The ’Cats ended their regular season with a pair of losses against the Ferris State Bulldogs on the road.
With Michigan State around the corner, the ’Cats traveled to Big Rapids, Mich. last weekend to play two games against Ferris State. The first game took place on Friday, Feb. 15. The upcoming Regional Tournament also starts with a game against the Michigan State Spartans.
This will be the first time that an NMU club hockey team will be competing in a regional tournament game. NMU head coach Carl Trosien said that his guys have been looking forward to Michigan State. Although the team didn’t win last weekend, Trosien also said this past weekend was very beneficial.
“We got to see some young players get to play a larger role with having guys out of the lineup,” Trosien said. “I think it reminded the team we can be beaten if we don’t play our brand of hockey.”
The ’Cats success has also allowed them to receive some air time from local station TV 6. NMU players and Trosien were interviewed after last weekend about the their first recorded regional tournament.
Ferris State won the first game against the ’Cats 5-1. The only goal scored by the ’Cats offense came from senior forward Kellen Michalak. Although the ’Cats didn’t win, sophomore right wing Ben Hughes said they did get to work on some new plays.
“We got to work on some new plays that we never ran before,” Hughes said. “It was also a good weekend for a lot of our top scorers to recover from injuries from the last few weekends of games.”
The ’Cats were not able to score much in their first game against Ferris State. Trosien said the team had a few mistakes that cost them.
“We were sloppy at times in our own end of the puck,” Trosien said. “They did a better job than we did taking advantage of our mistakes and penalties.”
In the second game against Ferris State, the ’Cats were able to take the game into a shootout but lost 4-3. The ’Cats battled back from a 2-0 deficit but could not overcome it.
Junior right wing Mike Baudine, junior forward Kevin McNoh and senior center Brad Gicopoulos all scored for the ’Cats in the loss.
Senior defensemen Mark Novak said in both games they just were not getting the bounces to go their way.
“I think we had a hard time finding the back of the net,” Novak said. “We had a lot of opportunities to score but just could not seem to score.”
Although the ’Cats ended their season with two losses, Novak said the team will be ready to work hard at practice this week.
“The whole team knows what is ahead of us,” Novak said. “To work hard during the game and make Michigan State play Northern Michigan hockey.”
The ’Cats will have to put last weekend’s losses behind them and prepare for their first game in the regional tournament against Michigan State.
Trosien said the weekend’s games against Ferris State were still regular season games, but meaningless when it comes to the post-season picture.
“Even as coaches, we approached the weekend as a chance to rest guys who needed to get healthy,” Trosien said. “We got to see some younger players in a regular role to see how they would handle it from a developmental state.”
While Trosien said it was a meaningless game, he still said that every game is important.
With a second match against Michigan State coming up, the ’Cats will have a chance for the school to get their first regional win in the history of the program.
“Winning is always the goal,” Trosien said. “This is one of those weekends however the results, are not as important as preparing for Saturday and Michigan State.”
With two losses ending the ’Cats regular season, Trosien said he believes that last weekend’s games made his team realize that when they slack on their end, it’s very hard to win games.
“We still need to learn to work as hard on defense as we do on offense,” Trosien said. “These are all things we can take out of this last weekend.”
With Michigan State to look forward to, Hughes said the team is prepared.
“We’ve had our eyes on this weekend since the first game of the season,” Hughes said. “We will be more than ready.”
The ’Cats will open up against Michigan State on Saturday, Feb. 23. in Northbrook, Ill. This will be the first time that an NMU club hockey team will be competing in a regional tournament game.
