While Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game between the Northern Michigan Wildcats and Bemidji State Beavers was a close contest, Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s was not.<\/p>\n
The Beavers boarded their bus and headed back for Minnesota with a 3-3 tie and a 5-0 win under their belts. The difference in the series finale was special teams and a change of goaltenders.<\/p>\n
The first period started out strong. And just like on Friday, the Beavers first shot on goal was their first goal. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the way we establish ourselves,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d senior captain Chris McKelvie said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Get pucks on net early. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the style we try to bring to the table, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always nice to get the first goal. It was exciting that it was on a penalty kill.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great playing [with] Chris McKelvie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lehrke said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the fastest guys in college hockey and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably the hardest working guy on our team. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a natural leader, we all look up him. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got great work ethic, we all look up to him and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our captain.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Beavers luck continued in the first. Their next shot on goal was their second goal of the night. With passes from Brady Wacker and Chris Peluso, Lehrke shot the puck underneath Wildcat goaltender Brian Stewart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blocker.<\/p>\n
Bemidji State came out strong in the second period and 58 seconds in they took control. On a triple rebound, Jordan George and Brad Hunt secured the puck and gave it to Ryan Cramer who gave the Beavers a cushy three goal lead.<\/p>\n
At 8:24 in the third the Beavers scored their fourth goal on a power play. Shea Walters gave the puck to Brad Hunt who shot it toward the net. Stewart had the save, but Ian Lowe was there to catch the rebound and score to give the Beavers four goals on 19 shots on goal. At 12:07, McKelvie had an unassisted breakaway that gave the Beavers their final five goal lead.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The last few goals were just the icing on the cake for all the hard work we put in this weekend,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d McKelvie said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was a tough weekend for us physically, so it was nice to get a few goals in the end and build some confidence for next weekend.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Beavers had 26 shots on goal for the evening including two power-play goals, a shorthanded goal and two even strength.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Any time you get a short-handed goal it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty deflating for the opposition,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bemidji State coach Tom Serratore said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We just kept our foot on the gas pedal all night and our special teams performed very well. We were very stingy defensively.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our special teams were working hard tonight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lehrke said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a whole lot of five on five goals in college hockey anymore so special teams usually win the game.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Next weekend, the Wildcats will face the top ranked Miami RedHawks, taking this weekend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s experience to build up for their next series.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We came out tonight, we gave up that short-handed goal and it went really bad from there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Northern Michigan coach Walt Kyle said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had a lot of guys try to do too much. It was certainly evident defensively we missed Erik Gustafsson.
\nIt was certainly evident offensively we missed Gregor Hanson. But the guys that were playing were capable of playing a much better game than we did; right from Stewart on out. I was happy at all with how we executed and performed tonight.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The Beavers will face Alabama Huntsville.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Every weekend has different challenges,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Serratore said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We start our conference games next weekend and we wanted to go into that on a high note. At this stage of the game, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very happy with where we are.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game between the Northern Michigan Wildcats and Bemidji State Beavers was a close contest, Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s was not. The Beavers boarded their bus and headed back for Minnesota with a 3-3 tie and a 5-0 win under their belts. The difference in the series finale was special teams and a change of goaltenders. The […]<\/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\/9736"}],"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=9736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9736\/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=9736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9736"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}