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Box Score]
KALAMAZOO, MI - The good thing for the Alaska Nanooks early in the third period was they killed their fourth straight penalty Friday night against Western Michigan.
The bad thing was that six seconds later, the Broncos scored the game-winning goal in a 3-1 upset of the third-place team in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association and the 12th-ranked squad in the country.
A first-period power-play goal by sophomore left wing
Carlo Finucci (Burnaby, BC)accounted for Alaska's only digit on the Lawson Ice Arena scoreboard.
The Nanooks are in a tie for third place in the standings with Ferris State, despite not being able to carry over their uptempo efforts from a scoreless second period, where Alaska outshot the Broncos 15-6 on the way 34-31 outcome in the series opener.
“I think in the second period we got quality scoring chances, but at the end of the day, you've got to capitalize,” Alaska head coach
Dallas Ferguson said.
Defenseman
Bryant Molle (Anchorage, AK) and right wing
Dustin Sather (Wanham, AB), both juniors, had assists and sophomore goaltender
Scott Greenham (Addison, ON) made 28 saves for the Nanooks (5-4-2-2 CCHA, 8-4-3 overall).
Western Michigan, in an 11th-place tie with the Michigan Wolverines, kept Alaska from not capitalizing after the first period by disrupting passing and shooting lanes, which led to a 20-12 advantage in blocks for the Broncos (2-7-2-1, 6-7-2).
The hosts killed the visitors' last five power plays, while getting 33 saves from senior goaltender Riley Gill.
“We knew going in that Gill was a big part of their team, and he played well tonight,” Ferguson said. “I think if we would have put a couple of those (shots) away in the second period, it probably would have been a different game.”
Ferguson lauded the Broncos, who got two goals from senior defenseman Jordan Collins, including an empty-netter.
“Give them credit, they played hard, they blocked shots,” Ferguson said. “They did a lot of things that are necessary to win at this level.
“Assessing our game,” he continued, “I don't know if it was a bad game, but at the end of the day, to get points in this league, you've got to have better than an OK game ... I think as a whole, we've got a lot more to offer, but tonight we came up a little short.”
The Nanooks are 2-3 in their last five games against Western Michigan and are 3-4 against last-place teams since last season.
To the Nanooks, it's a sign of the parity in the 12-team CCHA.
“Teams have a chance every night and we've got to be ready for that if we want to be a top team in the country,” Finucci said. “No matter what position they're in the standings, we've got to play our A game every night. We're not going to win with anything less than that.”
Finucci provided the game's first score at 5:33 of the opening period by faking a pass in the left circle and lining a low wrist shot past Gill for Alaska's 17th power-play goal of the season — just three fewer than for all of last season.
Western Michigan's first two goals Friday beat Greenham through screens in front of the crease.
Collins knotted the score at 9:08 of the first period with a blast from inside the blue line not long after a faceoff. Senior defenseman Tyler Ludwig provided the go-ahead tally at 3:15 of the third with a wrist shot from the left circle that cleared traffic and skipped off Greenham's glove.
“I was trying to fight the screens and see if I could pick up the puck, but I wasn't able to,” Greenham said. “The first one was the kind of shot that they really need me to save; but the second one, I just didn't see the shot until the last second and it ended up going off my glove.”
Broncos head coach Jim Culhane saw his team win for only the second time in its last 11 games after Collins scored into an empty net with 1:13 left in the game after he cleared the puck out of a scramble in front of the crease.
“It was a real solid effort by everybody for 60 minutes,” Culhane said. “We battled real hard against a ranked opponent and getting a win in conference play (after) we've been so close.”
