Air Force extended its school-record conference unbeaten streak to six games with a 4-3 victory over the Findlay in a College Hockey America game, Friday at the Cadet Ice Arena.<\/p>\n
The Falcons improved to 14-15-2 overall, 5-10-2 in the CHA, and moved into fifth place with 12 conference points. Findlay fell to 11-20-2 overall and 5-13-1 in the CHA. With the loss Findlay, with 11 conference points, fell from fifth to sixth.<\/p>\n
“It’s great to get rolling,” Rodgers said. “It’s always a key to be playing your best as the playoffs are coming around.”<\/p>\n
Air Force controlled the tempo of the game for nearly 60 minutes. But a typically-opportunistic Findlay team made it close at the end despite the fact that Air Force outshot the Oilers in every period and 43-27 in the game. The Falcons held an 18-5 shot advantage after the first period.<\/p>\n
Rodgers, the senior captain from Scituate, Mass., scored his first goal of the game four minutes into the first, walking into the slot and fired a wrister from Scott Zwiers. With 2:16 remaining in the opening period, Andy Berg punched in a goal from the left post. His 13th of the season came from Shane Saum and Spanky Leonard as the Falcons crashed the net.<\/p>\n
Findlay’s Brian Sherry scored early in the second period as he skated in uncontested on AFA goalie Mike Polidor and beat the sophomore five-hole. Rodgers’ second goal of the night, and his 11th of the season, came at 14:47 of the second period to give the Falcons a 3-1 lead. After Zwiers won a faceoff in the offensive end, he kicked the puck back to Rodgers in the high slot. Rodgers’ went top shelf on a bang-bang play.<\/p>\n
Midway through the third period, Saum tipped in a shot by Rodgers for his 14th of the season. Rodgers’ shot from the bottom of the circle hit Saum in the leg and went in for a 4-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Just 38 seconds later, Findlay freshman Rigel Shaw scored to cut the lead to two goals as he took a pass from Nate Markus in the slot and sent a backhand high over Polidor’s shoulder. His second goal of the night came with 1:41 remaining, just seconds after Findlay pulled its goalie. After winning the faceoff, Shaw’s slapshot beat Polidor to make the score 4-3.<\/p>\n
Findlay goalie Jamie VandeSpyker, who has enjoyed great success against the Falcons in the past, made 39 saves. Polidor made 24 saves for the Falcons.<\/p>\n
Rodgers and Zwiers each had three points for the Falcons, while Saum had two. Each team was 0-for-4 on the power play.<\/p>\n
Air Force and Findlay conclude the series and the regular season Saturday at 7:05 p.m. MST at the Cadet Ice Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Air Force extended its school-record conference unbeaten streak to six games with a 4-3 victory over the Findlay in a College Hockey America game, Friday at the Cadet Ice Arena. The Falcons improved to 14-15-2 overall, 5-10-2 in the CHA, and moved into fifth place with 12 conference points. Findlay fell to 11-20-2 overall and […]<\/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\/3256"}],"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=3256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3256\/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=3256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3256"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}