Senior forward Fred Mattersdorfer scored 11:54 into overtime Friday, lifting fifth-seeded Northern Michigan to a 3-2 win over Western Michigan in Game One of their best-of-three CCHA playoff series.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats needed a late third-period goal to tie the game at 2 and force an overtime period. Jimmy Jackson’s coast-to-coast, power-play marker gave NMU that key tally with just 3:33 to play.<\/p>\n
Northern Michigan almost ended the game minutes later, when Mike Sandbeck hit a post on a beautiful scoring chance in the game’s closing seconds. <\/p>\n
The Wildcats outshot Western, 30-28, as Dan Ragusett stopped 26 in net for NMU and Jeff Reynaert made 27 saves for the Broncos.<\/p>\n
A strong second period, which included two straight Western goals, turned the tide in favor of the Broncos after Northern Michigan had controlled much of the game’s early action.<\/p>\n
Dan Donnette gave the Wildcats a 1-0 lead at 12:57 of the first, scoring with assists to Chad Theuer and Ryan Riipi.<\/p>\n
But Western answered, as Dana Lattery and Mike Bishai each scored second-period goals to give the Broncos a 2-1 lead after 40 minutes.<\/p>\n
After 41 total shots in the first two periods, both teams clamped down, allowing a total of just six during the third. <\/p>\n
But one of those six found the back of the net, when Jackson took the puck the length of the ice after a shorthanded Bronco clearing pass, and went on to beat Reynaert and even the game at 2. Ragusett received an assist on the play, his second in the last two games.<\/p>\n
Referee Brent Rutherford gave the Wildcats another power play with 1:04 remaining in the third, and NMU nearly converted when Sandbeck hit the pipe with just three seconds left.<\/p>\n
After nearly 12 minutes of extra time, Theuer won a faceoff to Mattersdorder, who beat Reynaert cleanly between the pads to win the game.<\/p>\n
The two teams will meet again for Game Two at 7:05 p.m. Eastern on Saturday at the Berry Events Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior forward Fred Mattersdorfer scored 11:54 into overtime Friday, lifting fifth-seeded Northern Michigan to a 3-2 win over Western Michigan in Game One of their best-of-three CCHA playoff series. The Wildcats needed a late third-period goal to tie the game at 2 and force an overtime period. Jimmy Jackson’s coast-to-coast, power-play marker gave NMU that […]<\/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\/2056"}],"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=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/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=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}