Referee Brian Aaron drops the puck between the Spartans' Chris Mueller and the Nanooks' Curtis Fraser.

MSU defenseman Ryan Turek doubles back toward a puck behind the net

Tim Crowder keeps an eye on the play.

The Nanooks' Tyler Eckford gets in position to defend as the Spartans break out.

The Spartan pep band was in fine form on Friday night.

Jeff Lerg gets a refreshing sip from his water bottle.

Darcy Campbell skates in for the Nanooks.

The Spartan student section was appreciative of their team's effort.

I think this guy could be the next Matt McConnell, how about you?

Or perhaps one of these guys, who danced to "Can't Turn You Loose" when it was played over the PA in the third.

Lest anyone forget...

Justin Binab heads back to get the puck after the Spartans dump it in.

The Spartans' Jeff Dunne calls for the puck.

Wylie Rogers gets himself out of harm's way as Nick Sucharski and Nathan Fornataro get tangled up.

Rogers has a conversation with one of the officials before play resumes.

Crowder waits for the puck on a faceoff.

Fornataro and Sucharski manage to find one another again.

The Spartans celebrate Justin Abdelkader's game-tying goal in the third period.

For the record, as things stand now, the following players have been disqualified for tomorrow night's contest: Brandon Gentile and Chris Lawrence of the Spartans, and TJ Campbell and Ryan Muspratt of the Nanooks. However, the officials do have the ability to review the postgame extracurriculars using video and change the ruling, which they very well may, since it was the Nanooks' Justin Binab fighting with Gentile as I originally reported.

While we're on the fight, rough play in front of the net - which I think anyone who was here tonight can vouch for - started the whole thing. "I thought they took liberties at our goaltender," Nanooks head coach Tavis MacMillan said. "They ran our goaltender at least three times, and I just told [MSU head coach Rick Comley] that they don't want to play that game.You can't run other teams' goalies. He should know that, they've got one of the best goalies in the country. They can't play a game where you go running the goaltender all the time. I told him that, and he took exception to it. One of their players, I think it was [Tyler] Howells, grabbed me by my shoulder, and one of our players didn't like their coach being grabbed."

Now, I like Coach MacMillan, and I'm certainly not going to call him a liar. However, we watched the highlights from the game on the local news here in the Munn press box, and the most there could have been between Howells and MacMillan before the brawl started was some incidental contact, and I'm not even sure about that, because the camera angle didn't quite tell all. It did show MacMillan's shoulders, though, and I didn't see Howells's glove anywhere near them. However, in the heat of the moment, things can be remembered differently without any ill intent on anyone's part, and it's certainly possible that whatever incidental contact there may have been between Howells and MacMillan was misinterpreted by whichever of the Nanooks went after Howells.

Comley was quick to defend his senior forward, one of the assistant captains for the Spartans. "I was right there," Comley said. "I certainly did not see that."

He also wasn't too happy with the way MacMillan addressed him after the game. "Coaches don't need to start going after each other after the game," Comley said. "That was unfortunate, and it's not good for college hockey. It shouldn't be in college hockey, and it's got to be handled properly."

However, like his Nanook counterpart, Comley points back to rough play around the net as the root of the problem. "There was too much traffic about the net at both ends," Comley said. "He doesn't advocate running goalies, I don't advocate running goalies. It wasn't that goalies were run, there was just too much traffic around, and the referee's got to step in and eliminate that, and I thought the referee didn't tonight, both ways."

I felt the same way, as you can see looking back at my previous post, but speaking of goalies, according to Spartan netminder Jeff Lerg, they were off to the side having a polite conversation while the madness ensued. Lerg, apparently, was complimenting Wylie Rogers on his pads. Personally, I don't think those pads are anything special, not like some of what I've seen in the women's game lately ("lately" being a relative term; I haven't seen a women's hockey game in a month).

Oh yeah, there was a hockey game played here tonight. It's kind of like the old Henny Youngman line: "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out." In this case, it was a hockey game that Comley was very glad to see his team win.

"It was a very hard fought game," Comley said. "They're a tough team to play against. I thought they played pretty well. We didn't have real good jump, but we hung around, and then Ab got a big goal. We had to kill a penalty at the beginning of overtime, and we got a big goal in overtime to get a great win."

"It was a great game," MacMillan agreed. "I really sound like a broken record right now, because that's three out of our last four games that we've got a 2-1 lead in the third and lost. Our kids are playing hard, they're playing well, but we just had opportunities that we're just missing one or two guys to make that play or score that goal to put teams away. We've got to find a way to win."

For Michigan State, the way to win was to see that Tim Kennedy had the puck in crunch time. "He's our best player," Comley said, "and you need him to come through at a time like that."

MacMillan wasn't about to disagree. "He's such a skilled player," the Nanooks coach said of Kennedy. "If you could have said, 'Who do you not want to roll off the wall with the puck into the slot?' I would have said, 'Well, Kennedy and Lerg I don't want to do that," and sure enough I looked up and it was Kennedy. He's scored some big goals against us in this building that have hurt us in the past, and that's what big time players do. They score goals like that."

As for my overall thoughts, I liked both teams, and this was definitely one of the better games I've seen this season (Maine-Vermont and St. Cloud-Vermont are still higher up, though). Michigan State was being a bit too fancy tonight, especially in the second period when they only attempted four shots, but I liked a lot of what I saw from them early on. The Nanooks have some good skill players - and Knelsen is going to be an awesome force for the Nanooks once he matures a bit more physically - but it's like MacMillan said they're a couple of guys short.

Alright, folks, that's it for tonight. See you tomorrow, starting at 3:30, for another two games as the Rink Rat tours Michigan.

Good night from East Lansing!