Playing on the road can be hard for any sports team, but the Bowling Green hockey team is up for the challenge as they head to Oxford tonight to take on Miami of Ohio in a two-game series.
The Falcons are coming off a 4-3 victory over Findlay in which they scored three unanswered goals in the final 10:31 of the game.
“When you play a single-game weekend you’re going to remember that result, but you’re also going to remember the last period,” said head coach Scott Paluch. “That last 10 minutes that we played, the ability to put three goals together to win a hockey game, was certainly a good way to cap off the weekend and lead ourselves into Miami weekend with some good offensive production and a real good feeling of making plays to win a hockey game.”
The Falcons head into this weekend with a 2-5-0 overall record and a 0-4-0 record in the Mid-American Conference, while Miami is 6-2-0 overall and 3-1-0 in the MAC.
“We need to win,” said junior captain D’Arcy McConvey. “We know it’s going to be hard going into Miami to win, but it’s very doable even though Miami is a good team. We’ve been working a lot at improving ourselves and improving how to play against Miami, so we expect to do well.”
This weekend, however, won’t be the first time these two teams have met this year. They played in the championship game of the Lefty McFadden Invitational (Oct. 5) in Dayton. The RedHawks came away with a 2-1 victory and the Falcons came away with strategies on how to beat Miami the next time they play.
“We need to shoot more,” McConvey said. “We didn’t test them as much as they tested our goalie. We’ve worked on our neutral zone and defensive coverage so that we can avoid turning the puck over as many times as we did the last time we played them.”
The Falcons lone goal against Miami at the Invitational came from junior Mark Wires on an assist from junior defenseman Brian Escobedo. In that game BG fired 22 shots at Miami’s net, while senior goalie Tyler Masters stopped 38 of 40 shots on goal.
“They had some good chances against us the first time we played and we were able to keep them down,” Paluch said. “Tyler had a great game in goal and limited them to two goals, but they’ve been able to really put some big numbers up.”
The RedHawks are coming fresh off their sweep of top-15 ranked Northern Michigan with 7-1 and 6-3 victories to bump their average up to 5.25 goals per game. This ranks Miami as having the third-highest scoring offense in Division I hockey.
On the other end of the rink, the RedHawk defense has held opponents to 2.25 goals per game. This puts the RedHawk defense 10th overall in the nation.
“We’re playing a team this weekend that’s on a real good roll,” Paluch said. “We knew they were a real good team when we saw them in Dayton. They’ve had a lot of success, but more important they’ve been able to show a real consistent offense and the ability to put some numbers up.”
Through eight games so far the RedHawk offense has been giving opposing goaltenders trouble with 327 shots, compared to the 149 shots the defense has allowed.
“We’ve continually been working on being able to create more offense and the ability to shut down the other team,” Paluch said.
“Playing at home in front of their crowd in kind of a rivalry weekend in the CCHA the ability to shut them down is going to be a big part of it.”
The Falcons, however, will have to play this weekend, the rest of this semester and possibly the whole year, without sophomore defenseman Matt Lynn. Lynn was suspended from the team Tuesday for violating academic rules.
According to Paluch, his status with the team will be evaluated at the end of the fall semester.
“It’s obviously a disappointing situation,” Paluch said. “We have standards for our behavior on the ice and behavior off the ice. With this situation we have standards for academics and when those aren’t met there are going to be consequences.”
Face-off is set for 7:35 tonight and tomorrow night at Miami’s Goggin Ice Arena.
