Northern Michigan became the only road team to win its CCHA playoff Game 1 Friday night, getting 39 saves from backup netminder Tuomas Tarkki to hold off host Alaska-Fairbanks 3-1 before a crowd of 4,300.<\/p>\n
“It is a long series and we are not going to get too high,” NMU head coach Walt Kyle said. “I would not tell you that we looked fresh.”<\/p>\n
Patrick Murphy gave the Wildcats the early 1-0 lead at 13:01 of the opening period. Bobby Selden and Matt Hunter assisted.<\/p>\n
NMU struck twice in the second period to take a step closer to double the edge. Jamie Milam made the score 2-0 with a goal at 12:50. Dirk Southern was given credit with the helper. David Bonk made it 3-0 with his third goal of the season at 15:34. Murphy and Hunter both picked up their second point on the night with the assist.<\/p>\n
The Nanooks got on the board with a goal at 4:05 of the third period for the final margin, but could get no closer.<\/p>\n
Tarkki, playing in place of Craig Kowalski, was the linchpin in nets for the Wildcats.<\/p>\n
“This is my first playoff game,” Tarkki said. “It is always nice to get a win in a playoff game. Especially when you come to Fairbanks — the crowd is amazing.”<\/p>\n
UAF’s Preston McKay had 23 saves for the game as the Nanooks outshot NMU 40-26. Neither team scored on the power play; the Wildcats were 0-2 and the Nanooks were 0-5.<\/p>\n
The Wildcats (19-14-4) will play the Nanooks (16-18-1) again on Saturday night, where a NMU win would sent the Wildcats to the CCHA Super Six in Detroit.<\/p>\n
“I was proud of our guys’ effort. We have to get better tomorrow and potentially on Sunday,” Kyle added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Northern Michigan became the only road team to win its CCHA playoff Game 1 Friday night, getting 39 saves from backup netminder Tuomas Tarkki to hold off host Alaska-Fairbanks 3-1 before a crowd of 4,300. “It is a long series and we are not going to get too high,” NMU head coach Walt Kyle said. […]<\/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\/5291"}],"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=5291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5291\/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=5291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5291"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}