into the first period, the Canton native tipped a Michael Ferrantino (Plymouth) shot past UMass goalie Steve Mastalerz to give MSU its first goal of the season.
Ferrantino then set up JT Stenglein’s goal later in the first for his second assist of the night.
Despite scoring twice, the first period wasn’t easy for the Spartans. A little more than eight minutes in, senior Brent Darnell (Canton) received a five-minute major and a game misconduct for checking from behind. MSU killed off the ensuing power play and entered intermission with a 2-0 lead while being outshot 11-6.
UMass scored two goals on MSU goalie Jake Hildebrand to open the second period, but MacEachern countered on the power play to give the Spartans the lead again. The Troy native beat Mastalerz with an odd-angle shot from the right side for his first goal of the season.
“It’s huge, we scored five goals and I think our average last year was 2.5, so it’s definitely good to get the ball rolling right away,” MacEachern said of the offensive output. “Hopefully it will continue throughout the year.”
Matt DeBlouw (Chesterfield) got on the scoresheet with a wrist shot that rocketed past the UMass netminder early in the third. Berry’s second of the game and third point of the night came with just under 13 minutes left in the third.
“I thought it was a good start for us,” Spartans coach Tom Anastos said. “There were a lot of things that we liked, you know, we tried to pull some things together and be organized enough to play, finally. We saw some things that we’ve been working on, both offensively and defensively, and that was a good sign. It’s nice to see the puck go in the net, certainly a confidence boost both for the team and the guys that scored. There were parts of the game, in the third period we started to get away from the things we were doing to have success, so we’ll learn from that.”
Keith Burchett scored twice for the Minutemen with Zack LaRue adding the other.
Hildebrand made 21 saves on 24 shots while Mastalerz stopped 22 of 27.
The two teams will hit the ice again Saturday night in East Lansing with puck drop scheduled for 7 p.m.