Northern

[pdt1081]

There's hockey tonight. Should be a good crowd due to dollar night.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Pretty big crowd despite no students playing well, a couple of bad bounces go Northern’s way. 2-1 bad guys.

[pdt1081]

6-2 Final, BG!

Northern likes to bring the physical stuff, but they don't like to receive it. Scardina and Fyten with a very large presence tonight.

[pdt1081]

5 unanswered BG goals in the third.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

We outplayed them for the full 60 min. Breakouts were crisp. We cruised through the NZ. We were strong on the puck in both ends.

I still need to see more but there’s an outside chance the season is salvageable.

[pdt1081]

https://youtu.be/pMInDhk8_f8

[Bgsu2016]

Do we have a hockey team!?

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Zeroes after 1. Northern showed up to play right at the opening faceoff.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Shorty on a textbook BG turnover. 1-0 Northern.

NMU has 2 shortys on the weekend.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Nearly 2 min of 5x3 for us, not much to show for it. Haven’t really challenged Halasz.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

2-0, couldn’t clear on their 5x3. Not our night.

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

Split on the weekend. We were dominant on Friday for 60 min. They returned the favor on Sat. Northern plays differently with Halasz in goal. On to Tech.

[pdt1081]

When Northern is allowed to play their "style," and you don't respond to the physicality, you get results like this.

[Bgsu2016]

The loss on Saturday is where our weaknesses really showed, heck even my wife noticed it...

- Puck doesn't move quick at all. Our only way of really scoring is odd man rushes and screens on 5 on 5's. If we can't find pay dirt that way, we're done

- Special teams play is garbage. Puck doesn't move, shooters are hesitant at the point (obvious on the 5 on 3) and the PK lacks any aggressiveness at all

The difference between Bergeron & Eigner is that Chris's teams were awesome on the PP. You had guys like Sean Walker & Mark Friedman who could absolutely run it from the point and that's what made us a nationally ranked team. Eigner isn't getting those guys anymore and we've gone backwards

[TalonsUpPuckDown]

The loss on Saturday is where our weaknesses really showed, heck even my wife noticed it...

- Puck doesn't move quick at all. Our only way of really scoring is odd man rushes and screens on 5 on 5's. If we can't find pay dirt that way, we're done

I hear you, but here's the thing that nags at me. On Friday, it did move quickly. Breakouts were crisp. We were continuously hitting the cross rink pass in the neutral zone and Northern struggled to stop it. In the o-zone, we actually had guys camped in front of the net 5x5 which led to Fyten's goal. Pfoh outskated the Northern defender for his goal (I thought he was one of if not the fastest skater that night).

Then Saturday happened. I don't know if Potulny made killer adjustments and Eigner couldn't respond, if Northern was embarrassed after Friday and wanted it more, if having Halasz in net made the difference, if our guys mailed it in, or a combination of all of these. They were stronger to the puck in our zone. We couldn't break out crisply and when we did we beat it up the boards to their waiting d-man. The PP was...not good.

We see flashes of greatness for a bit then a regression to blech. So far blech has outmanned greatness. It will be an emotional weekend in Houghton. I have no idea what to expect from this team as Tech seems to be finding their stride.