The Falcons hockey team will look to continue their momentum from last weekend’s series for this weekend against the Alaska Nanooks on Friday and Saturday nights.
Despite losing on Friday against the Minnesota State Mavericks 4-1, the team came back to win 5-2 on Saturday, learning an important lesson the team hopes will carry on through the rest of the season.
“It was an opportunity to play a good team and play better than we played on Friday,” Falcons head coach Chris Bergeron said. “Any time we play Minnesota State, it’s a huge game, they’re the measuring stick in this league and have been for five years. Again, we proved that if we play the game a certain way, we give ourselves a chance against just about everybody, and that’s big at this time of year.”
The team is looking for Alaska to be a tough opponent to play against, as well.
“I’m looking for them to compete really hard,” Bergeron said. “They look like they forecheck hard. Anybody that’s watched us play this team, whether it goes back to the CCHA or WCHA, they’ve always played us hard here and given us a very difficult series here.”
The team is also looking to improve on their energy from the beginning of the game to the end to put together a complete effort.
“That’s something that I’m going to have to rely on the older players on,” Bergeron said. “We’re going to continue to prepare like we always do, we’re going to try to earn that confidence throughout the week by being good in our preparation, both physically and mentally, and then you have to execute come Friday. But make no mistake about it, Alaska doesn’t have the hype that Minnesota State has, doesn’t have the ranking, but Alaska is really good.”
Despite Alaska needing to travel over 3,000 miles to get to Bowling Green, the team feels that distance won’t be too much of a factor in the series and that they will still have to be ready to face an energized team.
“It doesn’t bother them to travel,” Bergeron said. “It’s no big deal because that’s what they do all the time. I’m looking for a really difficult weekend, I truly am. I think it’s going to be another good test for us against a really good team.”
