Saturday, January 28, 2012

Nanooks Valiant Effort Not Enough to Sweep Notre Dame

I will say, a much cleaner game tonight... There were a few shenanigans out there, like a lot of laces coming untied, coincidentally all on icing calls. Notre Dame kind of started the routine, but the Nanooks continued it. More funny than anything. Gives me something else to blame the equipment manager for... ;)

The 1st period got off to a good start. Both teams came ready to play, but ND got on the board first at 4:43 on the power play. A bit of broken D as the Nanooks couldn't contain the rebound. Eventually, the 4th chance got through as Nick Larson would get credit for the goal.

The 'Nooks did take a while to get their first shot on net, they used their opportunity wisely and Granberg banged it home on a 2 on 1 break set up beautifully by Carlo Finucci. Their 2nd shot broke through as well as Cody Kunyk stayed up on the play and used his wizardry to pick off the pass and made about 60 moves on Johnson and tucked it around Johnson's left pad.

The first 20 minutes was a sentiment for how the 'Nooks played yesterday. They kept driving and challenging the puck carrier at the point of attack, and remained persistent. Not a lot of shots, but a lot of quality scoring chances.

The second period sentiments didn't go the Nanooks' way, although they did control possession for the majority of the period. But two quick goals put Notre Dame in the lead 3-2, which stayed throughout the rest of the game until a costly turnover with Greenham on the bench sealed the Nanooks fate 4-2.

Long week ahead as the Nanooks head to Kalamazoo Tuesday night. Western Michigan is a tough team to play against, and Lawson is a tough place to play in. But if the Nanooks can keep the same tempo and drive, points should be coming in waves. Until then, Go Nooks!!!

3 comments:

Merlin said...

Great effort again last night but costly defensive mistakes did them in. Enders really had a bad night and needs to find his focus. He is normally one of the better players out there but has struggled lately. I can't believe that ND is #4 in the nation even though they are 5th in the CCHA. That doesn't make any sense.

Jason said...

Further proof that the media polls are pure bias. ND is 13 in the Pairwise, which is the only poll that matters, and given their performance this weekend I'd say that's pretty accurate.

Notre Dame is stockpiled with some great talent, but they definitely lack cohesion on a nightly basis. They are quite beatable, and if they get a first-round series on the road I wouldn't be surprised to see them get taken out early.

As for the PWR, it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out with regard to the CCHA. Right now there would be six CCHA teams in the big dance if it started today, which goes to show you how dominant the conference is top to bottom. It's disheartening to think that if we hadn't started conference play so slowly that we'd be right in the middle of that; all you have to do is look at Northern Michigan, who is in 9th place in the CCHA but 12 in the PWR. However, my hunch is that as the season drags on and conference schools beat up on each other more and more, we will see that number of PWR teams go down.

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