Sports: MSU Icers Repeat as CCHA Champs

MSU repeat as CCHA champions while receiving a No. 2 national ranking towards season's end.

             Michigan State's 1998-99 hockey team--picked third in the CCHA in the preseason--snuck up on its conference foes and claimed the regular-season championship with four games left on the schedule. Actually, the title seemed to sneak up on the Spartans. MSU clinched its second consecutive championship with a 3-1 win over Michigan Feb. 20 at Joe Louis Arena, but didn't know it until they found out that last-place Alaska Fairbanks had defeated Ohio State in Columbus. The Spartans now could not be caught in the CCHA standings. But even after head coach Ron Mason got the OSU score from a radio station and gave the team the news, he wasn't sure he believed it. 'We told the guys, and they all sang the fight song,' said Mason of the scene in the Spartans' bus outside Joe Louis Arena. 'But then we were thinking that sometimes they get the score wrong. We grabbed a cell phone and started calling just to get it confirmed.'

            Sure enough, MSU had earned its back-to-back regular-season titles, and its sixth CCHA crown overall.

            The Spartans did it with an impressive defense, a great stretch run and--most importantly, Mason says--an unselfish attitude. 'Things like blocking shots, getting the puck deep in the zone at the offensive blue line, that's what makes this team special,' Mason notes. 'I've had lots of championship teams over the years, but this may be the most unselfish team I think I've ever had.'

            That unselfishness began with the team captain, senior center Mike York. Already boasting offensive talents which are unmatched in the CCHA, York became a defensive devotee in 1998-99. York's defensive awareness reached the point where he led the CCHA in plus/minus rating (+28) and had only been on the ice once when an opponent had scored a five-on-five goal through the first 33 games. All of those skills made York, already the team's leading scorer with 17 goals and 21 assists (38 points) through 33 games, a candidate for Hobey Baker Award honors, given to the top college hockey player in the nation. A returning finalist for last year's award, he was considered one of a half-dozen solid candidates heading into the final balloting.

            York had support as well, and at the other end of the rink sophomore goaltender Joe Blackburn was showing he deserved consideration for postseason honors as well. Blackburn led the nation through 33 games in both goals-against average (1.36) and save percentage (.934) and was on pace to break both the MSU and CCHA single-season records in those categories.

             Blackburn received solid performances from the defensemen in front of him, notably seniors Chris Bogas and Jeff Kozakowski and junior Brad Hodgins and Mike Weaver. With the school's best defensive effort in terms of goals-against, the unselfish character of the team was clear.

            One incredible statistic late in the season was MSU's 12 goals scored on power plays against vs. 12 short-handed goals it has scored--leading to a net zero. 'That has never happened in college hockey that I know of,' says Mason.

            And the Spartans' goals--which included a CCHA playoff title and a run at the NCAA championships--were in focus as well.