The Spartans (17-12-4 overall, 12-10-3-2 CCHA) now have won four of their last five games and move past an idle Ohio State into fourth place in the CCHA standings with three games left to play.

“Well, it was a win and in the end, that was the most important thing tonight,” head coach Tom Anastos said. “We saw what we expected to see from Alaska. That’s a very good team. I thought their goaltender played great. They’re very difficult to play against and I didn’t think we had the jump — the emotional edge — that I was concerned about all week and you have to be able to hang in there.”

Alaska got the scoring going early on a goal by defenseman Scott Enders. With the Nanooks applying pressure in front of the net, Enders caught a pass on his stick from just inside the blue line and fired a wrist shot that found its way to the back of the net at 8:33 in the first period to go ahead, 1-0.

Later in the period, Darnell scored his first of two goals in the period to give MSU the lead. The first goal came on a rebound off a shot from sophomore defenseman Jake Chelios that was cleaned up and put in goal to tie the game, 1-1. Less than a minute later, junior defenseman Torey Krug tied up the Nanook defenders in front of the net and hit Darnell with a pass in front of the net for the goal to give MSU the 2-1 lead.

Darnell’s pair of goals gives him six for the season, in addition to giving the Spartans the lead heading into the first intermission.

“It was good to get on the board early,” Darnell said. “I know last weekend, our line had quite a few chances. It’s good to get one early and get some confidence going for us there.”

The Nanooks tied the game up at the 13:23 mark in the second period. Alaska forward Cody Kunyk fired a slap shot from the left point that got past sophomore goalie Will Yanakeff to knot the game once again.

The goal snapped a 22 consecutive penalty kill streak for the Spartans, who rank second in the nation in the category.

The Spartans had plenty of open looks to score in the third but couldn’t capitalize on the nine shots they had and played into overtime for the ninth time this season.

In overtime, Perlini intercepted a pass in the offensive zone and beat Nanook goalie Scott Greenham on a backhanded stealth shot past the left side of Greenham’s body to send the Spartans home with the victory and three points in the CCHA standings.

“I thought it was a hard effort by both teams tonight,” Perlini said. “I feel like they competed hard for 60 minutes. We had a little bit of a slow start tonight but in the third period, we came out hard and tonight was really a gut-check time for us late in the season. We found a way to get it done in overtime. Not the prettiest effort but we found a way for it to work.”

The Spartans close out their regular season home schedule at 7:30 on Saturday at Munn Ice Arena against Alaska.