Dec. 9, 2006
Box Score
By Danny Martin
Staff Writer, Fairbanks Daily Newsminer
Published December 10, 2006
Posted in Sports
Alaska Nanooks head coach Tavis MacMillan felt sick to his stomach, while the Bowling Green State University Falcons felt like little kids again.
The owners of the longest losing streak this season in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association ended their nine-game skid with a 6-4 victory over the Nanooks before a stunned crowd of 3,728 and an equally shocked Alaska head coach.
The loss dropped the Nanooks to 5-4-3 league and 7-5-4 overall for a sixth-place tie with the Ohio State Buckeyes and it overshadowed a hat trick by Alaska senior center Curtis Fraser, who took Alaska on his shoulders after they trailed 4-0 early in the second period.
"I got a sick feeling in my gut. I didn't like this one and you guys shouldn't like it either, for a number of reasons," MacMillan told the Pioneer Room crowd during a postgame media conference.
MacMillan admitted he made some bad decisions on lineup changes.
"I took some guys out of the lineup who played pretty well last night, and I put some guys in who didn't play well," he said, "and that's on me."
Reason No. 2 was the Nanooks were playing well early in the game, outshooting the Falcons 5-0, until goals by sophomore right wing Brandon Svendsen and freshman center Todd McIlrath gave the visitors a 2-0 lead and momentum for their first win in nearly two months.
Bowling Green last won 4-2 at Providence on Oct. 20 and the last time they beat the Nanooks lost was Jan. 8, 2005.
"We were playing well and then we stopped competing," MacMillan said. "I think when you lose, you've got to give your opposition some credit, and I think Bowling Green deserves some credit for the way they played.
Being in the so-called slump they are in right now, I thought they competed and played hard.
"I just thought we didn't deliver. Curtis had a pretty good game and (sophomore left wing) Trevor Hyatt played well ... but boy, we just had too many holes tonight. You can't lose at home and this was a big one; this one was really tough."
Junior left wing Kyle Greentree contributed his team-high 15th goal of the season and an assist, giving him five points for the Nanooks in the series, and junior defenseman Darcy Campbell had two assists.
Junior goaltender Wylie Rogers, in his second appearance of the weekend, had 13 saves and took the loss after replacing sophomore starter Chad Johnson, who recorded 11 saves before leaving at 7:10 of the second period.
Bowling Green, which remained at the bottom of the CCHA standings (2-10-0, 4-13-1) got its other goals from junior center Jonathan Matsumoto, freshman centers Josh Boyd and James Perkin and an empty-netter from freshman right wing Tomas Petruska.
After Friday night's 4-3 loss to the Nanooks, Falcons head coach Scott Paluch didn't have his team do a morning skate or even review video of their ninth loss in a row on Friday.
He instead took them out to North Pole and a visit to Santa Claus House.
"We just took our team to North Pole and told each of them to be a little kid again," Paluch said.
The Falcons grew up when they returned to the Carlson Center on Saturday night.
"All we focused on tonight was hard work and trying to win some battles," Paluch said. "To their credit, they did an outstanding job with that and this is a good win for us."
Alaska found itself in a 4-0 hole and with a new goaltender in the second period before Fraser cut the Falcons' lead in half with a pair of power-play goals.
Matsumoto, with his third of the weekend, drilled a power-play wrist shot from the left circle over Johnson's stick-side shoulder at 1:25 for a 3-0 lead and Boyd, at 7:10, banged in a rebound of fellow freshman wing Brett Molnar's shot in front of the crease, chasing Johnson for Rogers.
Fraser cashed in on a two-man advantage at 10:19 for the Nanooks' first goal of the night and his seventh of the season, as he wrapped the puck around Spratt's glove-side skate after the Falcons' netminder had denied four shots.
"The puck came out (from a rebound of a shot by defenseman Tyler Eckford) and I knew I couldn't put it back on the goal because he was out on me and right there," Fraser said. "So I just went around him with my stick on the goal line and I just came back on the other side of him to put it in the net."
The assistant captain made it 4-2 at 16:45 of the second by taking defenseman Nathan Fornataro's pass and one-timing it in from the right circle.
The Nanooks also outshot the Falcons 15-4 over the last 13 minutes of the period to emerge with a 29-18 advantage after two periods.
But an Alaska turnover in the Falcons zone set up Bowling Green for a 5-2 lead at 7:59 of the third period. Matsumoto gained the turnover in the high slot, fed to a streaking Perkin, who got behind Eckford and surprised Rogers on his stick side.
Fraser notched his first hat trick of the season at 8:59, making the score 5-3 by beating Spratt through the pads with a rebound of Darcy Campbell's blast from the left point that was generated by Aaron Lee's cross-ice pass.
The loss, though, put a damper on Fraser's first three-goal effort of the season.
"I was saying to Eckford, `You do something like that (hat trick) and it's been so long, but all you're left with is a sour taste in your mouth,'" Fraser said. "All you're left with is a 6-4 loss at home and you're going at home for Christmas with that taste in your mouth."
Greentree, set up by freshman center Dion Knelsen's long-ice pass, split Matsumoto and Falcons defenseman Tim Maxwell and put a backhand past Spratt at 8:59 to make it 5-4.
The Nanooks pulled Rogers with 59 seconds left in the game, and 18 seconds later, Petruska squelched the Nanooks' comeback aspirations with a shot from the top of the slot into an empty net.
The Nanooks return to action Dec. 29-30 against Alaska Anchorage at Sullivan Arena in Anchorage for the final two games of this season's Alaska Airlines Governor's Cup Series.
