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ANCHORAGE -- Coming into Saturday night’s game against the Alaska-Anchorage Seawolves, the Michigan Tech Huskies were riding a four-game winning streak. Despite a sluggish start, the Huskies were 17 minutes, 30 seconds from their fifth win when the Seawolves tied the game at 1-1.
Two five-minute overtime periods solved nothing, forcing the game to end in a tie. The Seawolves earned the extra point in a shootout.
"I liked the way we played," said Huskies assistant coach Joe Shawhan in an interview with Mix 93. "In the first period, we didn’t play with the urgency we needed to play with. We didn’t play with the pace. We didn’t play with the compete."
With the Huskies’ slow start, the Seawolves were able to trade chances with them for much of the opening frame. That changed late in the period when Michigan Tech forwards crashed the slot in front of Seawolves goaltender Olivier Mantha and caused him to lose his stick. The Huskies were unable to score, but they kept the pressure on.
The Huskies (7-6-3 overall, 6-2-2-1 WCHA) continued its aggressive play, and with just over a minute remaining, senior Reid Sturos found senior Tyler Heinonen behind Mantha. Heinonen skated the puck out to the top of the crease and fired a backhand that Mantha got a piece of.
The Huskies continued to press the Seawolves early in the second period and that led to a power play just 3:14 in. A minute-and-a-half later, the Huskies took the lead.
Junior Matt Roy took a cross-ice pass from Mark Auk and fired a shot from the middle of the blue line towards Mantha. Mantha stopped the shot, but the rebound bounced to junior Joel L’Esperance. Unable to get his stick on the puck, L’Esperance kicked the puck to freshman Gavin Gould at the top of the crease, and Goud buried it in the back of the net at 4:48.
After the goal, the teams settled into a back-and-forth affair until the Huskies found themselves on the penalty kill when Heinonen took a cross-checking penalty. After the penalty ended, Heinonen joined the rush with assistant captain Brent Baltus, who was playing his second game since returning from an injury. Heinonen got the puck and fired the initial shot that Mantha kicked away, but right to Baltus. His quick shot was also stopped by Mantha.
On a power play three minutes later, Baltus had another chance off a pass from Sturos, but was stopped again by Mantha, who made 37 saves on the night.
The Huskies, who had just six shots through the first 20 minutes, put up 17 in total in the middle frame, but were unable to beat Mantha more than once.
"I liked, going into the third, the amount of time we spent in hard ice," said Shawhan. "I don’t think we spent enough time there and I don’t think we got enough pucks into there where we could do some damage."
Looking for a better start to the third, the Seawolves (1-10-1 overall, 0-5-1-1 WCHA) got just that as they forced a penalty by captain Cliff Watson just 1:24 in. A minute later, Jonah Renouf evened the game with a shot through traffic that snuck past freshman Angus Redmond.
Nothing else found its way past either Mantha or Redmond through the remaining 17:30 of regulation, the five minutes of 5-on-5 overtime or the five minutes of 3-on-3 overtime. In fact it was not until Aleksi Ainali scored in a shootout with a deke that beat Redmond that any skater found the back of the net. Auk had a chance to tie it for the Huskies, but he lost control of the puck in close to Mantha.
SECOND PLACE: The Huskies earned four points on the weekend, giving them 21 and moving them into second place behind Bemidji State. The Beavers hold a 14-point edge, but the Huskies have two games in hand.
FRIDAY VICTORY: Assistant captain Shane Hanna, L’Esperance, and freshman Alex Smith all scored even strength goals for the Huskies in a 3-2 win Friday night. Smith picked up an assist on Hanna’s goal while Hanna added an assist on L’Esperance’s tally.
Redmond stopped 16 pucks on the night.