The BG hockey team’s lack of consistency showed again this past weekend, with a pair of polar-opposite games against Michigan State.
The Falcons won Friday’s game 1-0 and dropped Saturday’s game 6-1.
Senior goalie Andrew Hammond made his return to game action Friday with a huge performance. He stopped all 29 shots the Spartans threw at him.
He had missed the previous three games because of an elbow injury.
“Michigan State tends to come at you in waves; you kind of try and hold your team in there,” Hammond said. “I thought I did a pretty good job of that tonight. I was just trying to be patient and calm out there.”
Hammond was at his best in the third period, where the Spartans put 14 shots on him.
“I thought he looked solid,” said BG Coach Chris Bergeron. “I thought he looked on top of it. He looked in control for the most part and that’s Andrew when he’s at his best.”
The Falcons were strong in the first period, outshooting Michigan State 9-5, along with getting the game’s only goal.
Connor Kucera put BG on the board late in the period, blasting a one-timer feed from Adam Berkle past Michigan State goalie Jake Hildebrand.
“It was kind of a broken play,” Kucera said. “Berkle got the puck and came to the point and I just kind of moved across the middle and got a lane. Took a one-time shot and put it on net and it just happened to go in.”
Everything that went right for BG in Friday’s game seemed to go wrong in Saturday’s, as the Falcons fell behind early and were never able to catch up.
The Spartans demonstrated fantastic execution on the power play, scoring four times in seven opportunities with the man advantage.
Michigan State’s first three goals of the game came on the power play.
“The first two we had the puck go under one of our guy’s sticks to one of their guys on the back door, so that was [lack of] execution,” Bergeron said. “Then the five-on-three goal, that’s on Hammond. That’s just a bad goal. And then the momentum and the game is out of hand. It was lack of execution, I’d say.”
BG had a few scoring chances early, but only put four shots on Michigan State goalie Will Yanakeff in the first period.
Hammond stopped 12 of 16 shots and was pulled in favor of Tommy Burke mid-way though the second period. Burke stopped five of seven shots.
Cam Wojtala scored BG’s goal late in the third period.
The Falcons’ power play once again was held without a goal and went 0-for-8 on the weekend. BG only had two shots on three power play opportunities Saturday.
“It was pretty embarrassing,” Wojtala said of the game. “Our effort, our execution from start to finish. We didn’t really get anything going. Obviously, it showed throughout the game.”
BG will be back in action this weekend, taking on Western Michigan in a home-and-home series. Friday’s game will be played in Kalamazoo, with Saturday’s taking place at the BGSU Ice Arena.
