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| Joe Sova defending the rush |
It's unfortunate the score leads you to believe it was a blow out. It really wasn't, the game was really close, but unfortunately, officiating kinda got in the way. Instead of getting close with the 3rd goal by Scott Enders, the officials got a little trigger happy with the whistle and blew it dead. Had that gone well
Michigan clearly came out of the gates a little quicker than they did yesterday. They got on the board first with a goal from Louie Caporusso off a pass from behind the back red line from Kevin Lynch. I think Scott Greenham might have gotten interfered with a bit on that one, but the goal counted nonetheless.
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| Kunyk and Petovello cause a turnover. |
The Nanooks were put on the rails a bit after 2 back to back penalties by Bryant Molle and Erik Slemp both went off for boarding, but Alaska would remain perfect on the PK for the weekend. With 31 seconds remaining, Chris Brown would go to the box for interference, a power play time that would carry into the second.
And with that time, the Nanooks capitalized and evened the score off of a blast from Sova, fed by a cross ice pass from Aaron Gens, to knot it 1-1.
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| Greenham makes the save. |
While Luke Moffatt would get a score to go up 2-1, it wouldn't get on the board without a bit of review from the officials, who clearly didn't know what was going on. The new NCAA rules dictate that if the puck is deflected off a skate/body, the goal stands, however, if the puck is
directed in, its no goal. This replaces the old kicking the puck rule, to include intentional direction. The play clearly showed Moffatt intentionally placing his skate in the path of the shot, and pushing outward to redirect the puck. It is a bit of a judgment call on the officials, but its one that they missed.
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| Greenham steers another one wide. |
the best play of the second period wound up being a great feed from Bryant Molle to Nik Yaremchuk on the penalty kill to set up a 2 on 1 chance with Andy Taranto streaking down the right side. Nik made a terrific saucer pass that Andy was able to bring down and do what he does best. Needless to say, its again knotted at 2-2.
After that, the rest is kind of a blur. Something about three unanswered Michigan goals, including a Louie Caporusso empty netter, topped with a few bad calls (waved off goal included).
Nanooks travel to Oxford next weekend against a tough Miami team that only was able to take 1 point from Ferris State. I'll have to get some additional commentary up a bit later, but for now, enjoy the rest of the weekend.
4 comments:
Officiating or not, you can't lose 5-2 at home, especially to a clustermate. I know our guys are better than that. Get what you can at Miami, then come back home and wipe out NMU.
They were the better team, but that officiating was HORRIBLE. I cannot believe the goal that they blew the puck dead, the 5 on 3 we got in the last 30 seconds that helped out oh so much *eyeroll*.
I REALLY wish they CCHA would allow a local ref to be an actual official to make things a bit less biased. I'm sure these refs say they aren't biased at all, but they come out of Michigan and when half the teams are outta Michigan, it just doesn't seem right.
I get, it. If you win, then the officiating is fine and UA NEVER commits any infractions. If you lose, then the officiating sucks, Michigan are cheaters, Paula Weston is biased and you got robbed.
And you wonder why you don't get any respect?
The officiating is what it is. Not biased, maybe inconsistent, but not why we lost. We had one of those games where hardly anything went right. Michigan played better, we didn't play with the same intensity, and again, all our breaks were bad breaks.
Every time we were getting some flow we ended up in the box. We lost an edge at center ice on a two on zip. Had a goal disallowed. One of their goals bounced off their own guy's helmet and another goal slithered in. Pucks were bouncing all over the place, just not our way. It happens.
But we certainly didn't play with the same intensity we did Friday night which is a little concerning. We have to step it up more when we play "desperate" teams, for lack of a better term. We haven't been doing that; UND after choking against UAA, MSU looking for a Saturday home ice win, Michigan this past Saturday night. Those teams step their games up the second night and we didn't respond. We can't be satisfied with just Friday night points.
Miami (of Ohio) has something to prove both nights next weekend. We'll need to be more than ready.
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