A crowd of 11,570 people (third largest crowd at Value City Arena this season) saw Bowling Green alumnus John Markell (Ohio State head coach) continue his dominance over the Falcons on Saturday night as déjà vu was the only way of describing the series between the two in-state rivals.
Much like their past meetings with Markell’s Buckeyes, the OSU special team’s play and their physicality proved to be too much for the Falcons to overcome.
Two Ohio State power-play goals early in the game, much like the night before, helped the Buckeyes to a 3-0 lead at the midway point of the game. The Falcons would make a comeback once again though with strong goaltending from Jordan Sigalet, who made 35 saves on the night, but came up short as the Buckeyes completed their fourth consecutive series sweep of their in-state rivals by the same score as the previous night, 3-2.
“Ultimately, I felt their special teams was the difference on the weekend,” head coach Scott Paluch said, whose team went 1-15 on the power-play while giving up four power-play goals on 14 opportunities for the Buckeyes in the two games. “The game tonight was very similar to last night and you can’t come in here and expect to fall behind by three goals and think that’s the best way to earn points here.”
For the Falcons, it was their seventh straight game in Columbus where they came away with no points, as they fell to 13-11-4 on the season with a Central Collegiate Hockey Association record of 10-9-3. The Buckeyes moved to 22-7-3 with a CCHA record of 19-4-1.
Kyle Hood and Matt Beaudoin both ended the weekend with three points to lead the Buckeyes who, outshot the Falcons 38-to-28 on the night and 74-to-60 on the weekend.
It was a goal by Hood at 5:02 of the second period on the Buckeye’s third power-play of the game that gave OSU a 3-0 lead and decided the game. His laser from the top of the slot beat Sigalet for his third point of the series as he had two assists the previous night.
BG wasn’t as effective with their power-play as they could only muster one extra-man goal though they had eight chances and three 5-on-3 opportunities.
“The only momentum buster we had tonight was penalties,” Markell said, “Our coaches did a good job of pre-scouting and setting up the kill and the guys executed it well.”
Executing well is exactly the way you could describe the Ohio State power-play as a power-play goal just 2:46 into the game gave OSU an early 1-0 lead. It was a goal that was scored by Beaudoin as his shot from the left side of the crease found the net on a nice pass across from Andrew Schembri on the right.
The Buckeyes would improve that lead to 2-0 at 14:37 mark of the first as Tyson Strachan took a BG turnover in the neutral zone and skated in beating Sigalet’s outstretched right leg on a back-hand shot.
Alex Foster would finally break the Falcon scoring drought as he tipped in a shot by Jonathan Matsumoto from the right point at 12:57, then at the 8:27 mark of the final period, Matsumoto found the net for the 13th time this season when he put in a rebound from Mike Falk on BG’s lone power-play goal of the weekend.
Mike Nesdill recorded an assist on the Matsumoto goal for his first collegiate point in only his fourth career game.
BG would have numerous chances down the stretch, including a good 6-on-5 chance with 18.5 seconds left when the Falcons had a good chance in front, but OSU’s Dave Caruso came up big for the Buckeyes, making 26 saves on the night.
Sigalet made big saves for BG to keep them in the game and had a big stop of OSU’s Dan Knapp on an OSU power-play with about five minutes left.
“Both goalies again were terrific tonight,” Paluch said. “Jordan gave us a tremendous opportunity at the end to get a point.”
Sigalet also finished the game strong the night before as he made 33 saves to again give his team a chance in the opening game of the series. Though much like the game Saturday, OSU came out to score the first three goals of the game as their special teams dominated the early play.
A 2-for-2 start on the power-play gave them their first two goals as Bryce Anderson scored just 1:44 in and Beaudoin followed at 8:40.
Beaudoin would score again on an even-strength goal at 10:58 of the second period before Matsumoto scored while lying on his back at 17:03 mark to bring the score to 3-1.
James Unger would add the last goal for the Falcons on the night as his shot beat Caruso as he skated in on a 3-on-2 rush with Brett Pilkington and Derek Whitmore getting assists at 14:25 of the third period, but Caruso would shut the door on another Unger chance late in the game to make 30 saves on the night.
A stretch during the second period of the game saw two glass panes have to be replaced and gave the Falcons some time to regroup which really became a turning point.
“I thought we played a decent game until the glass started breaking all over the place,” Markell said. “For some reason, we lost momentum and it seemed to charge them.”
Charge them is what it did, as BG trailing 3-1 at the time started to get more jump and had a good chance in the last minute of the second period miss Matsumoto’s stick and go off his skate into the net, disallowing the goal.
The Falcons will try to recover from the two losses this weekend when they host Western Michigan for a two-game CCHA series.
