The Falcons hockey team split their series against the Miami RedHawks, winning 3-2 in a double overtime contest Saturday night after recovering from a 6-3 loss on Friday night.
“I’m much happier with our effort,” Falcons head coach Chris Bergeron said. “I thought our guys responded with a strong effort after a poor one, and the message is going to be to stop doing that, stop putting ourselves in a situation where we’re responding, but, once again, we proved that we can.”
In the Saturday game, freshman forward Brandon Kruse scored the opening goal with only 34 seconds remaining in the first period. However, Miami evened the score with a goal of their own in the second. As the teams again went even in the third period with Miami taking advantage of a power play chance and with sophomore defenseman Alec Rauhauser scoring with 38 seconds remaining in regulation to tie it back up, the game went into overtime.
In the overtime period, Miami outshot the Falcons 4-1, but neither team was able to score, sending it into a three-on-three double overtime period. While neither team was able to score for much of the five minutes, the Falcons scored late in a period for a third time in the game as Spezia tipped in a rebound chance to give the Falcons the 3-2 victory.
Bergeron was proud of how the team was able to show resiliency by coming back from the 2-1 deficit.
“The feeling on the bench was that they weren’t going to settle for that if they didn’t have to,” Bergeron said. “I’m proud of our group for not settling, the resiliency that we built up, that was there, and it showed, and Alec made a good play. I’d like to see us not be in that situation, but at least we proved tonight that, when we’re in that situation, we can do just fine.”
However, as the game officially counted as a tie in the standings, the team believes getting the double overtime goal doesn’t change how they saw the game.
“I’m happy that the fans are happy and that our players are happy,” Bergeron said. “Miami would have been happy had they scored that goal, which Ryan (Bednard) made sure didn’t happen, but it goes down as a tie, and if it’s a league game, that’s an extra point for us, but I don’t take a whole lot from that. The result was a tie, and I’m happy we were able to score late.”
Friday, the team fell behind 3-1 early, with a goal from junior defensemen Connor McDonald at the 13:50 mark of the first period getting the team on the board. However, they fought back midway through the second as senior forwards Brett D’Andrea and Tyler Spezia both scored to tie the game back up. Nevertheless, Miami scored the next three goals unanswered to take the 6-3 win.
“We were definitely the second best team out there from the beginning,” Bergeron said. “I know their staff pretty well, and I know that they would have prepared their team to come into a difficult place to play against a team that takes pride in working hard, which we didn’t do, especially early. We were chasing it all night long.”
The team will next play Friday and Saturday nights at home against the Bemidji State Beavers.
