Sunday, October 29, 2006

Wolverines split with Northeastern

Michigan ran into a hot goaltender Saturday night and suffered a 3-2 upset loss to Northeastern.

The Wolverines (4-2-0, 1-1-0 CCHA) had taken the first game of the series, 4-3, on Friday night. Both games were on home ice at Yost Ice Arena.

Michigan went 0-for-12 on the power play and fired 47 shots on goal Saturday night, but Huskies' goalie Brad Thiessen came up with 45 saves.

"You have to give credit to the goalie, obviously," U-M head coach Red Berenson said. "He made the saves he had to make. Their defense kept us away from any loose pucks. I think we had one rebound goal in the game. I give credit to their overall team. They check hard. We generated good offense, but we needed to put one behind the goalie particularly to get the game tied up, but we just couldn’t get that one goal. As you can see, the power play wasn’t effective. We couldn't score when we had the chances, and that's when you really need your power play to bear down."

T.J. Hensick had two assists and Jack Johnson and Kevin Porter (pictured) scored for Michigan. Billy Sauer made 17 saves.

Johnson earned himself a game disqualification and a five-minute major for jumping NU forward Joe Vitale after he ran Sauer. He'll sit out Friday night's game at Michigan State.

"It was a hard hit on our goalie and I know the nearest player would have done the same thing," said Berenson. "I couldn’t tell you if it should have been a disqualification, but it was a serious hit on our goalie and it was a serious retaliation. You've got to protect the goalie and we ended up coming out on the short end of that."

Friday night, Porter scored the second of his two goals on the night 1:01 into overtime for the victory. David Rohlfs and Chad Kolarik also tallied to back Sauer's 20-save outing.

"It felt great to finally score a goal," said Porter. "In the second period, it was great and then to get that last one was awesome."

After Friday's game in East Lansing, the series will return to Yost on Saturday at 7:35 p.m. and the game can be seen on ESPN 360. Friday's game at 7:05 p.m. will be on Comcast Local.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

anyone have the clip of the fight? i was there in person, but on the other side of the ice, would love to see what comcast local showed