A year ago, the Bowling Green hockey team was 4-9-7 after their first 20 games of the season with only two league wins.
This year, the Falcons are 10-7-3 and currently sitting fifth in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association with a league record of 7-5-2, just three points behind fourth place Northern Michigan, who they’ll face in a two-game series starting tonight at the Berry Events Center in Marquette, Mich. Face-off is set for 7:35 p.m.
The Falcons are starting a stretch that will see them play on the road in seven of their next eight games.
After the two games with Northern this weekend, they’ll play a home-and-home with Notre Dame before trips to Ferris State and Ohio State.
Northern (10-7-5; 8-5-3 CCHA) comes in unbeaten at home this season with a home-ice record of 9-0-1 on the year. That includes two big sweeps over Michigan State and Nebraska-Omaha. This past weekend, they took 3 of 4 points from Miami at home as they took a three point lead over BG for fourth place in the league with BG having last weekend off.
Having a bye week gave the Falcons some time to let players get healthy and continue to work on the good play they had going against Alaska-Fairbanks two weeks ago as they swept the Nanooks 6-2, 6-1.
“It’s big to get right back in league play again after having the week off,” head coach Scott Paluch said. “We’re coming off two big wins and now we continue up to Northern, who hasn’t lost at home and is a terrific home team. Their interesting in that they haven’t given up a lot of goals and yet they haven’t scored a lot, but still I think they’re a good offensive team and have a lot of skilled players.”
BG comes into the weekend averaging 3.3 goals a game, which is 13th nationally.
Northern only averages 2.5 goals a game, but has a league best 2.23 goals against average, which ranks seventh in the nation.
Senior goaltender Tuomas Tarkki has been the big reason behind the low- scoring as he holds a 1.82 goals against average third-best in the country with a save percentage of .938 and has three shutouts.
“He’s been around for a long time and didn’t get his chance till last season playing behind Craig Kowalski,” Paluch said. “He’s a big kid; he takes up a lot of space, knows how to get square to the puck and is very tough to beat.”
Up front, Northern is lead by Darin Olver, who has scored five goals and dished out 15 assists for a team-high 20 points.
He is joined by Andrew Contois on top of the scoring list. He has scored seven goals and tallied 10 assists for 17 points on the year.
On defense, the Wildcats have as good a defensive core as there is in the league.
Geoff Waugh, Jamie Milam and Nathan Oystrick lead the group, who play tough defensively and have the ability to makes plays on offense as well.
Oystrick, a pre-season All-CCHA selection, has five goals on the year and has tallied six assists.
“They’re as deep in the league as any team on defense,” Paluch said. “Nathan Oystrick is as good an all-around defenseman as there is and is clearly one of the top players in our league.”
For BG, Jonathan Matsumoto continues to lead the team in points with 17. Matsumoto is tied with Derek Whitmore for the team lead in goals as they both have nine on the season.
The Falcons’ power-play ranks 10th nationally coming in, as they have scored on 21 percent of their extra-man advantages on the season, scoring 30 power-play goals.
They will be facing a penalty-kill which ranks sixth, killing off 87.3 percent of the power-plays against them.
“Special teams have appeared to be big in every series and our power-play will have to be effective again in this series,” Paluch said. “With not a lot of goals being scored up there, finding offense will be important and the power-play is a chance to do that.”
Jordan Sigalet comes into the weekend up six points in the Perani Cup Standings for most three star points in the CCHA. His current goals against average is 2.60 with a .925 save percentage and one shutout.
The Falcons will have to be prepared to skate on Olympic-sized ice this weekend as the Berry Events Center is one of the two arenas in the conference that has an extra 15 feet in width.
The larger sized ice makes it difficult for teams to fore-check and get a good offensive flow to their game.
The Falcons had a good break, which allowed them to get plenty of rest, but their ready to go.
“It was nice to have a weekend off to get some time to regroup and let the body recover,” Mike Falk. “It’s difficult to play there with the Olympic sheet and the fact that they have a great team, but we look to have a very solid weekend this weekend.”
Mike Nesdill has been skating with the Falcons in practice this week after being cleared to play after what was thought to be a season ending injury. The team hasn’t decided yet though whether he’ll play this season or be red-shirted.
Jeremy Bronson is said to be “very close and could be ready to go”, but forward Jon Erickson is expected to miss due to a knee injury in practice last week.
The series will end tomorrow night with the teams dropping the puck at 7:35 p.m. in this crucial mid-season CCHA series.
