Despite being the more dominating team for the majority of the game, the Air Force Academy Falcons fell, 2-1 in overtime, to the No. 2 University of Denver Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The Pioneers’ Kyle Ostrow broke the tie and won the game with 57.8 seconds remaining in overtime when his attempted centering pass on a two-on-one bounced off of Falcons’ defenseman Brad Sellers’ back and past goaltender Andrew Volkening (33 saves).<\/p>\n
“We couldn’t have played any harder; we couldn’t have played any better,” said Air Force coach Frank Serratore. “Denver’s the number two team in the country and they’re the number two team in the country for a reason. They found ways to get it done all season<\/p>\n
“Did they deserve to win tonight? Not in my book, I thought we were the better team. But you know what, they’re the number two team in the country and they found a way to win.”<\/p>\n
The teams battled through a quiet first period, with both teams exchanging shots and hits, feeling each other out.<\/p>\n
The Pioneers got the first main break of the game 37 seconds into the second period when Rhett Rakhshani drew a penalty on a partial breakaway try. The penalty to the Falcons was the first in a string that saw them on the penalty kill for 5:21. Air Force was able to keep the Pioneers off the board and almost got a short-handed tally from Sean Bertsch.<\/p>\n
“There’s a reason they’ve got the second-best penalty kill in the country and they showed it tonight; they made us look foolish at times,” said DU coach George Gwozdecky “I got to a point where I was unhappy on the bench and said from now on, we’re just going to decline the penalty.”<\/p>\n
However, the Pioneers were the first to break the scoreless tie 11:21 into the middle frame when Matt Donovan sent a wrist shot from near the Pioneers bench high over Falcons’ goaltender Andrew Volkening’s left shoulder and in the net.<\/p>\n
Bertsch and his line had a few more chances later in the period, but it was teammate Jacques Lamoureux who finally put the Falcons on the board 29 seconds into the third period with a power-play goal. Lamoureux tipped a point shot from Stephen Carew past DU goaltender Marc Cheverie to tie the game at one in almost identical fashion to a goal that was called off for the Falcons the night before against Colorado College.<\/p>\n
The goal could in theory have been overturned again tonight, as the DU bench believed Lamoureux tipped it in with a high stick, but the Falcons and Atlantic Hockey don’t have video review for the officials like the WCHA.<\/p>\n
Three minutes later, things started to get ugly as the teams exchanged a few penalties and got into a few shoving matches. The Falcons ended up with a four-on-three advantage out of the mess, and ended up calling their time out to get organized, which inadvertently also calmed things down between the two teams.<\/p>\n
The Falcons continued to pressure in the third, getting several more chances, including a Matt Becker shot that rang off of Cheverie’s facemask. However, the Falcons couldn’t get another goal past the goaltender, who tied his career-high with 45 saves, and the game went into overtime.<\/p>\n
“Cheverie — how he got east-west — he got from Los Angeles to New York and New York to Los Angeles on several pucks,” said Serratore. “He played like an NHL goalkeeper and he probably will be.”<\/p>\n
Despite being outworked for most of the game, the overtime period was almost all Denver. Pioneers’ defenseman John Ryder hit a post late in overtime and then Ostrow got the game-winning tally.<\/p>\n
“In the last three or four minutes of regulation and overtime, I thought, [it’s] probably going to be a tie and we’d be happy with it,” said Gwozdecky. “Depending on how you look at it, [it was] a fortunate bounce for us. With the way that game went, that was probably going to be the way it was going to wind up.<\/p>\n
“That’s as good a team as we’ve played all year long.”<\/p>\n
The Pioneers next host the University of Minnesota while the Falcons get a weekend off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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