{"id":7972,"date":"2007-02-03T13:35:21","date_gmt":"2007-02-03T19:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2007\/02\/03\/mavericks-top-huskies-in-overtime\/"},"modified":"2010-08-23T11:55:23","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T16:55:23","slug":"mavericks-top-huskies-in-overtime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/2007\/02\/03\/mavericks-top-huskies-in-overtime\/","title":{"rendered":"Mavericks Top Huskies In Overtime"},"content":{"rendered":"

In terms of home ice for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, Saturday’s game was a must-win for the Minnesota State Mavericks.<\/p>\n

And thanks to freshman Geoff Irwin’s blistering wrist shot 3:35 into overtime, the Mavericks (10-5-5 overall, 7-11-4 WCHA) are still in that hunt after a 2-1 win over Michigan Tech.<\/p>\n

“Give Mankato credit,” said Huskies head coach Jamie Russell. “Honestly, I believe they deserved to win that hockey game. <\/p>\n

\"Minnesota<\/p>\n
Minnesota State celebrates its Saturday win over Michigan Tech (photos: Ryan Coleman).<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“We were fortunate to be in the game. We turned the puck over way too many times and gave up odd man rushes in overtime. That just can’t happen.”<\/p>\n

Saturday’s first period was practically a carbon copy of Friday’s \u2013 sort of.<\/p>\n

One team had a heavy lead in shots \u2013 the Mavericks led 15-5 in that category \u2013 but the other team was ahead on the scoreboard.<\/p>\n

But unlike the night before, it was the Huskies (12-14-4 overall, 7-11-4 WCHA) who struck first. <\/p>\n

Tyler Shelast ripped a wrist shot past MSU goalie Mike Zacharias to open scoring at 14:37 of the first period. It was Shelast’s 12th goal of the season \u2013 and fifth straight game with a goal. Peter Rouleau and Mark Malekoff earned assists on the even-strength tally.<\/p>\n

“[Shelast] has a lot of confidence right now,” Russell said. “He’s shooting the puck, and good things happen when you shoot the puck.”<\/p>\n

MSU tied the game with the only goal of the second frame.<\/p>\n

Irwin fired a shot at the net that deflected off traffic in front. The puck was re-directed by Jerad Stewart’s skate and trickled past MTU netminder Rob Nolan at 7:24.<\/p>\n

Through two periods, MSU held a 26-12 edge in shots.<\/p>\n

“We played way better [than Friday],” said Mavericks head coach Troy Jutting. “We had a different demeanor, we had a different intensity level. Last night we played the game at their speed. Tonight, we played it at ours.”<\/p>\n

Neither team could score in the third, and it appeared \u2013 at least for a moment \u2013 that Saturday’s game would end with the same result as Friday’s. <\/p>\n

\"Geoff<\/p>\n
Geoff Irwin notched the game winner for the Mavericks.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But a moment was all Irwin needed to unleash a vicious wrister that snuck under the crossbar over Nolan’s glove, and sent the 3,859 spectators at Midwest Wireless Civic Center into a frenzy. <\/p>\n

Following an injury to the Mavericks’ Jon Kalinski, which stopped play momentarily, Mavericks center Trevor Bruess won a face off clean to the left of Nolan. Irwin was the beneficiary, as the puck was on his stick for only a split second before the shot was gone.<\/p>\n

“I sat there hoping Bruess would get the puck back to my stick,” Irwin said. “I just put it on net and it found its way there.”<\/p>\n

“We played 64 minutes of hockey tonight,” Jutting said.<\/p>\n

The win moved the Mavericks into a tie for sixth in the WCHA with Michigan Tech, two points behind fifth-place North Dakota \u2013 MSU’s opponent next weekend. <\/p>\n

Michigan Tech returns home to face Denver, while MSU travels to Grand Forks with a chance to steal home ice away from the Fighting Sioux \u2013 at least for a week. <\/p>\n

“These three points were huge,” Zacharias said. “Every weekend they just get bigger and bigger. Next weekend is our biggest of the year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In terms of home ice for the Western Collegiate Hockey Association, Saturday’s game was a must-win for the Minnesota State Mavericks. And thanks to freshman Geoff Irwin’s blistering wrist shot 3:35 into overtime, the Mavericks (10-5-5 overall, 7-11-4 WCHA) are still in that hunt after a 2-1 win over Michigan Tech. “Give Mankato credit,” 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\/7972"}],"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=7972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972\/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=7972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7972"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}