Last weekend, the Wildcats decided to take a minor test, a quiz if you will, during its season-opening exhibition game against the U.S. National Team Development Program Under-18 team, a program that is notorious for upsetting college teams.

The Wildcats held on in that game 4-3 as they stopped a late charge by the U-18s, but now the real test begins as Big Ten foe Michigan State comes to Marquette.

NMU split a series with the Spartans to start the season last year in East Lansing, and Wildcats head coach Grant Potulny is expecting more of the same from MSU this weekend.

“I had a chance to watch them last night in an exhibition game (MSU beat Western Ontario),” he said Tuesday. “They’re a lot like us. They’re much deeper than they’ve ever been.

Northern Michigan University’s Denver Pierce, right, waits in front of Michigan State goalie John Lethemon for a play to develop in a game from Oct. 12, 2018, in East Lansing. (Photo courtesy Kevin Ware)

“They do have two returning goalies that have both played. Top line is good. They have (Mitchell) Lewandowski and (Patrick) Khodorenko still. (Taro) Hirose is gone (with the Red Wings), but they’ve got a freshman from Switzerland (Nicolas Muller), who looks like he’s going to be a really good player. They plugged him in there. And their top four ‘D’ (defensemen) are good.

“They play hard and it’s going to be a challenge. They’ve got experience playing against some of the best teams in the country week in and week out.

“I do think we’re going to have to worry a lot about us this week, which we do typically, but it’s early in the year. There’s just not enough of a sample size to know what they really do well, or areas where maybe you might have some success. You kind of focus on what you could do well and what you do well.”

Potulny may know what the Spartans will bring to town, but there’s still question marks surrounding his own team. The most obvious involves the goaltenders.

Longtime Wildcats netminder Atte Tolvanen is now playing professionally in his native Finland, so NMU is left with two untested goalies this year in Nolan Kent, who played less than 14 minutes last year, and John Hawthorne. Both of them played last week against the U18 team and combined for 25 saves, so Potulny isn’t sure who is going to start this weekend or whether they’ll split time in net with one playing Friday and the other on Saturday.

Grant Potulny

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I don’t know that. I do have to get both in early. It’s important that those guys get a chance to play and it’s important that they play at home. It’s important they play on the road, because once you kind of get into your conference schedule, which is not too far away, you want to make sure that you know you’re going with. And if you don’t know, that’s OK.

“I’ve been on teams that played for a national championship against a team that was rotating goalies all year. I’d love to do that because it means they’re both playing great.”

The other big question lies with special teams. Since the Wildcats have only played an exhibition game, Potulny hasn’t had a clear assessment yet of how his team performed. But he does like how the penalty kill looked on Saturday.

“Penalty kill looked good,” he said. “They had good practice and did a really nice job. That’s another thing. You think about (former players Adam) Rockwood and (Troy) Loggins and (Denver) Pierce and some of the guys offensively, they were the best penalty killers we had. So that’s an important role.

“We’ve got some different guys who can go in there. (Joe) Nardi and (Griffin) Loughran have done it in the past. I thought (Ty) Readman did a nice job and (Andre) Ghantous and (Garrett) Klee did a nice job. The penalty killing, I thought, was good.

“The power play is tough to tell. We’ve only had one power play and the other one was 25 seconds. It was disjointed. We did score on one, so you’re pleased with that. We’ve just got to execute.”

Overall, though, Potulny liked what he saw last week and said the emphasis right now is to create more shots and focus on getting the puck on net.

“I actually was pleased by it,” he said. “I thought the young guys played well. Over the course of the summer, as the coaching staff, you have to continue to try to get better. We ask our players to get better, so it’s our job to get them in better spots and get their focus where it needs to be.

“When you look at all the statistical categories, the one area that we have not been good enough in is shots. If you think back to the previous couple of years, the goals we scored, a lot of them were highlight reel-type goals.

“We need to get in a position where we generate more shots and we are scoring more goals around the net. Two of the goals I thought were a direct result of that. Ty had a rebound goal and (Grant) Loven had one where he just put it on net. So I was pleased with the shots, we had 39 shots. Kind of all things offensively, I thought we played pretty well.”

The puck drops at 7 p.m. Friday and 6 p.m. Saturday at the Berry Events Center.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.