No. 20 Michigan Tech gears up for Bowling Green
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HOUGHTON -- On a road trip, everyone has a job. There is the driver of course, in charge of pointing the car in the right direction and deciding how fast to go in order to get to the destination without a costly speeding ticket. There is the copilot, the second in command, who is in charge of navigation. Someone is usually in charge of music, someone gets snack duty, and someone is tasked with nagging the driver with questions of "how much longer?" and "are we there yet?"
The Michigan Tech Huskies are on a road trip. They know where they are heading, but don’t know who should play what role, and in turn, aren’t sure how to make it to the journey’s end.
"It’s cliche," head coach Joe Shawhan said, "but it’s like driving a bus. We are still trying to find our chemistry and our combinations and where to put the guys on the bus.
"I do think we have a good group of people on that bus. We all have a good clear direction of where we are going, we just have to find the best combination to help us get there. But we are getting a lot closer."
Last weekend the No. 20 Huskies stopped at No. 9 Minnesota State, where they dropped two games to the Mavericks.
The games exposed new weaknesses but also illuminated areas of progress. Progress they hope to continue Friday and Saturday when they host the Bowling Green Falcons at 7:07 p.m. at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena.
Tech has struggled this season with the penalty kill, something that has been a point of emphasis for Shawhan this season. But against Minnesota State, the Huskies only allowed two power-play goals on 10 MSU attempts.
The Huskies may have stopped the power play, but they couldn’t execute on their own attempts, going 1 for 11 on the weekend. The answer to the power-play problem is simple, according to Shawhan.: his Huskies just need to relax.
"In the power play, you tend to struggle when you try to be narrow-minded and when you lose the energetic creativity that works within the context of what you are trying to accomplish," he said. "We are just trying to do too much too perfect instead of just throwing in an abundance of shots, retrieving and playing for second-chance opportunities."
The Huskies had 37 shots in the games against MSU, a number Shawhan would like to see increase this weekend when Tech takes on Bowling Green State. The Huskies have defeated the Falcons in seven of their last eight matchups.
With three losses in a row, the Huskies record is a concern, Shawhan said, but not the focus.
"I see this team that is coming out better every weekend. Whether the results show it or not, we are a better team," he said.
Currently, Tech sits at 4-4-1 (2-3-1 WCHA), second in the conference standings. The team is followed closely by Bowling Green with a 3-3-1 (2-1-1 WCHA) record.
The last time Tech faced the Falcons was in last season’s WCHA championship, where the Huskies won in dramatic fashion, defeating Bowling Green on a Shane Hanna double-overtime goal. This time, Shawhan expects some leftover energy and animosity from that contest.
"That was a high-intensity game," he said. "[Bowling Green] has good attention to detail and is disciplined. They are a team that doesn’t beat themselves."