The first period between Bowling Green and Simon Fraser of British Columbia, Canada, was the only period that decided the final score. All five goals were scored during the first, labeling the other 40 minutes of ice time superfluous play.
Falcons Brody Waters and Brayden Krieger played the first and second goals, which proved to be the game-tying and winning goals. They were followed directly by freshmen Adam Zlnka’s first goal and point and Maxwell Martin’s first goal in the orange and brown.
The game could have been much worse for Simon Fraser. In total, the Falcons capitalized on only one of their six powerplay attempts with Waters’ goal. Even outside of man advantages, BG recorded 86 total shots to the Red Leafs’ 31 and 45 shots on goal to the Red Leafs’ 18.
You may have speculated that Simon Fraser just simply committed more penalties. This is true. The Canadian team committed 31 minutes of penalty to BG’s 16. Yet 19 of the minutes came from one frustrated player in red.
However, Ryan Redekopp singlehandedly spent more time in the “sin bin” than everyone in orange and brown. Quinn Emerson was the bane of Redekopp as, through his 19 penalty minutes, two came from tripping Emerson, five from crosschecking and fighting with Emerson, and a final 10-minute disqualification for fighting with Emerson a second time. The extra two minutes came from a slashing call in the second period.
The D-man’s only other stats were three blocked shots. Rough night for #10.
Discipline was a weak point for Bowling Green (and for Simon Fraser) as they also received a fair number of penalty minutes (although four came from Emerson getting mixed up with Redekopp after the initial dirty play from the Red Leaf). Sixteen minutes came from six different players, with two penalties from Gustav Stjernberg and Emerson.
A very strongly disciplined segment of the game came inside the wheels. BG had 43 faceoff wins to only 21 faceoff losses, 14/19 from Ben Doran and an impressive 10/11 from freshman Johannes Løkkeberg in his first contest.
All of this action happened without three of the captains and arguably the three best players on the team: Ethan Scardina, Ryan O’Hara, and Ville Immonen. They were scratched from the game, to get younger players like Zlnka, Martin, and Løkkeberg more competitive ice time.
Staying with the theme of handing out ice time, Pete Eigner skated to the net with eight minutes left in the game, allowing no goals and saving two shots, making some pretty nice plays as well. He relieved starting goaltender Cole Moore, who had a near-perfect 15-save 1-goal-allowed 52 minutes in the crease.
The Falcons will resume their season on Thursday, Oct. 17, against the Western Michigan Broncos in Kalamazoo. Puck-drop is set for 7 p.m.
