Seawolves 3 - DU 5

The difference in the game tonight came down to one thing in my estimation.  After the Seawolves fought back with an aggressive offensive effort and gained the lead, they looked like they sat back on that lead.  Everyone sitting around me agreed that they were asking for trouble.  And eventually it came.  From about the 3 minute mark in the 3rd period until they got the goal to tie it up the Seawolves seemed to put themselves on their heels and try to hold the lead.

The game was back and forth with both teams getting chances but the Seawolves were sublimely effective when they pressed their attack.  It was working for them.  It would have been the difference in the game and probably have led to a win if they'd managed to keep it up.  Instead, they really looked like they wanted to preserve the lead.  They basically gifted chance after chance to the DU offense.  No doubt the shot chart for the last ten minutes of the game would have lots of tick marks in the UAA zone and not so many in the DU zone.

Rob Gunderson played well all night but with nobody really pushing the puck forward he was relied on too heavily to win the game.  Let me make sure I say this correctly and leave no misunderstanding about it: they played as hard as they've played all season.  But deciding to do so in your own end is folly.

The game winning goal came on the DU power play off of a call made from center ice by referee Matt Ulwelling on a play that was right in front of referee Brian Thul deep in the UAA zone.  McLeod and some hack for DU ran into each other in the slot when the puck wasn't there and McLeod gets whistled by the referee at center ice for interference.  Here's the thing that's bothersome, the referees let them play pretty much all night then UAA gets whistled with about 8 minutes left?

If you're going to let the teams play ... then let them play the whole game eh?  Lastly, the move to pull Gunderson with around 2 mins left was reasonable ... but the execution was a bit of a kluge.   The extra skater and another defenseman who was changing came off the bench a little slowly it seemed.  They charged into the zone while UAA had possession but just as they hit the blueline they were met with the puck coming out of the zone.  If they'd gotten there like half a second earlier they could have forced the puck deep again but they struggled with it and when DU came up with the puck the Seawolves were unable to stop the rush.  Not a big criticism I suppose, but it just didn't quite click and if it had then who knows.

It's a game of bounces a lot of times and while the Seawolves got a good bounce here and there they didn't quite seem to get enough of them.  Definitely a bummer.  The bright side is the number of good scoring chances the team had.  But for a save here or there it might have been a different outcome.

Did I say I hate the early and late goals in periods.  Here's the boxscore.  It's the first Friday loss in a while, so I can only imagine the guys will come back tomorrow night with resolve and get the job done.