EAST LANSING — You had to be there. No really, you had to be there at Munn Ice Arena on Friday night. Unless you have the BTN-plus streaming service.
Those were the only two ways to see what was a fantastic battle between No. 1 Michigan State and No. 3 Penn State, a game full of skill and first-round NHL draft picks, a game with late-season intensity being played out in November, with an overtime winner by one of the least-heralded players on the ice giving the Spartans a 2-1 victory.
They’ll do it again at 4 p.m. Saturday. Again, you’ll have to be there at Munn or have BTN-plus, which is worth subscribing to, by the way, if you regularly enjoy watching a number of MSU and Big Ten sports outside of men’s basketball and football. But this hockey game deserved a bigger audience, a more general audience, a Big Ten Network audience.
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This game was almost entirely why Big Ten hockey exists — quality Friday night programming, two high-ranked opponents with big-time NHL prospects for the marquee, only able to happen as a Big Ten game because Penn State added ice hockey in 2012, giving the Big Ten enough teams to officially be a conference in the sport.
The thing is, a major reason why Big Ten hockey became its own league — which destabilized and threatened the rest of college hockey — was so the Big Ten Network would have more Friday night programming, even though those involved in the old CCHA and WCHA offered to make sure there were always Big Ten teams from their leagues playing each other on Fridays when BTN wanted hockey in primetime.
I wonder if the Big Ten and BTN had known then what they do now — that volleyball and wrestling often do better in the TV ratings than hockey, and that men’s basketball would be available for Friday night broadcasts — if Big Ten hockey would exist as a hockey conference today. I think MSU, Michigan and Ohio State might still be the CCHA, with Minnesota and Wisconsin in the WCHA, and Penn State somewhere, perhaps out east.
A lot of folks wanted that. That was a better and more financially sustainable situation for most of college hockey, which is a smaller community, with just 64 Division I teams, a community that used to look after itself. The Big Ten pulling out of the CCHA and WCHA was a self-serving move that threatened the sport collectively. It also took a while for it to benefit the Big Ten programs. The league, as a hockey conference, has finally become a seven-team behemoth (including Notre Dame), taking advantage of superior resources, but some of the early years were bleak. And the Big Ten teams would have been fine staying in their old leagues, with some classic hockey-only rivalries.
The MSU-Penn State hockey clash Friday night was relegated to BTN-plus because of BTN’s “men’s basketball contractual obligations,” according to a BTN spokesperson. Ohio State vs. Fort Wayne at 6:30 p.m. and Wisconsin vs. Northern Illinois at 8:30 (ET) were the obligations. And, to be fair to BTN, both of those contests might have drawn more eyeballs than MSU-Penn State hockey would have, even if the number of actual folks paying attention to Ohio State and Northern Illinois basketball this time of year, or Fort Wayne basketball any time of year, is debatable.
The is no debate that MSU-Penn State on the ice was better entertainment than Ohio State’s 94-68 win over Fort Wayne or Wisconsin’s 97-72 drubbing of Northern Illinois. From a quality of programming standpoint, from a showcasing your marquee events and athletes, BTN’s men’s basketball contractual obligations — without flexibility — are a miss.
Saturday night’s MSU-Penn State hockey game being on BTN-plus is more understandable and more of an MSU issue. It’s a football Saturday and, per BTN, the network’s window for hockey was 8 p.m. Problem is, MSU men’s basketball team hosts Arkansas across the street at 7 p.m., so MSU hockey was moved to 4 p.m., which is when Washington at Wisconsin football is on BTN. Nothing to be done about that — though if you want to get a rise out of Tom Izzo, tell him his tipoff time Saturday is messing with the number of people that get to watch MSU’s top-ranked hockey program this weekend. Izzo loves MSU hockey. Has since his days as an assistant coach in the 1980s. He was at the hockey game Friday. He’d probably try to move his game to 11 p.m. and have it shown on PASS Sports, just so hockey could get its due.
College hockey is a great sport — especially at the level MSU and Penn State are playing it. More people would realize it if they saw it. Getting them to care is a challenge. Big Ten hockey suffers from only having six of its 18 schools playing the sport. Hockey doesn’t get the casual viewership of the other 12 curious fan bases the way some other sports do.
“We went up to BU (Boston University and played on ESPN2 in October) and I think that twas the most-viewed (college hockey) game since 2018,” Adam Nightingale said. “I think that’s a pretty good sign for college hockey. Obviously, at the end of the day, these networks have to make decisions. It comes down to dollars and cents. I think anyone who’s exposed to college hockey knows how great of a product it is. I think the more we can expose it, the more people will get addicted to it a little bit, because I think it is an addicting sport. But that’s above my pay grade.”
This MSU-Penn State series is a series that’s worth prioritizing, if the Big Ten is going to be in the business of hockey.
MORE: Couch: Inside Adam and Kristin Nightingale’s wild ride back to East Lansing to lead Michigan State hockey
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.