Wayne State freshman Derek MacKay scored his first career hat trick to lead the Warriors to a 4-3 win over Air Force Saturday at the Great Lakes Sports City Arena.<\/p>\n
Air Force made the game interesting in the closing minutes as the Falcons pulled the goaltender with 1:26 remaining and then went on a power play. The Falcons had a 5-on-3 advantage for the final 34 seconds but never got set up in an effort to tie the game. <\/p>\n
The Falcons again fell behind early as MacKay scored the first two goals of the game in the first period. His first came at 8:23 from Dustin Kingston on a centering pass from the corner. His second was a power-play goal with 1:54 remaining that beat freshman goalie David Goodley on the short side. <\/p>\n
Wayne State took a 3-0 lead with a shorthanded goal just 1:01 into the second period. Air Force opened the second period with 1:27 remaining on a power play, but Billy Collins scored his second shorthander in as many nights for a 3-0 advantage.<\/p>\n
Air Force got on the board late in the second period as freshman Carson Strang scored his sixth goal of the season. Strang took a shot that missed the net, but he collected the loose puck behind the cage and beat David Guerrera with a wraparound shot. Matt Bader and Tom Starkey also assisted on the play.<\/p>\n
The Warriors answered two minutes later as MacKay completed his hat trick with 1:03 remaining in the second. He scored on a wrist shot from the faceoff dot as a power play was beginning. <\/p>\n
Trailing 4-1, Air Force rallied for two goals late in the third period. A blue-collar effort led to goals by Justin Hamilton and Mike Knaeble to make the score 4-3 with 4:53 remaining. Hamilton scored on a power play from Shane Saum and Scott Zwiers on a flurry in front of the net. Knaeble netted his first career goal on a nice centering pass from Kyle Fransdal from behind the net. <\/p>\n
Air Force continued to pressure the Warriors late in the period. With 1:26 remaining, Air Force pulled its goaltender in favor of an extra skater. After a penalty on Dustin Kingston, the Falcons had a 5-on-3 advantage, but never got set up in the offensive end.<\/p>\n
“Our guys worked so hard again tonight,” said Air Force head coach Frank Serratore. “Justin Hamilton is an absolute warrior. He refused to give up and was a major factor in this game. Even though we haven’t had many victories, this is a very tight-knit and focused team and they deserve something good to happen to them.”<\/p>\n
Air Force outshot the Warriors in every period and 35-26 for the game. The Falcons were 1-for-5 on the power play while WSU was 2-for-5. Goodley, making just the second conference and road start of his career, stopped 22 shots while allowing four goals. Guerrera stopped 32 of the 35 shots he faced. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wayne State freshman Derek MacKay scored his first career hat trick to lead the Warriors to a 4-3 win over Air Force Saturday at the Great Lakes Sports City Arena. Air Force made the game interesting in the closing minutes as the Falcons pulled the goaltender with 1:26 remaining and then went on a power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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\/4270"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4270\/revisions"}],"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=4270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4270"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}