BOWLING GREEN — Bowling Green State University’s hockey team concluded its final home series of the regular season with a 4-2 defeat against Central Collegiate Hockey Association rival Northern Michigan on Saturday inside the Slater Family Ice Arena.
Now, with two games to play in the regular season, the Falcons control their own destiny in terms of having home ice in the playoffs. They entered Saturday three points ahead of Lake Superior State for the No. 4 seed in the CCHA playoffs, which is the cutoff to host a playoff series.
The CCHA awards three points for regulation wins.
Lake Superior State defeated St. Thomas on Saturday, which put them in a tie with BGSU for fourth with 33 points. The third through sixth seeds in the CCHA are still up for grabs. Bemidji State (37 points) holds third, and Northern Michigan (32) is in sixth.
Lake Superior State hosts the Falcons on Friday and Saturday.
“That’s how we want it,” Falcons forward Coale Norris said. “We’re going to have to go up there, and we’re going to have to play repeatable, hard hockey. We played them when they came down here, we had a good series against them. We’re going to have to go up there and just work. There’s no other way around it. There’s no other respite this time of year.”
BGSU and Northern Michigan played to a tie at 1 following the first period, and each team got its goal early.
Bowling Green opened the scoring, as Adam Pitters found the net with assists from Alex Barber and Norris with 1:17 off the clock.
The Wildcats responded with the equalizer 58 seconds later, as Alex Frye put one in with assists by Connor Marritt and Jett Jungels. Bowling Green out-shot Northern Michigan 24-10, and the Falcons put 11 pucks on Wildcats goaltender Charlie Glockner.
“There were parts of the game that were very frustrating, and parts of the games where we did a really, really good job,” Falcons coach Ty Eigner said. “We competed really hard. We played them much harder than we played [on Friday]. We did more good things, but again, the same stuff we talked about before. It’s really frustrating to take those kinds of penalties when we have momentum.”
Once again, untimely penalties became an issue for the Falcons. BGSU served just 10 penalty minutes, but each whistle was as much of a momentum killer as the next, or worse, they resulted directly in a Northern Michigan score.
Northern Michigan grabbed a 2-1 advantage on Frye’s power-play goal with 7:17 left in the second period. He clanked the puck off of the left post, recovered his own rebound, and rifled it past BGSU’s Christian Stoever.
“Our guys need to understand and learn through experience that typically when you have more penalties than the other team, they do find a way of balancing themselves out,” Eigner said. “We say it on the bench all the time. The next penalty was going to be on us. So don’t put yourself in that position, and unfortunately we did.”
BGSU took 17 shots and 13 on goal in the second period, but could not convert.
Northern Michigan took a 3-1 lead with 12:24 left in the game on a short-handed opportunity. Tanner Vescio went into the penalty box for cross-checking. The Falcons won the face-off, but turned the puck over shortly after. Hampus Eriksson led a 2-on-1 breakaway and put the puck past Stoever. Andre Ghantous and Ben Newhouse earned assists.
But the Falcons did not let their power-play chance to go to waste. Norris scored while the man-up advantage was active to cut the deficit to 3-2 with 11:13 to play in regulation. Taylor Schneider and Gabriel Chicoine earned assists.
Northern Michigan (17-13-1, 11-12-1 CCHA) got an empty-net goal from Hank Crone with 27.3 seconds left, as the Falcons could not capitalize on a 6-on-5 chance that lasted just shy of 1:30.
“We definitely had some chances there,” Norris said. “We thought we struggled to get traffic in front of them early. In the third period, we did a better job getting big bodies to the net front and trying to create some havoc.”
The loss is BGSU’s sixth in seven games. The Falcons out-shot the Wildcats 63-35. BGSU put 36 shots on goal to NMU’s 20. Stoever recorded 16 saves in 19 chances. Glockner had 34 in 36 chances.
First Published February 20, 2022, 2:39 a.m.
