Penn State trying to end hockey skid at Minnesota

The Penn State men’s hockey team is in unfamiliarity territory.

For the first time this season, the Nittany Lions heads into a weekend on a losing streak.

Making the task even tougher, they have to get things figured out at Mariucci Arena, a rink at which many a team has struggled to win.

On the heels of three straight losses, No. 16 Penn State (16-7-3, 6-4 Big Ten) pays a visit to conference co-leader Minnesota (13-12, 8-2).

The Nittany Lions have been on a high most of the season, but trying to regain their edge on the road in the Big Ten will provide one of the toughest tests of the year.

“It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of attitude we come in with,” coach Guy Gadowsky said Monday. “It’s always easy to say we maintain pretty even keel when things are going well. Now it’s a matter of us to try to maintain that keel even though things didn’t go well (last) weekend.”

Penn State was swept by No. 5 Michigan, the conference’s other co-leader, last weekend, and the prospect of winning at the Golden Gophers’ home arena, where the Lions are 0-4, adds to the challenge.

“It could be a positive,” Gadowsky said. “There are a few things that are easily identified that we have to improve on, because of the weekend we had. You have it, you identify it — no better team to see how you do.”

The Gophers and Wolverines are tied, six points ahead of third-place Penn State.

Perhaps this is a good time to be making the trip to Minneapolis, however. Minnesota is just 7-6 at home this year, and dropped a pair of non-conference games there last weekend.

The last meeting with the Gophers is also pretty fresh in their minds, with a split at Pegula Ice Arena just four weeks ago. Penn State won 3-2 in overtime, then had a bad night in a 7-1 loss the following day.

For most of the season, the Nittany Lions have enjoyed piles of praise from near and far as they climbed the national rankings and sat among the Division I statistical leaders in a number of categories. It’s not a bad ride for a roster that has as many freshmen as seniors (8).

But with this latest rocky stretch, it’s been up to the elder statesmen in the locker room, maybe more than the coaches, to make sure this team doesn’t get mired in the struggles.

“Even when we were winning a lot, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, we’re the best,’ ” freshman forward Chase Berger said. “Now we’ve lost a couple games, but it’s kind of the same mentality it’s been all year: Come to the rink, have fun and try to get better.”

Berger ticked off a number of important facets of their game that will help the Lions earn a good weekend, including maintaining control of the puck. They will need to press hard into the Gophers’ end, get the puck behind the defense and keep it away from the Minnesota forwards as best as they can if they want to find success.

Even if the Nittany Lions are in an unusual situation this week, it’s a necessary growth point to get the program ready for bigger goals.

“Whether you sweep on the road and are coming off (the wins) and you’re up here,” Gadowsky said, holding his hand near the top of his head. “Or you get swept and you’re down here, you’re really — it’s going to be our job to maintain the same focus.”

It’s also the latest challenge in a tough final stretch of the season. The Nittany Lions are halfway through the Big Ten schedule, and four of the final five series are away from home. They took care of the first half nearly as best as they could, and they have known all year how the season was scheduled to end.

“We (were) going to have to do a really good job in the first half of the year, and the guys did that,” Gadowsky said. “Now it sets us up to, if we can have a battle on the road and have success, that we can have a tremendous finish.”

This story was originally published February 4, 2016 at 10:32 PM with the headline "Penn State trying to end hockey skid at Minnesota."