OK, so maybe Paula Weston has her moments. Scoring was definitely a problem for us tonight, and though we held the Broncos to two goals, we failed to achieve that feat for the second time this season. The first time was against the then-winless and last place ranked Bowling Green Falcons. This time, its against the now-last ranked Western Michigan Broncos.
Since I blatantly refused to give WMU's athletic department money to watch a video stream, with multiple reports of sub-par quality, and some shady billing practices, I stuck with good ol' Bruce Cech, something I do quite frequently, even when watching over B2, audio will be muted as inferior commentators are not tolerated. Especially when name pronunciations are clearly not a job requirement.
But not actually seeing the game, Bruce does a good job painting a picture, and it sounds like we just weren't clicking. We have this issue on Fridays, regardless of location, where passes tend to get intercepted more often than normal. Sounded like almost every offensive rush, a pass gets picked and its going the otherway. It's like watching Charles Woodson in football, we're in the offensive zone (the "red zone", if you will), and bam, all of a sudden, it's been taken away from you and you're now on your heels, and it shouldn't be that way. We are a better team than this, we are averaging 3 goals per game, why can't we seal the deal on Friday? We have just one CCHA win on Friday under our belts against Ferris State (who shut out our next weeks opponent tonight, by the way), and we have a loss to Notre Dame, a loss to Lake State, a loss to Bowling Green, a tie against Northern, and now a loss against Western. What are we doing so differently? We're winning on Saturday. Is it a coaching thing? Sure, you watch game film to prepare then make some adjustments to the game plan on the ice. Is the team just not ready to play Friday? I don't think so, sounded like they were all out there working for 60 minutes, and there was some great effort put out by a lot of talented individuals, but as a team, I think we failed.
Let's compare our regular season games (including the two tournaments, excluding exhibition).
Friday - 3-3-1
Saturday - 5-0-2
Seriously, what is different? I fail to understand why those numbers are so staggering. Northern was doing a good job of keeping us back on our heels during the game, and maybe Western picked up on that, but we've got to attack the puck and be aggressive on BOTH sides of the ice. It's a two way game, and the Nanooks know that, perhaps better than anyone out there. Just didn't execute as well tonight. Sad loss for UA, as Ferris' defeat tonight now ties FSU and UA for 3rd place in the CCHA. Tomorrow, I hope will be a typical Saturday, and a much needed 3 points will go on the standings.
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