Big Rapids, Michigan — The Falcons’ hockey team came to Ferris State looking for one thing — revenge.
In their previous trip to Bulldog country two seasons ago, they were embarrassed being out-scored 15-2 in their two-game series with the Bulldogs.
One thing missing from that team of two seasons ago, though was a good balance of scoring and a never say die attitude, which has been apparent for the Falcons this season. On Friday night they went into the third period trailing 5-2 and scored three unanswered goals to earn a 5-5 tie then rebounded strong on Saturday to earn a 4-2 win, which earned them three big CCHA points for the weekend.
“Coming in here and taking three out of four points feels real good,” head coach Scott Paluch said. “It was a real solid win for our team. We feed off the positive momentum from the previous night, came out strong and got off to a good lead. Then we made pretty strong plays defensively, getting pucks out when we had to and got good contributions from a lot of guys.”
“We haven’t had too much success here in the past and it was a real monkey off our back to get a win here tonight,” forward Jonathan Matsumoto said. “We came out strong from the beginning which we lacked in Friday’s game and bounced back very well.”
It was a goal by Matsumoto at 4:36 in the second period Saturday that gave BG a 3-1 lead and made the difference. The Falcons, who were outscored in the first period 3-0 the previous night, came out and took an early two goal lead then answered back a Ferris goal by Eric Vesley that made it 2-1 after the first with Matsumoto’s goal on a nice play on the left side of the net.
Mike Falk and Alex Foster picked up the assists as Foster hit Falk coming in fast on the left, who passed it back to Matsumoto for the goal.
Falk also was the catalyst on the first goal of the game just 4:14 in and scored the second goal of the game just three minutes later to give BG the 2-0 lead. He hit Matsumoto on his first goal of the game skating across to the left circle, whose laser beat Bulldog goaltender Derek MacIntyre, and then scored on a hard laser of his own on the Falcons’ first power-play of the game with Foster getting his first of two assists on the night. The Falcons’ power-play struggled on the weekend though, only going 1-9 while the Ferris power-play went 2-11
Ferris’ only extra-man goal of the game Saturday came with 8:45 left in the second as Matt Rutkowski cut the BG lead to 3-2 with a nice shot over Jordan Sigalet, who was lying down in the crease after BG couldn’t clear the puck.
Sigalet, however, came up big as he made solid saves throughout the night, including key saves in an early stretch of the first period where Ferris had some good pressure off their fore-check. He went on to make 36 saves for the game (54 for the weekend) only allowing two goals.
Steve Brudzewski would then score the lone-goal of the third period just 3:25 in to finish it off. His seventh goal of the season found the net from the right side of the crease on a pass from John Mazzei. BG would go on to finish off the win as they protected the lead well and didn’t give up a lot of turnovers, which had gotten them in trouble the night before.
“Ferris plays so hard and I think the fact that we were able to stay in front the whole time dictated the game,” Paluch said. “We didn’t put ourselves in a lot of tough situations with mistakes and the odd-man rushes we gave up were in the first, but that was due to Ferris cracking our fore-check.”
It was the fore-check on Friday night that got Ferris off to a strong start on the weekend and had the Falcons back on their heels. The Falcons had trouble getting the puck in the offensive zone as Ferris did a good job of using the fore-check to create 16 first period shots to just seven for BG, allowing Ferris to grab a 3-0 lead after the first.
Matt Stefanishion would get the first two Ferris goals, one on the power-play and one off a BG turnover as Ferris had a 2-0 lead with 4:57 remaining in the first period.
Greg Rallo would add the third goal with 1:06 left in the period off a rebound in front of the net as BG continued to struggle defensively.
After settling down on defense, the Falcons would come out and put up 26 shots in the final two periods, 13 in each to outshoot Ferris 38-35 for the game.
A 22 second stretch at the midway point of the second got the score to 3-2.
Michael Hodgson scored on a hard-shot from the left circle and Bryan Dobek scored on a goal setup by good fore-checking from the Falcons to bring BG within one at 10:27 of the period. Jon Sitko, Alex Rogosheske, Dobek and Mazzei all picked up assists on the goals.
Ferris would counter the Falcon attack though, as just 1:42 later Stefanishion would finish off a hat-trick to make it 4-2 as his shot was misplayed by a BG defenseman in front of the net. Vesley then would make it a three-goal lead at 15:09 on a shot off the right crossbar.
It would be one of the last shots Sigalet would see on the night as Jon Horrell replaced him at the start of the final period.
Entering the third period at 5-2, the Falcons still continued to claw their way back and did so by crashing the net, scoring their last three goals on rebounds and getting 10 big saves from Horrell, including one on Ferris’ star forward Jeff Legue as he had a great break-away chance.
Just 2:10 in, Derek Whitmore scored his 11th of the season in front on a rebound off a shot by Jeremy Bronson, then 43 seconds later he assisted on a goal by James Unger on a similar type of play. The last Falcon goal off a rebound would then come at 12:19 as Dobek got his second goal of the game off a rebounded shot from Taylor Christie.
Brett Pilkington picked up two assists as well on the plays and set a new career-high in points for a season with 23.
BG outshot Ferris 5-to-2 in overtime, but the game would end in a 5-5 tie.
BG will continue their five-game road trip at Ohio State next weekend before hosting Western Michigan.
