David Archambeau/For the Gazette Michigan Tech forward Blais Richartz (21), defenseman Chase Pietila (17), forward Henry Bartle (4), and forward Alex Nordstrom celebrate a goal scored in a CCHA quarterfinal game against Bowling Green State Saturday at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena.

HOUGHTON — For the third straight season, the Michigan Tech Huskies will host a CCHA semifinal contest. After dropping the game each of the last two years, the Huskies are hopeful that as they enter their game Saturday against the Minnesota State Mavericks, they have learned key lessons that will help them be successful this time around.

“We need to focus on ourselves, and we need to dictate and play the way we want to play,” said assistant coach Tyler Shelast. “(We have) one game, one opportunity. (We need to) come out flying, and, really, lay it all out there.”

Unlike in each of the previous two seasons, if the Huskies want to return to the NCAA Tournament this year, they will need to win the CCHA playoff title. They are aware that every game, from here on out, could be their last one.

“There is no tomorrow,” said Shelast. “Looking at last year and the year before, we had the opportunity of being really high in the pairwise. I don’t think, from a player standpoint, the superficial thought is, ‘Oh, if we lose, we’re in. It’s fine.’ At times, there may be a subconscious let down in some capacity. We don’t have that opportunity. We lose any of those games. We lose, say, really, Saturday and lose Sunday (last weekend, the) season’s over. We lose (this) Saturday, it’s over.”

After the Huskies won Friday night’s quarterfinal series game over the Bowling Green State Falcons, 5-0, they knew that things would be different when it came to Saturday’s contest.

“As it goes farther in the series, you get to that third game, really, anything can happen, right? Credit to Bowling Green on Saturday,” Shelast said. “It’s hard to eliminate teams. Their season’s going to be put to an end if we beat them. So, it’s never easy. (It) certainly wasn’t an easy game, and seeing how that game kind of played out. Kind of the energy that we had to put into that game to win it, (if we played) the next night, anything (could) happen.”

Looking at Friday night’s win, the Huskies really took control of the game in the second period. They did score in the first period when co-captain Logan Pietila’s pass attempt deflected into the net, but it was the two goals in a span of just under three minutes in the middle frame that changed the course of the contest. The Huskies not only scored twice, but outshot the Falcons, 18-1, in the process.

“I think the shots were 18-2 or 18-1, or something like that,” said Shelast. We played fast. We looked at the number of pucks, we chipped, you look at how hard we got in on pucks. Obviously, our offensive zone play was really good, moving the puck side to side, guys getting into areas, and then really just recovering pucks and doing it all again.

“When you kind of get into that mode, what kind of happens is when they start chipping pucks out, (but) they don’t necessarily make it outside of our far blue line. Then we just turn it up again, and they’re not able to change, and maybe we get a change. It’s typically more fun playing offense than it is playing defense.”

Shelast compares that style of play to what a number of consistently strong hockey teams do regularly.

“So you kind of turn into that three-quarter-ice game, and that, for us and most teams, look at Mankato, back in the day, you look at Michigan State, Wisconsin, whoever it is,” he said, “when you can turn games into three-quarter-ice games, and you’re just consistently just turning pucks, it makes it very tough to defend against.”

Saturday night, the Huskies had to battle back from a 2-0 deficit and a 4-3 deficit, but both times, they found a way to be successful.

“It was certainly different Saturday night in terms of just kind of our overall pace, just kind of our overall, whether it was nervousness or whatever it was,” Shelast said. “You could see there was a difference.

“I didn’t have a sense where I was really nervous, but I was kind of like, ‘OK, we’re a little bit different tonight. It’ll be interesting to see how can we get our game going, and turn it.’ I thought we did.”

Friday night, freshman winger Henry Bartle scored his first career goal. Saturday night, senior center Blais Richartz scored, and senior winger Tyrone Bronte scored as well, giving the Huskies more offense from their depth.

“They’ve done a great job, when you think about just what those guys are doing,” Shelast said.

“They’re the ones keeping it very simple. They’re playing to their strengths.”

With their depth players playing well, that has helped their top players step their games up to match.

“They help push the Pietilas, the Gordons, the Mosleys in that capacity,” said Shelast, “where, if these guys are having success off of that type of game, everyone else can kind of look at that and be like, ‘OK, we need to be able to do that. We need to be able to drive that way.'”

The Huskies are playing with a confidence over their last eight games that seems to start with the way they are exiting their own end, thanks to how their defense has started to help get the puck out of the defensive zone better than it had earlier in the season.

“Our (defense is) moving pucks fast,” said Shelast. “Nick (Williams), Chase (Pietila, (Trevor Russell), Jed (Pietila), (Matthew Campbell) was back, Kasper (Vaharautio) all the way down. When they have a commitment to playing fast, and they have a commitment to playing that three-quarter-ice game, and getting up to our forwards.”

SCOUTING THE MAVERICKS

The Minnesota State Mavericks enter this weekend coming off a sweep of the Northern Michigan Wildcats last weekend, 2-1 and 6-1. The Mavericks are 18-14-4 this season, the first under head coach Luke Strand.

The Huskies did sweep the Mavericks in Mankato, Minnesota, back on Nov. 24 and 25, but split with them during Winter Carnival weekend in Houghton, winning 3-1 Friday and losing 4-2 on Saturday.

Fifth-year forward Sam Morton leads the Mavericks in scoring with a team-high 24 goals and 34 points in 36 games. He is a finalist for CCHA Forward of the Year. Freshman defenseman Even Murr has also been very good, leading the team in assists (21) and racking up 27 points in 36 games. Murr is up for CCHA Defenseman of the Year and made the All-Rookie Team.

In goal, sophomore Alex Tracy has seen the bulk of the action, appearing in 29 games, starting 27 of them. He is 13-9-4 with two shutouts. He carries a 2.44 goals against average and a.911 save percentage.

GAME TIME

The Huskies and Mavericks will meet at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena in Houghton Saturday night at 5:07 p.m.