Western Michigan came into Saturday night’s game with an obvious, imperative goal: win, or the season is over. Win the Broncos did, downing No. 5 Miami 7-5 to force a deciding game in their best-of-three series.
“Who would have thought we’d see 12 goals here tonight?” WMU coach Andy Murray asked after the game. “I think we played much better last night than we did tonight, to be quite honest. Miami did everything they could to win the series tonight, but we caught them in some counter situations and converted.”
Like Friday night, the RedHawks lit the lamp first. Riley Barber’s 18th goal of the year, assisted by Colin Sullivan and goaltender Ryan McKay, beat Lukas Hafner just over two minutes into the contest.
It took Frederik Tiffels and company about 10 minutes to respond, when Tiffels converted a short-handed breakaway attempt to tie the game at 12:11 of the first period.
Tiffels potted his second unassisted goal of the game in similar one-on-one fashion just 93 seconds into the middle frame, maneuvering to his backhand once again to beat McKay.
“Those were a couple of big breakaway goals,” Murray explained. “They turned it over and we went the other direction.”
WMU widened the lead to two less than a minute later on a goal by Nolan LaPorte at 2:17 of the second period.
It didn’t take long for Miami and Western Michigan to trade strikes again. Austin Czarnik and Colton Hargrove each added to the team’s respective totals. Both Hafner and McKay were pulled midway through the second period in favor of Frank Slubowski and Jay Williams, adding an element of desperation to both teams’ efforts.
The scoring pace slowed significantly after that flurry in the second, though Chris Dienes did record his fifth goal of the year on a bar-down wrist shot that beat Williams over his left shoulder.
Miami found some magic in the twilight of the game, opting to pull Williams in favor of a sixth skater with well over four minutes to play. Sean Kuraly and Blake Coleman managed to bring Miami back from the brink, but Will Kessel ended any hope of a three-goal comeback by burying the empty-netter with moments remaining, ringing the score up as a 7-5 Western victory.
“Sunday is a special day,” Tiffels said. “We’re excited for tomorrow. It’s a good chance, a good opportunity to go out the right way.”
The RedHawks will have to regroup and recover after what could only be described as a sloppy effort. Though players were not made available to speak, coach Enrico Blasi noted that while his team had some good opportunities and rallied in dying moments of the game, some work still has to be done.
“They executed better than us tonight,” Miami coach Enrico Blasi said. “We gave them some good opportunities and they capitalized on them. We didn’t manage the puck well and we gave them an opportunity to get into it … That’s the story of the game.”
The rubber match will be held at the Goggin Ice Center at 7:05 p.m. Sunday, a matchup that Western says it’s been looking forward to.
“Coming into the weekend, Miami did not want to play a Sunday game,” Murray said. “We did. It sets up a classic game for tomorrow night.”
