Third Spartan in program history to win the honor
While the Frozen Four kicked off this past weekend, congrats to Western Michigan on their first title, it was also awards time as the top players in NCAA hockey were recognized.
The Hobey Baker award is presented to the top NCAA men’s ice hockey player of the year. This year, Isaac Howard was able to add his name to the list of greats. Howard has spent the past season racking up all sorts of accolades. Howard finished the year with 26 goals and 52 points, both career highs. He finished in the top five nationally in all major statistics. He was the B1G Tournament MVP, B1G player of the year and first team All-B1G honors.
The best news is all this production is coming back to E.L. this fall after Howard decided not to turn pro. Howard joined Barstool Sports’ hockey spin-off podcast, “Game Notes,” an extension of the award-winning “Spittin’ Chiclets” podcast with Mike Grinnell and former NHL draft pick, Matt Murley in St. Louis this past weekend and shed some light on to his decision to return. “I don’t want to get into it too much, I just feel like with me and Tampa, we didn’t see eye-to-eye the same way as I thought maybe we would.” Howard said, “It wasn’t a situation where I was demanding to step right into the NHL, it wasn’t anything like that, but it just didn’t necessarily work out and coming back to Michigan State is unreal.” “It’s just a fun like unique opportunity,” Howard said. “College is a special time of your life and I’ve absolutely loved that at Michigan State. We want to win that national championship, that’s our goal, would there be a better place to win it than Las Vegas? I don’t think so, so we might as well go and do it.” He also mentioned Augustine’s decision to return fired him up knowing there was going to be a wall back in net when he could have easily turned pro too. Listen to the interview here .
MSU hockey may have had a crushing end to the season but what a season it was. Nightingale has turned this program around and next year this is going to be perhaps the most promising athletic team on campus with nothing less than a title in their sights.