The BGSU hockey team ran into a wall this weekend – the ninth-ranked and Central Collegiate Hockey Association leading Miami RedHawks with their two-headed monster occupying the nets.
That two-headed monster being Charlie Effinger and Jeff Zatkoff, the top two goalies in the league with 1.38 and 1.58 goals against averages, respectively.
Friday night in Oxford the Falcons, who came in averaging 3.50 goals a game, met up with Effinger and only managed to get one shot by him in a disappointing 6-1 loss. Things wouldn’t get much better Saturday night at the BGSU Ice Arena as the Falcons met up with Zatkoff and again struggled to finish plays in a 5-3 loss that dropped the Falcons to 3-9-1 on the season with a CCHA record of 3-7-1.
“Whether it’s 6-1 or 5-3 it doesn’t really matter, we’re losing,” BG forward Alex Foster said. “We’re looking to correct it, but it’s just not getting done right now. This [losing] is unacceptable right now.”
Much like Friday night, the Falcons played a strong first period Saturday, but made mistakes later on in the game that cost them any chance of getting back in the game. Miami would capitalize on these mistakes and bury a lot of the quality chances they got, taking a 3-1 lead in the second period after the teams played to an even 1-1 first.
“I thought it was a game that was pretty familiar to a lot of games we’ve had,” BG coach Scott Paluch said. “I thought we scratched and clawed and played a real hard game. They just finished off plays when they needed to.”
Zatkoff finished with 28 saves on 31 shots and RedHawk forward Matt Christie scored two goals to pace the RedHawks, who were out-shot by BG, 31-28. Jimmy Spratt got the start at goalie for the Falcons and made 23 saves on 28 shots.
It would be a third period goal by Christie at 7:44 that would prove to be the game-winner. His shot in front on a 1-on-1 breakaway beat Spratt by his right pad after Christie split three Falcon defenders coming through the neutral zone as he approached the Falcon blue line.
For Christie, it was his second goal of the night. His first goal opened up the game’s scoring on the power-play at 6:28 of the first period.
BG would answer when Brandon Svendson scored his second goal of the season at the 16:36 mark when he was able to take advantage of a rebound off a shot from Ryan Barnett. It would be the first of two goals off a rebound the Falcons got on the night as Jon Erickson would score off a rebound late in the third to make the score 5-3.
Though the Falcons were out-shot 8-7 in the first period, they played good defensively and were once again in the same position they were the night before – in a tie game after the first 20 minutes. However, much like Friday night that would change as Marty Guerin and Nino Musitelli scored goals just 1:01 apart to give the RedHawks a 3-1 advantage.
Zatkoff and the RedHawk penalty-killers would continue their league-leading penalty-kill effort killing off a Falcon 5-on-3 power-play along with two other BG power-plays in the second as BG couldn’t find the net despite some good chances.
“He played pretty well,” Paluch said of Zatkoff. “He found ways to make some saves in situations where it looked like the puck was going to go in and he somehow found a way to keep the puck out. He made himself big and did a good job there.”
Miami coach Enrico Blasi also credited his penalty-kill unit for making big plays all weekend. He credited the closeness of the competition in the league to creating games like Saturday’s where one or two plays can make the difference in the game.
“Our penalty-kill has been one of our strong-points all year,” Blasi said. “We have some defensemen at forward that go back there and do a nice job killing off penalties, but our best penalty-killer is our goaltender and when he is on we’re going to kill off some penalties. I thought BG came at us tonight and we were just opportunistic with our chances.”
