Last Saturday, the Wildcats hit the ice at the Berry Events Center with plaid patterns on their sweaters for Yooper Night, looking to spring back from their overtime loss against the Falcons the day prior. Bowling Green came out hot in the first, earning an early power play and wearing out NMU with a calculated cycle before Jaden Grant tucked it away to put the Falcons up 1-0 early.

The Wildcats tried to recover by slowing down the play, but as the clock inched towards the end of the first, NMU couldn’t seem to keep the puck out of their zone. Eventually, after an onslaught of pressure, former NMU forward Matvei Kabanov diced up the defense and put it away for a 2-0 lead as the players headed for the locker room.

Bowling Green continued to pile the pressure on the Cats in the second. The constant switches of play and line changes from the orange and black kept the green and yellow exhausted. The tic-tac-toe offense continued to tear away at NMU, and despite their efforts and several blocked shots, a clean backdoor pass to Bowling Green’s Ryan O’hara was easily tucked away, putting the Falcons up 3-0. Despite some great athletic stops, NMU’s Ryan Ouellette was pulled, with Julian Molinaro taking his place.

After some incredible hustle and pressure from Northern’s Medrick Bolduc and Grayden Slipec, the puck fell to Colby Browne, who pulled away with phenomenal speed and was hooked on the breakaway for a penalty shot. However, it was dissatisfactory as Browne dinked it off the post.

At 11:52 in the period, Slipec mounted another hefty forecheck before dishing a pass to Rasmus Larsson, and the sky-scraping Swede snapped a quick shot over Christian Stoever’s glove to get NMU on the board.

For three minutes after the goal, the game lulled before BGSU ripped a shot that passed through just about every player on the ice, finding the back of Molinaro’s newly found net. Bowling Green retook the three-goal lead, 4-1.

The third period was filled with a plethora of preposterous puck stops from Molinaro, and with 7:44 left in the game, Bolduc danced his way through a BGSU defender and found Tanner Latsch, who put away Northern’s second goal, igniting some hope late in the third.

Northern pulled Molinaro in an attempt to get back in the game, but BGSU sealed the victory with an empty-net goal. Molinaro would put up 22 stops in 33 minutes, an impressive feat as NMU heads into their game at Lake Superior State on Friday. The Wildcats will go into the matchup with the Lakers at 4-23-1 on the season.