Jordie Johnston’s hat trick was just enough to lift the 17th ranked Ferris State Bulldogs to a 4-3 win over the Colgate Raiders.<\/p>\n
“It’s definitely nice [to be back in the win column],” said Johnston. “We came out hard, which we’ve been lacking lately. It’s really just hard work and doing the little things right.”<\/p>\n
Colgate started the game strong and took an early lead with a power-play goal seven minutes into the tilt. With Eric Alexander in the penalty box for tripping, Corbin McPherson picked up a loose puck in the slot and fired a shot past Nelson.<\/p>\n
“We had a chance to steal one on the road, one-goal lead with seven minutes to go,” said Colgate coach Don Vaughn. “Now, whether or not we deserved that is another story.”<\/p>\n
Following the slow start, the Bulldogs began to bring momentum back to their side, starting with Johnston’s first goal of the night to tie the game at one.<\/p>\n
With Johnston streaking down the right side, Matt Kirzinger fired a hard shot off of Eric Mihalik’s pads. The rebound landed right on Johnston’s stick in the right circle, and he lifted the puck into the open net.<\/p>\n
Johnston’s second goal came four minutes into the second period and was a mirror image of his first. This time it was Johnston picking up Kirzinger’s rebound in the left circle with an open net in front of him.<\/p>\n
Johnston’s second goal gave Ferris State its first lead since a win over Notre Dame on December 9, 2011.<\/p>\n
However, the Raiders weren’t done yet. Mark Nasca got his stick on a puck in the slot and put a shot on target that was tipped past Nelson by Spiro Goulakos for his first goal of the year.<\/p>\n
The Raiders took the lead back with four minutes to play in the middle frame off a goal by Joe Wilson. Austin Smith made a great effort to go end-to-end before having the puck roll off his stick on the wraparound attempt. Fortunately for Colgate, Wilson was on the doorstep to nudge the puck in.<\/p>\n
“He’s [Smith] playing on a totally different level,” said Vaughn. “When you have that skillset and when you have that work ethic, you get a pretty good hockey player.”<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs tied the game back up with a power-play goal by Aaron Schmit with seven minutes left in the game.<\/p>\n
Johnston completed his hat trick with the go-ahead goal for Ferris State with 2:30 to play in the contest. Two great passes by T.J. Schlueter and Billins got Johnston behind the Colgate defense, where he cut to the net and out-waited Mihalik to get another look at an open net.<\/p>\n
“We got a hold of the puck in their zone and Schlueter made a great pass to Billins, and Billins made maybe even a better pass to me and just left me alone in front of the net,” said Johnston. I was lucky enough to out-wait the goalie and slide it in, but without those two nice passes, that play never happens.”<\/p>\n
Smith nearly tied the game with seconds remaining with a great individual effort to drive the net, but Taylor Nelson somehow got across the crease to get a pad on the puck to preserve the Bulldogs win.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs outshot the Raiders 44-25 on the night, despite the slow start. Ferris State had strong periods of play in all three periods that featured long terms in the Raiders’ zone.<\/p>\n
“We spent some time in their zone, which means they weren’t in our zone, which is key,” said Johnston.”It’s good because we got their goalie tired, and that’s what we want.”<\/p>\n
Ferris State and Colgate will conclude their nonconference series tomorrow afternoon with an early, 4 p.m. start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jordie Johnston’s hat trick was just enough to lift the 17th ranked Ferris State Bulldogs to a 4-3 win over the Colgate Raiders. “It’s definitely nice [to be back in the win column],” said Johnston. “We came out hard, which we’ve been lacking lately. It’s really just hard work and doing the little things right.” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14255,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14253\/revisions\/14255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14253"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}