The Falcon hockey team will take on the Alaska Anchorage Seawolves on Friday and Saturday night, as the Falcons will play in their first game on home ice since Dec. 28, as well as their first full series at home since Dec. 9-10.
The team will also be looking to rebound from being swept for the first time this season last weekend against the Northern Michigan Wildcats.
“I think it’s going to be important (to come out with energy) because we haven’t played at home with the students in a while,” Falcons head coach Chris Bergeron said. “Where I think is a little of the concern is that we come out so hungry and so fired up because of what happened last weekend, we want to make that go away and we can’t do that.”
While Alaska Anchorage comes into this weekend as the last place team in the WCHA, goaltender Olivier Mantha leads the conference in total saves made with 712 and holds a strong save percentage with .908 at this point in the season.
“I’m looking for a team that’s got really strong goaltending,” Bergeron said. “Mantha is a guy that’s proven in this league, he gets a bunch of shots, so he’s a guy that we’ve got to get to, which last weekend we didn’t do a great job of.”
Despite Alaska Anchorage needing to travel through two time zones to make it to Bowling Green, the Falcons don’t believe that the travel aspect will have much of an effect on the series, and Alaska Anchorage will be ready to play.
“I’ve always felt that, with both Alaska teams, it doesn’t bother them to come on the road,” Bergeron said. “That’s their deal; they travel so much that the travel doesn’t bother them, whether they’re going home or coming down to play somebody. I think that it’s going to be a team ready and hungry, with good goaltending and fighting for a playoff spot; that’s a dangerous team.”
The team is also looking to finish the final part of the regular season with high expectations.
“I want us to play to the level that we’ve set for ourselves, regardless of who we’re playing against,” Bergeron said. “Last weekend, I don’t think we played to that level. There was an opponent who had a lot to say about it, but I don’t think that we played to the level that we set for ourselves… A strength of ours is that we don’t make things up in terms of expectations. The bar is set by the individual and the bar is set by our team collectively, and we try to get there as much as possible.”
