BOWLING GREEN — The results of Bowling Green State University hockey’s series at St. Thomas show as pristine, but the Falcons were left feeling with much to be desired.
BGSU will try to put it all together this weekend in a series against Central Collegiate Hockey Association rival Bemidji State.
The Falcons are coming off a sweep of CCHA opponent St. Thomas in St. Paul last weekend. Friday’s 4-2 win went nearly as coach Ty Eigner envisioned, but his team had to scratch a bit for Saturday’s 2-1 win.
“We were happy with how we played Friday, and a bunch of stuff was really positive in terms of our evaluation of that game,” Eigner said. “It was nice to start the second half [of the season] with a really good performance on Friday.
“Saturday wasn’t as good. St. Thomas has something to do with that, too ... but from our perspective, we just felt like the difference between how we played on Friday and how we played on Saturday, that gap was too great, so we’re trying to fix that.”
BGSU (11-8-3, 8-5-1 CCHA) got a power-play goal from Taylor Schneider, and Christian Stoever made five of his 19 saves in the final 12:36 to keep the Tommies at bay on Friday. BGSU outshot St. Thomas 33-21 and killed off all five of the Tommie’s penalty chances — three in a closely contested second period.
St. Thomas and BGSU played an extra overtime period on Saturday, and the Falcons earned the win with Alex Barber’s goal 14 seconds into the extra period.
“Saturday we just did some things that were uncharacteristic and looked like nothing we did on Friday,” Eigner said. “Zack’s first shot was a breakaway, and it was less than a minute into the game. So we give up a breakaway right away, and then the next opportunity Zack had to make a save was a 2-on-1 that they scored on. We were not real disciplined in our systems. We were kind of loose, and we had guys turning away from things, and we just didn’t stick to the game plan.”
Rose then saved 15 of 16 opportunities, including 14 in a row following the Tommies’ early goal.
“He did well, and he looked like the Zack Rose that played the first six games of the year for us, and played really well, and practiced really well,” Eigner said. “I think the injury that he was dealing with, I think that was something that was difficult for him and hard for him to play his position with the particular injury he had.”
The Falcons return to home ice, where they are 6-2-0 this season, to welcome CCHA rival Bemidji State on Friday and Saturday. The Beavers finished seven points outside of the top 20 in the latest USCHO Division I poll released on Monday. BGSU received four votes in the poll.
Bemidji State (12-10, 10-4) is in second place in the conference with 30 points. BGSU enters the weekend in third place with 24 points and can climb to a tie for second with the Beavers with a pair of regulation victories.
“They’re a really good team,” Eigner said. “They’re an older team, and they’re a team that people knew in the preseason polls thought was going to be a good team. Fundamentally they do a lot of really good things. They’ve always defended hard, they always had good goaltending, they’ve always had a really good goals against in terms of the national rankings, and they know how to play.”
Bemidji State coach Tom Serratore said his team is stepping into a different environment when it travels to BGSU’s Slater Family Ice Arena.
“The games with Bowling Green, they’re at a different level,” Serratore said. “Their intensity level, speed, craziness, chaoticness — whatever you want to call it — it’s a different type of game. I tried to explain that to our freshmen this week that this is going to be a different kind of weekend, and it’s something a little different. There’s 10 feet from the end wall to the goal line. They got lively end walls, they got eight-shaped corners. Things really happen quick, and there’s nowhere to hide in that rink, that’s for sure.”
Beavers goaltender Mattias Sholl was named the CCHA’s Freshman of the Week on Monday. He saved 49 of 51 opportunities over the team’s previous series against Lake Superior State.
He is the brother of former BGSU goaltender Tomas Sholl, who spent 2013 to 2017 with the Falcons.
“We just want to continue to focus on the things that we believe we need to do in order to be successful, especially with the puck,” Eigner said. “Mattias Sholl, he had a nice weekend. He’s done a good job. In all honesty, it’s nice to see Mattias doing well because he comes from a great family, and he’s a really nice young man. It’s fun for us to see him do well.”
HOBEY NOMINEE: Falcons senior forward Nathan Burke has been nominated for the 2022 Hobey Baker Award, which is given annually to the best player in men’s college ice hockey.
Burke is one of 77 players nominated for the award, which will have the field reduced to 10 by March 16 after a combination of an online fan vote and coaches’ input.
Burke, who transferred from Minnesota to BGSU following the 2020-21 season, has scored a team-high 13 goals and five power-play goals. He has recorded 18 points in 22 games.
First Published January 13, 2022, 4:28 p.m.
