The Buckeyes led 3-0 after 20 minutes, but two early third-period Falcon goals kept this one close as Ohio State squeaked by Bowling Green State, 3-2, in the opening game of their first-round CCHA playoff series.<\/p>\n
“We weren’t paying attention to detail, everything we worked on last week,” said OSU head coach John Markell. “I think it built from the last shift of the second period. I give them credit. Bowling Green came in here and played hard, exactly the way we told the guys they would. We didn’t play a 60-minute hockey game here tonight.”<\/p>\n
BGSU head coach Scott Paluch said that he was proud of the way his team came back against the nationally-ranked Buckeyes. “The whole game I thought we did some things necessary to win the hockey game. Even when it was 3-0 we were still doing the things that we needed to do to be successful. <\/p>\n
“We gave up too many second chances in the first and second period. As I’ve said all along, Ohio State is a deeper team, forward-wise; they’re going to capitalize when you give them those second chances.”<\/p>\n
Matt Beaudoin scored the first OSU goal at 9:04 in the first, picking up his own rebound and putting it past Jordan Sigalet glove-side for the 1-0 lead. The tally was the third shot that Sigalet faced in quick succession, having stopped not just Beaudoin’s first but Dave Steckel’s blast from the left circle.<\/p>\n
With less than a minute left in the first period, Paul Caponigri stole the puck in the neutral zone and skated in alone on Sigalet to extend OSU’s lead to 2-0 after two.<\/p>\n
Steckel picked up his second assist of the night on Bryce Anderson’s goal at 4:04 in the second. Steckel passed up to Anderson, who was breaking into the BGSU zone; Anderson shook off a defender and went in alone, scoring on a single shot to make it 3-0.<\/p>\n
But two Falcon goals before the six-minute mark in the third period made the score more indicative of how closely the game was actually played. At 3:51, Mark Wires finally got one past Mike Betz after the OSU netminder had fended off a series of shots in succession, then at 5:02, Ryan Barnett tipped in Brian Escobedo’s shot from the right point to cut the lead to one goal.<\/p>\n
After an OSU timeout, the Buckeyes seemed to return to form but Bowling Green did not relent; without the play of Betz, especially when the Falcons pulled Sigalet for the extra attacker with 1:16 to go, the game might have gone the other way.<\/p>\n
“I thought he was the difference-maker,” said Markell. “He came up with some great saves. Bowling Green didn’t quit. Mike Betz played like a true senior, a leader on this team, and a lot of guys in that dressing room can thank him for playing that way.”<\/p>\n
Betz was impressive throughout the contest, making a spread-eagle split save on Jonathan Sigalet’s point-blank shot midway through the second, stopping James Unger on a BGSU two-on-one midway through the third, and stoning Brett Pilkington during the closing seconds of the game.<\/p>\n
“Awesome,” said Steckel. “That kid came to play. Pretty much the backbone of the team tonight. I thought he kept it 3-0.”<\/p>\n
Betz finished the night with 28 saves on 30 BGSU shots. Sigalet showed why he was the league’s pick for the All-Conference First Team, stopping 37 of the 40 shots he faced.<\/p>\n
Neither team scored on the power play in the disciplined hockey game, with BGSU going 0-for-3 and OSU 0-for-1.<\/p>\n
Bowling Green (11-17-9) and Ohio State (22-15-0) will meet again Saturday night in the best-of-three series, and Markell said that his squad needs a better effort to win and advance to the CCHA Super Six.<\/p>\n
“I know we can play better than that. We just did it a week ago. We have to prepare ourselves for a tough match here tomorrow. This time of year, you take the win, you watch the video, and try to get [the players] back on the habits that made us a successful hockey club all year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Buckeyes led 3-0 after 20 minutes, but two early third-period Falcon goals kept this one close as Ohio State squeaked by Bowling Green State, 3-2, in the opening game of their first-round CCHA playoff series. “We weren’t paying attention to detail, everything we worked on last week,” said OSU head coach John Markell. “I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"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\/5273"}],"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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/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=5273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}