Freshman goalie Craig Kowalski stopped 29 of the 30 shots he faced Friday, helping Northern Michigan earn a 1-1 tie with No. 8 Western Michigan at the Berry Events Center.<\/p>\n
The tie gives NMU three of the four points it could have earned against the Broncos, and puts the Wildcats (11-8-7, 7-7-6) in a fifth-place gridlock in the CCHA.<\/p>\n
Both of the game’s goals came on the power play in the second period, with Mike Sandbeck scoring first for Northern and Steve Rymsha answering for Western.<\/p>\n
The Broncos outshot NMU, 30-24, but had to fight for their lives in overtime, as the Wildcats received a power play just 14 seconds in. NMU finished with eight shots in the extra session, while Western had two.<\/p>\n
“We played a very good team \u00ad- a highly-ranked team,” NMU coach Rick Comley said. “We played very well last night and caught them off guard, I think. [Western] played a lot better tonight, and I think it took us a period or a period and a half to get our legs under us. We played pretty well in the third period and in overtime.”<\/p>\n
After a scoreless opening 20 minutes, Sandbeck broke the ice with his first of the season at 11:21. The senior forward beat WMU goalie Jeff Reynaert through the five hole, scoring on the power play to make it 1-0. Assists went to Terry Harrison and Jimmy Jackson.<\/p>\n
But the Broncos countered by tying the contest three minutes later, when Rymsha got his 19th from David Gove and Mike Bishai.<\/p>\n
NMU finished 1-for-6 with the man advantage, while the Broncos were 1-for-7.<\/p>\n
“Our penalty killing was outstanding,” Comley said. “Our power play -\u00ad at times we moved the puck well -\u00ad but they block shots very well. We had some great chances.”<\/p>\n
Both goaltenders made a number of quality saves to keep the score tied at 1. Reynaert finished with 23 stops for Western.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats will now prepare to host No. 1 Michigan State next Friday and Saturday in Marquette. Western, meanwhile, will play at Miami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Freshman goalie Craig Kowalski stopped 29 of the 30 shots he faced Friday, helping Northern Michigan earn a 1-1 tie with No. 8 Western Michigan at the Berry Events Center. The tie gives NMU three of the four points it could have earned against the Broncos, and puts the Wildcats (11-8-7, 7-7-6) in a fifth-place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1697"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}