Sports

GVL / Brian B. Sevald
Jeremy Christopher handles the puck behind the Wright State goal during the game on Friday.

Laker icers swept by No. 1 Spartans

By Greg Monahan
GVL Staff Writer
2/7/2010

Facing a top-ranked in-state opponent, the Grand Valley State University men's hockey team knew a sweep could have given them a birth into this year's national tournament. Yet in the end, the Lakers were the ones who were swept.

Skating against Michigan State University, the American College Hockey Association's top-ranked team in the Central region, the third-ranked Lakers found themselves in the midst of a pivotal weekend.

In the ACHA, the top two ranked teams in each region get an automatic berth into the national tournament. With two wins the Lakers would likely leapfrog the Spartans and find themselves in position to stamp their ticket to Connecticut for nationals.

But after a 6-4 loss on Friday followed by a 4-3 loss at home on Saturday, the Lakers were left searching for answers.

"I really don't know what went wrong," said senior forward Ryan Altom. "We couldn't seem to get things going. It's frustrating. Our offense struggled, and we turned the puck over way too much in our own zone and in the neutral zone, and it seemed to hurt us every time we did it."

The two losses for the Lakers upped their losing streak to three games, the first time the Lakers have lost three straight this season.

"We've been in a funk lately," said senior goalie Grant Lyon. "The boys have made some bad turnovers. Goaltending- personally I don't think I played that well this weekend, and our intensity was way down. I think we played down to their level - they didn't bring their 'A' effort this weekend and we could have trounced them, but we didn't bring the intensity to match theirs."

Ending a grueling month-long stretch of the team's season that has seen the Division II club play two Division I teams along with the first- and second-ranked Division II teams, head hockey coach Mike Forbes said plenty more is still in store for the Lakers.

"It has been a tough part of our season," he said. "Even going back to the start of the winter semester, playing two games back-to-back with Adrian, then playing Oakland, this has been a very, very tough, very, very physically demanding stretch for us, and there's no getting away from that. There may be a sigh of relief in the fact that's behind us, but we've got harder work ahead of us.

With the losses to MSU, the Lakers will have to go through a regional tournament to advance to the national tournament, something Forbes said may be a blessing in disguise for the Lakers.

"The old adage is to be careful what you wish for," Forbes said. "There's always been a part of me that thought this team needs to play through regionals to have success. If we get time off, we have a difficult time getting started again, and for us to have two weeks off going into nationals I think it'd be very difficult. The bottom line is we need to win two hockey games."

The Lakers will play four home games the next two weekends before the regional tournament. This weekend's matchup is against the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Puck drops at 9 p.m. on Friday and 8 p.m. the following evening.

gmonahan@lanthorn.com

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