Pioneers hit road for weekend series against Michigan State
Which Denver Pioneers will show up against Michigan State on Friday and Saturday?
The DU team that opened the season with losses to Ohio State and Boston College at home in the Ice Breaker tournament, or the team that impressively swept two games from nationally secondranked Boston University at Magness Arena last weekend? The sweep enabled DU to climb back to No. 6 in the national rankings.
Michigan State is 0-2 after 6-1 and 7-3 losses on the road at Lake Superior State last wekend. The DU-MSU games at Munn Ice Arena in East Lansing are set for 5:05 p.m. Friday and 3:05 p.m. Saturday. Before the Friday night game, MSU will honor former Spartans coach Ron Mason, who died at age 76 in June.
“We’ve been talking about how we prepared and how everyone thought we were bad after our first weekend,” DU coach Jim Montgomery said this week. “We really respected our opponent (BU), and we had success. Michigan State’s going through the same thing right now. They fear and respect us, I assume, and we’re going to see their best Friday night. It’s their home opener and they have a lot of young freshmen defensemen and forwards who are going to be excited about playing their first collegiate game at home.”
This will be the Pioneers’ final warm-up for the National Collegiate Hockey Conference season, and DU opens league play with a two-game set against Western Michigan on Oct. 28-29 at Magness Arena.
“This series, I’m not sure how much it’s going to help us,” Montgomery said. “I just know it can hurt us, and we have to be able to play so it doesn’t hurt us. … I don’t know how good we are. We’re Jekyll and Hyde right now, but I’m hoping that in the first opportunity to play on the road, we’re going to be coming out and playing on our toes and getting after it and having that togetherness feeling that it’s us against the world, instead of waiting for things to happen.”
Montgomery said Tanner Jaillet, who has played in three of the four DU games, would get the start in net Friday night.