FAIRBANKS, Alaska – After a dramatic win on Friday, the Alaska Nanooks hockey team fell to the Bowling Green Falcons 4-1 in a Western Collegiate Hockey Association contest at the Carlson Center. Splitting the two-game series with the Falcons and earning two points on the weekend, the Nanooks drop to 8-18-4 overall and 6-14-4 in WCHA play, while BGSU improves to 17-11-6 overall and 13-6-5 in the WCHA. Following the weekend, Alaska sits in ninth place in the WCHA standings with 16 points, while Bowling Green remains tied for second place with Michigan Tech, each with 31 points.
"I really liked our first period, I thought we generated some good scoring chances and obviously, being down one-nothing, things were still going in the right direction for us," head coach Dallas Ferguson said following Saturday's game. "I thought we got off the tracks a little bit after the second goal in the second period, as far as how we needed to be playing and our power play obviously wasn't clicking, so I think that was taking some momentum away from our bench and from our game. We just wanted to get reset for the third period, starting with our work ethic and going from there, but the end result is disappointing after getting a big win last night. Tonight we didn't play 60 minutes and suffered the consequences."
Bowling Green's Sean Walker put the Falcons on the board first, taking a 1-0 lead at the 15:59 mark of the first period on the power play. Walker picked up a turnover at the Nanook blue-line before walking to the middle of the ice and throwing a wrist shot on net. Walker's goal was assisted by Tyler Spezia and Brent Tate.
The Falcons extended their lead to 3-0 in the second period, with goals from Matt Pohlkamp and a shorthanded goal from Mark Cooper. Pohlkamp's goal came at 3:46 into the second period when teammate Stephen Baylis capitalized on a Nanook turnover in the D-zone before shooting it on net, where Pohlkamp re-directed it. Cooper's shorthanded goal came 11 minutes later (14:09), when the Nanooks gave up a 2-on-1 in favor of Bowling Green. Pohlkamp passed it over the Nanook defender where Cooper was able to tip the puck in to make it 3-0 Bowling Green.
Bowling Green's Joe McKeown extended the Falcons' lead to 4-0 at the 3:26 mark of the third period, with assists from Mark Friedman and Brett D'Andrea.
Eight minutes later, the Nanooks responded when junior forward Marcus Basara buried to make it 4-1 at the 11:22 mark of the third period, spoiling Falcon goaltender Chris Nell's chance for a shutout. The play began when sophomore forward Colton Sparrow was battling behind the net with a Bowling Green defender before throwing a backhanded pass to the front of the net. Senior forward Alec Hajdukovich caught Sparrow's pass but was fighting for space in front of Nell. Hajdukovich was able to redirect Sparrow's pass to Basara who was crashing the net for a tip-in goal to give the Nooks their first and only goal of the night. Basara's seventh goal of the season was assisted by Sparrow and Hajdukovich, which puts him on a two-game point streak.
Freshman goaltender Jesse Jenks made 21 saves on the night, including 11 in the second period. On the other end of the ice, BGSU's Nell also made 21 saves on Saturday, his highest being 10 saves in the first period. Bowling Green was able to capitalize on the man-advantage, going 1-of-5 PP opportunities (including a shorthanded goal), while the Nanooks were held to 0-of-5 PP chances.
The Alaska Nanooks hit the road on Monday night, travelling to Houghton, Michigan to take on the Michigan Tech Huskies for a two-game WCHA series on Friday, Feb. 26 and Saturday, Feb. 27, with puck-drop set for 3:07 p.m. AST.
"We just need to be ready to play. Obviously, we're going against another top WCHA team, we need to stay ready and stay focused on our game," Ferguson concluded. "Hopefully we can get a couple guys healthy in the meantime, but at the same time, we need to get our power play going and be ready for a really good Michigan Tech team. I think we know what to expect a little bit from them but just being ready to go down and play our game will be important. We got four games left and we're no worse for wear than we were at the beginning of the weekend so we need to go down there and find a way to get points and come home and finish up at the Governor's Cup."
For more information on the Alaska Nanooks hockey team, follow @NanooksHockey on Twitter or like the Alaska Nanooks Hockey page on Facebook.
