Michigan State Hockey News: Spartans land high-scoring forward Miroslav Mucha and more

Michigan State hockey has officially added Slovakian forward Miroslav Mucha from Lake Superior State University. Additionally, MSU announced its addition of Zach Dubinsky, a forward out of Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute, as well.

There was some confusion since Mucha entered the portal following the May 1 deadline. He officially entered his name on May 13. The rule explicitly states that a player cannot enter the portal after the deadline unless there is a coaching change or if a program pulls a player’s financial aid.

According to College Hockey Insider’s Mike McMahon, Mucha is a graduate transfer and graduated from Lake Superior State last week. In McMahon’s daily college hockey newsletter (which anyone interested in college hockey should absolutely sign up for), he says three sources gave him conflicting information about the NCAA’s May 1 rule.

Two sources said that Mucha would have needed to be in the portal on May 1 regardless if he was a grad transfer or not. A third said the rule may not apply since he is a grad transfer.

It’s possible that the NCAA could have also quickly approved his transfer request. Regardless, the news that Michigan State has landed Mucha is very exciting.

At Lake Superior State last season, Mucha led his team in games played (all 37 of them) and was second on his team in points (35), averaging nearly one point per game. While he may not have had a ton of goals last season (10), he’s good at setting up his teammates up for scoring chances. He had a plus-minus of plus-five (+5) last season.

Here is a clip of what Mucha can do:

Mucha is the type of forward that Michigan State desperately lacks. While the Spartans have defenseman who created scoring opportunities last season (David Gucciardi, Dennis Cesana), Mitchell Lewandowski was the only one who was creating any chances on offense.

Both Lewandowski and Cesana have moved on from the program now.

As for Dubinsky, the public has known about his transfer since early April, as this article from The State News illustrates. But Michigan State has paired the Mucha announcement along with Dubinsky.

MSU announced that Adam Nightingale would be its new head coach earlier this month. The Spartans were the focus of McMahon’s newsletter Friday, which also gave updates to Nightingale’s search for a staff.

According to McMahon, names involved in the search include UMass associate head coach Jared DeMichiel and U.S. National Development Team director of hockey operations Kevin Reiter. Apparently they’ve also spoken to Lake Superior State associate head coach Mike York (an MSU alum) and Winnipeg Jets scout Brian Renfrew (former MSU associate head coach) as well.

Reiter has been with the Team USA National Team Development Program since 2013 and was a finalist for the Penn State gig last year.

Lastly in this round of hockey news, Michigan State has officially cut ties with forward Griffin Loughran. As a junior last season, Loughran appeared in 22 games last season (and had 12 points) before he was suspended for not meeting academic standards.