Sticky starts and beautiful endings both occurred for the Northern Michigan Wildcats, who swept the Lake Superior State Lakers. Earning four points on the weekend with a 7-3 victory Friday night and a 4-3 victory in tonight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s match secured a first round home series against the rival Michigan State Spartans.<\/p>\n
Tonight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game was a sweet victory for the Wildcats, who have won 12 out of their last 16 games. This offsets their rocky start when they won five out of 18 games. Their work ethic and progress lead for a great night to send them off into the playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The start of the year we just weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t clicking, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty much has to do with the whole season,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Wildcat Mark Olver, who had a goal and assist on the night. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You just have to find that chemistry between lines and players, you have to get goalies playing well and you have to focus on one thing and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s winning. We came back for the second part of the year and things just started to click a lot better for our team and we started to play a lot better.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That chemistry showed most when the Wildcats took a one goal lead Andrew Fernandez shot the puck from outside the blue line. Though Northern Michigan was one up, the Lakers didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let up and played with an intensity that kept players on their toes.<\/p>\n
In the second period, the Wildcats upped their lead to three with a power-play goal from rookie Tyler Gron, who backhanded the puck through the netminder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legs, and an even strength wrist shot from Olver. With two minutes left in the period, the Lakers make their way onto the scoreboard when Zac MacVoy put the puck top shelf, stick side to make the game 3-1 going into the third.<\/p>\n
Wildcat Jared Brown had the game winner with an unassisted goal at 12:37 in the third. Eighteen seconds later, the Lakers Will Acton charged back with a goal. The Lakers pulled their goalie in last minute hopes of closing the gap and the extra man helped their effort with another goal from MacVoy, but it was too little too late and Northern Michigan took the series with a 4-3 win. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our guys played hard and battled back in the third,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lakers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 coach Joe Roque said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our power play needs to work more. It has to produce and find a way to score goals. But our discipline was better tonight and we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give them a lot of power plays.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was happy with the effort,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wildcat coach Walt Kyle said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think Lake Superior came out with a great effort and they really made us work. Tonight they played really well and we needed that. I liked the way we responded. For long stretches of the game tonight I saw us play in the style we need to play. I liked our goals and some of the other chances that we had.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had a lot of guys play hard and we get a lot of scoring out of the freshman\/sophomore classes right now. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re doing a great job for us. I like the way things are looking for us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Wildcats are happy with their regular season, but are already focused on the series ahead.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re excited for Michigan State,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Olver said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We went down there the beginning of the year and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play so hot. Lerg is a great goaltender so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have to get a lot of pucks to him, but aside from that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just excited.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Michigan State has a couple of real consistencies,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Kyle said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Number one: Rick Comley is a very good coach. Number two: they have an exceptional goaltender. And number three: they have a very good work ethic. They have some very good players and they beat us twice this year down in their building. We will have our hands full.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Lakers are taking what they learned from this series and applying it to the next round.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We got to play one of our rivals and there was a lot of intensity and that will help us prepare for next weekend,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Roque said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We set ourselves up to work in this environment and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll work hard going into next weekend.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sticky starts and beautiful endings both occurred for the Northern Michigan Wildcats, who swept the Lake Superior State Lakers. Earning four points on the weekend with a 7-3 victory Friday night and a 4-3 victory in tonight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s match secured a first round home series against the rival Michigan State Spartans. Tonight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game was a sweet […]<\/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\/9527"}],"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=9527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527\/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=9527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9527"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}