A Brief Review of the 3-2 Loss

I was too disappointed to write anything last night. I watched a game that I thought UAA was more than capable of winning. I wasn't enamored. There were enough minor execution errors that even just a 50% reduction could have resulted in a win. Obviously, credit has to be given to the Badgers who pulled out a victory. No doubt there was a big sigh of relief on their part. They made substantially fewer mistakes with the puck and I think more than anything else that was their key to victory. I didn't think the Seawolves played their best game in the "collective" sense.

Paul Crowder was solid all night and it was nice to see Coach Shyiak say some of the same things I'd been saying about his strength on the puck. Josh Lunden showed more physical play that I think I'd seen so far this year. He had a huge hit in the first period deep in the Wisconsin end that was impressive. Jared Tuton played all night on the #1 line with Beagle and Waldrop and while his play was impactful in a physical way (lotsa good hits) I didn't think the line was particularly dynamic. It looked more like three guys playing hard individually since there's no way I could characterize Waldrop or Beagle's play as poor. Justin Bourne got to a lot of pucks with his hustle and certainly led the team in # of shots attempted. I thought Chris Tarkir played a good game. I'd thought he'd been less than visible in a couple of games this year but last night his play was impactful. Matt Robinson was noticably the best player in the defensive end. And that's not taking anything away from the rest of the defensemen who all did a solid job in their own end. Nathan Lawson played well enough in the net that I'd expect him to play again tonight but getting beat high on his glove side on the first goal was a surprise to me. Overall he did what he was supposed to do in terms of giving his team a chance to win. Kevin Clark looked good in places but also had a couple of times where he was awkward. I would credit him though with breaking up a couple of 2-1 rushes when he found himself the last player. He also made a couple of good plays in Bucky's end as well as getting two Badgers to foul him in the 3rd to gain PP's. I didn't look at the faceoff stats but I thought that the Seawolves won more than their share. The one stat for UAA that is a big positve is that 3 times now this season they've scored a goal while playing with an empty net.

I thought the flow of the game was a bit choppy but I guess that was just how and where the penalties were called. UAA had more PP chances and in the 3rd period had about 90 seconds of a 5 on 3 where they were unable to convert. To me that was the pivotal part of the game. Converting at that point would have given the team a huge turn in momentum. I thought UAA was overall the faster team. Perhaps my expectations are too high but I can't help but feel that last night was another 2 points that got away.