Seawolves Take 1st Game With Bemidji 5-4

Naslund looks for a rebound ... photo credit BSU Website ...

Don't let the score fool you.  The Beaver's scored two goals tonight.  A crazy fluke goal just 27 into the game gave the Beaver's their first goal of the night.  Just 15 seconds later they scored their first goal of the night.  Thirty-five seconds later the Seawolves scored their 2nd goal of the night to make the score 2-1 in favor of the Beaver.  Um ... Whut?

27 seconds into the game Bemidji's Sam Rendle threw a puck from the goal line in the corner about chest high past Rob Gunderson; Scott Warner was stationed on the far side of the net and the puck bounced off his chest and dropped, as it flopped around and Warner tried to control it he knocked it in to give Bemidji a 1-0 lead.

On the ensuing face-off at center ice, Bemidji's Matt Read made a quick dash to the puck on the draw that was won by Jordan Kwas for the Seawolves.  His quickness paid off as he went in clean and scored Bemidji's first goal of the night just 15 seconds after UAA gave them the lead.

Bemidji won the draw following that goal but the Seawolves pressured the puck deep into the Bemidji zone where Daniel Naslund corralled it and then walked it out of the corner to the front of the net and stuffed it between Beaver goalie Dan Bakala's pads.

With less than a minute and a half gone in the game there was 3 goals scored.

Thank god things settled out a bit after that.  For the rest of the 1st period the Seawolves pretty well dominated play in terms of both possession and scoring chances.  A single power play chance at 9:38 didn't yield any positive results but UAA maintained good zone presence and worked the puck well for several opportunities but without generating any real clear chances.

But with 2:38 gone in the 2nd Bemidji's Brady Wacker got called for holding.  That seems a bit ironic to me.  Forty-five seconds into the man advantage Matt Bailey stuffed home a 2nd rebound attempt after Bakala made a great save and stuffed Craig Parkinson's 1st rebound attempt.  

Bemidji took a 3-2 lead when the "genius" of WCHA officials Todd Anderson signaled a goal at 8:57 during a Bemidji power play.  Rob Gunderson was struggling with a puck on his chest and fell backward toward the goal.  You could clearly see on the non-overhead replay that the puck never got up to his shoulders.  On the overhead view you could clearly see that nary a bit of green stitching on Rob's sweater crossed the line.  

But apparently since they couldn't actually see the puck on the overhead the Anderson upheld his bogus call of a goal.  Wasn't it Todd Anderson that somehow saw the puck cross the line while it was buried in Nathan Lawson's glove against DU in OT some years back?  Anyway, the refereeing was brutal.  

Naslund got called for a phantom tripping and Bemidji's Findlay got called for a boarding penalty that was no such thing as well.  Then Anderson signaled goal again on a shot that rang off the crossbar.  The overhead view clearly showed the puck didn't go in the net and Anderson disgustedly had to wave it off.  Poor Todd.  That must have ruined his night.

Sean Wiles answered about 6 and a half minutes later with a nice backhand shot at the 15:11 to get the game back to even at 3-3.  At 19:04 of the period Radislav Illo slew-footed a UAA player (I think Friesma called that one) and received a penalty for tripping.  Bemidji did a good job killing off the first half of the penalty to end the 2nd period.  

But with just 26 seconds gone in the 3rd period, Matt Baily scored his 2nd of the night off a sweet Jordan Kwas feed.  Bailey was standing on the door step on the backside of the play when Kwas threaded a quick pass and Matt just had to stuff it home.  The Seawolves and the Beaver exchanged power play chances about 5 minutes apart but both penalty kill units did good work to keep the other team from scoring.  

At 15:20 of the period following a Bemidji rush the Seawolves transitioned out of the zone when Brett Cameron positioned well defensively intercepted the puck and fed it for a late developing 3 on 2 rush.  Cameron joined the rush and took a pass from Nick Haddad that he absolutely buried to the low stick side corner on Bakala.  That made the score 5-3.

Bemidji though had a quick answer just 26 seconds later when while the referee (dunno which one) had his arm up for a Luka Vidmar high sticking call, Illo broke in to receive a pass that floated over UAA's defense and Bemidji scored it's 2nd goal of the night to make it 5-4 with 4:18 to go in the game.

Bemidji was solid on their power play chance with the puck in UAA's zone and generated a couple of legitimate scoring chances that had to be cleared at the last second.  Nick Haddad came through with a quality effort to kill 15 or 20 seconds behind the Beaver net and almost produced a scoring chance himself.  With 1:30 or so left in the game, the Beaver pulled their goalie and gave their best in furiously trying to get the game tying goal.  Craig Parkinson won a crucial draw with 12.3 seconds left in the defensive zone, the Seawolves tied it up along the end boards and it was game over.

Congratulations are in order for the team.  They once again overcame some adversity in coming from 2 goals behind early before finally getting a two goal lead late.  We wondered in the chat room if that was UAA's first two goal lead of the season.  I'm not going to bother looking it up though.  All that matters is the Seawolves got a precious two road points tonight.  

If tomorrow's game goes like tonight but sans the weird shit then UAA could come away with all four points.  Let's hope none of the guys take their foot off the gas tomorrow.  The Beaver did outshoot UAA by a fair margin in the 2nd and 3rd periods tonight so the guys definitely have some tightening up to do and some adjustments to make in order to get a chance at the sweep.  It won't likely be an easy game though as the Beaver are sure to redouble their efforts to win their first WCHA game in their new barn.

Here's the boxscore.  And here's a link to the story on the UAA website.