Senior goaltender Craig Kowalski made 55 saves Friday, but that wasn’t enough to keep Northern Michigan from recording the loss. Michigan blanked the Wildcats 2-0.<\/p>\n
While Kowalski couldn’t keep the Wolverines from lighting the lamp, he did frustrate at least one of them.<\/p>\n
Junior Milan Gajic scored in the third period, and he might have turned in his jersey after the game if he hadn’t found the net.<\/p>\n
“Before, I was thinking about retiring, honestly,” the winger said. “I put (shots) everywhere. I put them off his head. I put them off his back. I was getting pretty upset about the whole situation.”<\/p>\n
Gajic was mystified by one particular shot, which knocked off Kowalski’s mask but didn’t cross the goal line.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know how I hit a goalie in the back of the head and the puck stayed out,” Gajic said. “I’m not a physics major, so I couldn’t tell you.”<\/p>\n
Eric Werner solved Kowalski first. He put the Wolverines up 1-0 when he banged in the puck halfway through the first period. T.J. Hensick earned an assist, his team-leading seventh point.<\/p>\n
Kowalski faced a flurry of shots in the second period, but the goaltender held strong and kept the Wildcats within one. <\/p>\n
Michigan (5-1-0, 2-1-0 CCHA) added to its lead on a power play 10:19 into the third. Gajic one-timed a shot from the left circle and beat Kowalski top-shelf. Werner earned his second point of the night on the play. Andrew Ebbett also assisted.<\/p>\n
Dwight Helminen, who returned from an ankle injury, had an empty-net chance with less than 30 seconds left, but the puck slid just wide of the right post.<\/p>\n
Northern Michigan (3-2-0, 2-1-0) had isolated scoring chances but struggled to generate sustained pressure in Michigan’s zone. Sophomore Al Montoya made 19 saves in his fifth career shutout.<\/p>\n
Michigan attacked throughout the game, but it was the defensive effort that was most satisfying for coach Red Berenson.<\/p>\n
“Shutouts are great for goalies, and they’re great for teams, but particularly for the defense,” Berenson said. “Obviously Montoya played strong tonight, but our defense did a lot of good things.”<\/p>\n
Werner leads the Wolverines’ defense with four points, but he said offense is secondary.<\/p>\n
“We’re stressing on working harder down low as the year goes on,” Werner said. “That’s a real part of the game — defense first — and I think (the defensemen) are taking more pride as the season goes on.”<\/p>\n
The two teams face off again Sunday afternoon, and Berenson cautioned that the series is far from over.<\/p>\n
“This is not the weekend,” Berenson said. “The weekend comes down to Sunday afternoon. But this was a good start.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior goaltender Craig Kowalski made 55 saves Friday, but that wasn’t enough to keep Northern Michigan from recording the loss. Michigan blanked the Wildcats 2-0. While Kowalski couldn’t keep the Wolverines from lighting the lamp, he did frustrate at least one of them. Junior Milan Gajic scored in the third period, and he might have […]<\/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\/4523"}],"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=4523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4523\/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=4523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4523"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}