The Falcon hockey team will face the Bemidji State Beavers on Friday and Saturday night, as the Falcons will look to outlast Bemidji State’s top returning players.
“I’m expecting a very difficult weekend,” Falcons head coach Chris Bergeron said. “I know that they have respect for us and we have respect for them, so they’re not taking us lightly because of where we were picked or where they were picked (in preseason polls)… I’m looking for it to be a good, hard WCHA weekend, which is very similar to every other WCHA weekend.”
Bemidji State senior goaltender Michael Bitzer and senior forward Gerry Fitzgerald have been their best players, with Bitzer starting nearly all the games this season with a save percentage of .897 and goals against average of 2.79, while Fitzgerald leads the team in points with 13, scoring four goals and nine assists along the way.
“This is a team that we’ve played a bunch over the last few years,” Bergeron said. “Their top guys are really good, Gerry Fitzgerald and Myles and Leo (Fitzgerald) are playing at a high level as well, obviously Michael Bitzer is the returning player of the year or, arguably, goalie of the year for sure.”
Despite Bemidji State winning the regular season championship last season, they have gotten off to a difficult start this year, going 2-3-1 in the WCHA and 5-5-2 overall.
“Their only really poor weekend on paper was against Minnesota State,” Bergeron said. “But Bemidji is really good and what happened last year I think the stars did align and we were a victim of that the very first weekend of the year and got swept up there, so it’s almost hard to match what went on from Michael Bitzer out, as good as Michael Bitzer was last year, but you talk about capable, this group is absolutely capable.”
Bemidji State is also coming off of a series split against the Princeton Tigers; however, they feel that the playing styles of the two teams are completely different.
“The styles of Princeton and Bowling Green, they’re opposite,” Bemidji State head coach Tom Serratore said. “We’ve played Bowling Green enough, we know what to expect and we know how we have to play, the biggest thing is that you have to have good special teams, and we’re going to have to execute.”
With the Bemidji State goaltending being so good, the team believes that they will have to be consistent offensively for the two games.
“I think it puts pressure on our offense,” Bergeron said. “Our offense has been hit or miss, we think that if we can give up less than three goals, that’s the focus, Michael Bitzer doesn’t change that. Where the issue becomes is if you’re only going to give up less than three and that’s a good thing, then we have to score more than two and haven’t been consistent with that, so I think the pressure is on our offense.”
