Spartans Back to Back GLI Champions

The Spartans took care of business in Grand Rapids by becoming the first back to back tournament champions since 2014-2015. The McGuiness Cup will be back at Munn for another year.

MSU played exactly as they should have on Sunday night, defeating Ferris State 5-2. Two goals came from GLI tournament MVP, Charlie Stramel with additional goals from Romani, Männistö, and Burke. The Spartans did a nice job of limiting penalties and wearing down the Bulldogs. With it 4-0 with 15 minutes left in the second, the Spartans were clearly the better team on the ice and eased their way to victory.

The title game against Michigan Tech started out a bit tighter as both teams went into the first intermission tied at 0. MSU found its stride in the second as Romani and Stramel both found the back of the net. Stramel connected again early in the third to put MSU up 3-0. Männistö scored the fourth on an empty netter to end the game. Tech did a nice job of making MSU work the whole ice in the first period but they just could not sustain that type of play for the full game. Going up 2-0 in the second really seemed to take some of the life out of Tech. MSU did a great job of staying out of the box having only three penalties for 6 minutes.

It was nice to see the team come back strong after time off for the holidays and with important pieces playing in the World Juniors. Stramel continues to have himself quite a year and may be the best player on the ice for MSU now for the past couple of months. Nightingale has said all year this team hasn’t won anything together and now they finally have. There are obviously a handful of other trophies this team would like to win together still to come. January 4 the Spartans have an exhibition against US National Development Team before they head to tough matchups against Ohio State, Wisconsin and then home against Minnesota and then back on the road to Penn State. January is quite a B1G gauntlet and to win the conference they are going to need to dominate in January. There is still a lot more this team has that we haven’t seen yet and let’s hope the potential gets fully unlocked and the Spartans get hot at the best time.

Congrats to the Spartans who made the All tournament team: Anthony Romani, Charlie Stramel, Patrick Geary, Trey Augustine. Let’s not forget the Tournament MVP, Charlie Stramel.