BOWLING GREEN — For Bowling Green State University hockey, this has been a January thaw of the wrong kind.
The Falcons are in the midst of a goal drought, having scored just eight goals in their past six games. The Falcons are 4-4 since New Year’s Day, and have slipped to No. 16 in the PairWise rankings, outside of the range to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
Bowling Green did not score a five-on-five goal in a two-game split against Ferris State over the weekend, including a flummoxing defeat Saturday in which the Falcons created 31 scoring chances — and were shut out 3-0 at home.
“I think they’re trying to fight it, but they’re human,” Falcons coach Chris Bergeron said of his team. “They’re hungry, and they want more and they want to do better, and they get frustrated. All we can do in that situation is try to remind them, try to help them through it, try to reinforce that all frustration is a waste of time in that moment.”
VIDEO: BGSU hockey gets to face Northern Michigan
The current stretch is the worst of the season for BG (17-7-3), but Bergeron did not anticipate sweeping changes ahead of the Falcons’ weekend series at Western Collegiate Hockey Association rival Northern Michigan.
Bergeron said the Falcons typically can say they didn’t play well after a loss, but BGSU felt it played well enough to win a couple games it lost during the current stretch, including the second game of the series against Ferris State.
Bergeron said the coaching staff isn’t going to “yell and scream” because 31 chances is plenty, yet he acknowledged the Falcons aren’t happy with their January results. BG is better than its .500 record in 2019, Bergeron said.
“Our confidence has taken a little bit of a hit, and it should have with 4-4 in the last eight,” Bergeron said. “Let’s go back and earn that confidence by playing the game a certain way. Now, speaking of last Saturday in particular, I’d like our group to stay confident because we did enough to win that game. We just found a way not to.”
Defensively, Bowling Green has been the best team in the country. Behind the excellent goaltending of Ryan Bednard and backup Eric Dop, the Falcons are allowing 1.78 goals per game, the lowest mark in Division I.
Bowling Green is hoping to bring its offense — the same one that scored 20 goals in four games against current No. 4 Ohio State and No. 8 Western Michigan — back to the same standard.
With a battle for second place in the WCHA lurking at Northern Michigan, the Falcons plan to stay the course.
“When you start to make up ‘puck luck’ and all those types of things, those are things you earn,” Bergeron said. “I felt like we earned some good things to happen on Saturday, and they didn’t happen. The reality is the tape says that we’re getting enough chances to score goals.
“And we’re going to have to find a way to execute just a little bit better in that situation and score.”
First Published January 30, 2019, 6:59 p.m.
