Heading into Nebraska-Omaha, the Falcons had little hope at gaining a win. The Mavericks were coming off a weekend sweep over No. 7 Ohio State.
However, after the first shot on net for the Falcons went in Friday night, Bowling Green realized that the Mavericks might not be as hard as they thought.
BG came away with a 5-0 victory Friday night, and a tough 6-3 loss on Saturday.
“I think we had a very good effort out of our team for 60 minutes,” head coach Scott Paluch said. “We were playing in a building that is probably the toughest place to play in in our league and certainly one of the toughest in college hockey.”
Friday night’s win was the Falcons’ first road Central Collegiate Hockey Association win of the season (1-10-0). BG’s last road win in league action came Jan. 25, 2002 at Michigan (4-2).
It was also BG’s first road shutout since Nov. 27, 1999 at Lake Superior where Tyler Masters made 24 saves for a 1-0 victory. It was the first shutout of the season for BG, who had two shutouts last season, against LSSU and NMU. Masters recorded both shutouts.
“It’s always fun coming into another person’s building and keeping the crowd kind of quiet, and getting up on them early,” goaltender Jordan Sigalet said. “What we tried to do was come out and have a strong first 20 minutes because we’ve had some slow starts, and we put a full 60 minutes together.”
Sigalet recorded his first career shutout, stopping all 31 shots faced.
“We got a very solid effort out of Jordan in goal early in the game,” Paluch said. “Our special teams, both our penalty kill and our power play, were exceptional. We got an early lead and kept on building from that.”
Alex Rogosheske registered the first goal for the Falcons Friday night at 7:41 of the first period. It was the Falcons’ first shot on goal and extended Rogosheske’s point streak to a career-high three games.
The Falcons’ second goal came two minutes later on a five-on-three power-play. Mark Wires found the back of the net with help from D’Arcy McConvey and Kevin Bieksa.
Rogosheske scored his second goal of the night, a power-play goal, to give the Falcons a 3-0 lead.
The Falcons came out just as strong in the second period as they did in the first. Wires recorded his second power-play goal of the evening at the 8:00 mark of the second period.
Mike Falk scored the final power-play goal for the Falcons late in the third period.
At 18:54 in the third period the teams got into a brawl. BG’s Ben Assenmacher and UNO’s Mike Lefley were disqualified from the game. As a result of the incident, UNO had 21 penalties for 61 minutes, while BG had 20 penalties for 59 minutes.
Nebraska-Omaha held a 31-24 shot advantage for the game, but did not score on the power play, while the Falcons went 4-for-8 on the power play.
Saturday night was a different story for the Falcons, as they dropped a 6-3 decision to the Mavericks.
“The result doesn’t show what kind of effort we put forth,” Paluch said. “That was a very good performance by our team. We wanted to give ourselves a real good chance to get a sweep out of the weekend and we did that. We played real well.”
Nebraska-Omaha got on the board first, at 1:13 of the first period, but the Falcons answered back when Wires found the back of the net on a pass from Steve Brudsewski and Tyler Knight.
UNO scored three more goals to give them a 4-1 lead before the Falcons scored again.
Falk netted a goal at 19:10 of the second period from McConvey and Brudsewski to cut the Mavericks’ lead to 4-2.
Then, with 17:42 left in the third period, Brudsewski scored a short-handed goal to put the Falcons one goal closer to tying the game.
“[Brudsewski] was terrific on Saturday,” Paluch said. “We needed a goal and he gave it to us.”
However, that was the last goal the Falcons would score. UNO registered two more goals, including an empty-net goal with 43 seconds left in the game.
Sigalet finished with 28 saves on 33 shots faced, while the Falcons ended the evening 1-for-6 on the power play.
“Jordan was very good again,” Paluch said. “He played real well. He made so many saves in key situations. Jordan was solid throughout the entire night.”
NOTES
BG finished the month of January with a 4-3-1 record in eight games with its 5-0 win on Jan. 31 at UNO. The last time the Falcons finished above .500 for a month in the regular season was in March of 2001 (2-0-0).
