In sweeping Lake Superior State at home last weekend, Michigan State has strung together a season-best five-game winning streak.Friday night, Bryan Lerg's goal 2:52 into overtime gave MSU a 3-2 victory.
"I think we have come together better as a team," said Lerg. "We were down by one after the first and we didn't panic at all. We knew that we had 40 more minutes to go out there and score some goals and we did that. If we relax and don't panic, we're in the game the whole time."
Josh Sim scored both Laker goals and LSSU goalie Pat Inglis made 37 saves.
"(Inglis) played good and he's been good all year for us," said Lake Superior State head coach Jim Roque. "He's a big kid and he battles hard. Obviously, as you can see I had no problem playing him in a situation like this."
Jeff Lerg (pictured) stopped 27 for the Spartans, who also got goals from Nick Sucharski and Justin Abdelkader.
Saturday night, Lerg turned aside 27 yet again in a 4-0 blanking of the Lakers. He was named CCHA Goaltender of the Week today as well.
Bryan Lerg, Jim McKenzie, Daniel Vukovic and Chris Mueller scored for MSU and Mike Ratchuk added a pair of assists.
"I just knew we needed to get the win and the points for conference reasons and for national reasons," said Jeff Lerg. "It was nice for Bryan to get the game-winning goal on his birthday and for us to give Coach another win on his birthday. It ended up being a nice weekend for all of us."
Jeff Jakaitis made 26 stops for LSSU.
"We had some chances in the first where we were right in front of the net and we couldn't get it over Jeff Lerg," said Roque. "That could've given us the lead and instead they came out of the first period with the lead. We're just struggling with confidence, but we're playing hard, and our guys want to win and they're trying. I thought we played more controlled tonight and I thought we competed a bit better. We played hard but we're just not making good decisions with the puck right now."
The Spartans (16-8-1, 12-6-1 CCHA) are off this weekend, but will resume action Feb. 2-3 at Nebraska-Omaha.
Lake Superior State (13-10-3, 7-8-3 CCHA) hosts Ohio State for two this weekend.
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