BGSU hockey doubled-up the Michigan Tech Huskies by a score of 6-3 on Friday night at Slater Family Ice Arena in Bowling Green.
With the win, the Falcons move to 15-4 overall and 4-1 in the WCHA on the season. With the loss, Michigan Tech’s seven-game winning streak is snapped and they fall to 8-4-1 on the season
Senior netminder Eric Dop played one of the best games of his career for the Falcons in this game. Numerous times Dop was forced to make tough back-to-back saves and he stood tall all night long.
“Eric’s preparation is outstanding. From Monday through Thursday, Eric Dop does everything you could ask and then some to put himself in the position to have success on Friday and that’s kinda what we want this whole program to be about,” BGSU head coach Ty Eigner said.
The game marked the first time Falcon senior forward Gavin Gould has gotten to play against his former team since transferring last season and he did not disappoint. A minute and a half into the game, Gould drove a puck on net that was tucked in by senior defenseman Justin Wells for his second of the season. Junior forward Evan Dougherty also got an assist on the goal.
Two and a half minutes later, junior defenseman Will Cullen scored his fifth goal of the year on a shot from his defensive partner, Wells, and junior forward Taylor Schenider.
The Huskies would answer right away, with Alec Broetzman scoring less than a minute later to make the score 2-1 less than five minutes into the hockey game. Assists went to Eric Gotz and Arvid Caderoth, formerly of Frolunda HC in Sweden.
The fourth goal of the first period came on the power-play for Bowling Green as offensive dynamo Kruse lit the lamp for his 10th goal of the season. Fellow senior forwards Johnson and Connor Ford were given the assists on Kruse’s goal.
The Falcons scored again to bring the score to 4-1 early in the second period on Carson Musser’s first goal of the year. Kruse got the assist on Musser’s second career goal and first not on an empty net.
While the Falcons didn’t take any penalties in the first period, they made up for it the rest of the way taking six total for the game.
With time ticking down in the second period and junior defenseman Tim Theocharidis in the penalty box, a wild scramble in-front of the Falcon net led to the puck squeaking past Dop, who made the initial few saves but could not get a clearance from his defenseman. Trenton Bliss was awarded the goal making the game 4-2 with an assist to Caderoth.
A minute and a half into the third period, Tech scored again to bring the score to 4-3 on an unassisted goal from Bliss.
The Huskies’ momentum was short-lived though as two minutes later, Ford riffled home a power-play one-timer from Theocharidis and Kruse making the score 5-3 Falcons.
The icing on the game came on an empty-net goal from Ford, giving him goal number number nine this season, with an extremely unselfish assist to Kruse, giving him his third assist and fourth point of the game.
Falcons coach Ty Eiger jumbled up his normal top line of senior forwards Brandon Kruse, Max Johnson and Cam Wright in this game, with each playing on a separate line.
“Every line got over 200 points, I don’t know if you’re going to find another college hockey team in the country that has three lines with 200 points on each line. We did that and then we tried guys who haven’t played together but we thought might play well and we got good contributions from everyone tonight which is why we did what we did,” Eigner said.
The Falcons take on the Huskies again Saturday night at Slater Ice Arena with puck drop scheduled for 7:07.
