Dean Blais complimented Minnesota-Duluth on being opportunistic in the Bulldogs come-from-behind victory Friday. On Saturday, it was his Mavericks who executed their chances.<\/p>\n
After falling behind early in the first period, Omaha rallied to get a pair of goals and carry on behind 39 saves from Ryan Massa for a 4-1 victory at home.<\/p>\n
“We lost the game we should’ve won and probably won the game we shouldn’t have won,” UMD coach Scott Sandelin said, quoting his assistant after the game.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs carried their late momentum from Friday into the start of Saturday’s matchup. UMD got several chances early and a quick goal at 4:40 when Kyle Osterberg scored on the Bulldogs’ third shot of the possession.<\/p>\n
The Bulldogs also got the first power play of the game when Joel Messner was whistled for cross-checking, but like last night, the Mavericks perfect penalty killing continued.<\/p>\n
As they did so Friday, UNO’s goals came in a pair.<\/p>\n
The Mavericks attacked the net hard, which found Austin Ortega with puck behind the goal. He slid a pass past the post that barely got to Tyler Vesel, who buried the chance to even the game at 13:28 in the first period. It was the Mavericks’ first shot on goal of the night.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, Vesel and Tanner Lane broke free for an odd-man rush. When Vesel lost the puck, Ortega collected it and backhanded a shot that found its way to the back of the net at 15:55 in the first.<\/p>\n
“I just snuck it under the pad and kept jammin’ at it,” Ortega said. “I was just giving full effort, because you never know what could happen.”<\/p>\n
Despite having a 2-1 lead after 20 minutes, UNO had only six shots on goal to UMD’s 15.<\/p>\n
The second period started slowly for both sides until UMD’s Brenden Kotyk was whistled for interference at 12:03. The Mavericks were unable to capitalize on their first and only power play of the night, but they found the net just minutes later.<\/p>\n
Ortega, sitting back in Omaha’s zone, found Guentzel flying past the center line. The forward caught it clean in open space and scored a backhander top-shelf on Kasimir Kaskisuo for the score. It was Guentzel’s first goal since UNO’s game against Western Michigan Oct. 18 before the sophomore was sidelined with an injury.<\/p>\n
In the third, Blais knew his team needed to correct their approach with a two-goal lead after last night’s loss. Behind Massa, UNO came out more defensive-minded.<\/p>\n
“Last night, we made the mistake of trying to create offense when we have a two-goal lead, and tonight, we wanted to stick to simplicity and fundamentals,” Massa said.<\/p>\n
UMD started the period aggressive as the puck stayed in the Bulldogs’ zone for nearly the entire first four minutes of action.<\/p>\n
UMD got chance after chance, but if they weren’t going into Massa’s glove or colliding off his stick or pads, they were hitting the pipe or a Mavericks defenseman.<\/p>\n
UMD pulled its goalie with a little more than a minute to play, but Ortega hustled to get a puck drifting back in the Bulldogs’ zone and slung one home for his fourth point of the night and the UNO victory.<\/p>\n
“Massa made some great saves, the difference-maker in the third period when they had a couple opportunities,” Blais said. “We played a better strategic game, a better positional game tonight than last night, but the stars [were] Ryan Massa and Austin Ortega.”<\/p>\n
This marks the first loss for UMD since falling to Miami (Oh.) Oct. 31. The Bulldogs had the longest unbeaten streak in the NCAA before the 4-1 loss.<\/p>\n
Despite coming away with just a split after opening up with an early lead and finishing with a huge shot advantage, Sandelin said his team can’t be disappointed in the way they played.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t play poorly at all; we just couldn’t find a way to score,” Sandelin said. “That’s hockey. That’s just how it works sometimes. For our team, I don’t want us to think we went backwards.”<\/p>\n
Duluth has the week off before returning home for a series against Colorado College. UNO will go on another road stint starting against No. 2 North Dakota Thanksgiving weekend.<\/p>\n
After an up-and-down weekend, the Mavericks were just happy they could take something away from the series that they could bring with them up to Grand Forks.<\/p>\n
“Tonight we were able to get up on the board; we really showed we’re a scoring team,” Ortega said. “Kind of sending a message to North Dakota that we can score on any goalie out there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dean Blais complimented Minnesota-Duluth on being opportunistic in the Bulldogs come-from-behind victory Friday. On Saturday, it was his Mavericks who executed their chances. After falling behind early in the first period, Omaha rallied to get a pair of goals and carry on behind 39 saves from Ryan Massa for a 4-1 victory at home. “We […]<\/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\/19749"}],"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=19749"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19751,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19749\/revisions\/19751"}],"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=19749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19749"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=19749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}