When reporters jokingly asked Shea Walters if his game-winning goal in overtime was his biggest of the season, the junior center smiled and laughed.<\/p>\n
“It was my first goal of the season, thanks for bringing it up,” Walters said, getting a rise out of the media at the postgame news conference. Walters’ first goal of the season gave Bemidji State a 3-2 overtime win over Minnesota-Duluth in the Final Five quarterfinals Thursday at the Xcel Energy Center.<\/p>\n
The second-line center Walters went 35 games without scoring a goal. Still, he is a member of BSU’s second power-play unit. He does have 13 assists on the season and five of them were on the power play.<\/p>\n
“My position on the power play is to be a puck distributor and get it down low to [Jamie] MacQueen,” Walters said.<\/p>\n
BSU drew a tripping penalty on Brady Lamb 5:53 into overtime. The Beavers worked the puck around the offensive zone on the first shift of the power play and then it came to Walters at the point.<\/p>\n
“They were cheating on MacQueen, which opened up a shot for me,” Walters said. “It was a nice win on the draw, got kicked out to Dan McIntyre, he made a nice pass over to me, I made a shot and fortunately it went in. I was just trying to get it on net as quick as possible.”<\/p>\n
Walters fired a low slap shot that made it through traffic, past Justin Fontaine’s stick and past Bulldogs goaltender Kenny Reiter’s left skate at the 6:12 mark of overtime. Then, Walters stood in his place, arms in the air as his teammates mobbed him.<\/p>\n
The goal was the eighth of Walters’ three seasons at BSU.<\/p>\n
On a side note, defenseman Brad Hunt’s goal in the first period was just his third of the season, although he is a puck-moving defenseman with 17 assists, second most on the team.<\/p>\n
“It was all [teammate] Darcy Findlay,” Hunt said. “He was out there raising heck for 30 seconds all over their D-men. He got the puck off the half wall and I was driving up the middle, faked the shot and froze the defender. I kept going to the middle and just threw a wrist shot and it went in. It was a good time to have that goal.”<\/p>\n
The goal got BSU on the board after the midway point of the first period to knot it at one goal apiece.<\/p>\n
The Beavers (15-17-5) still need two wins to make their third straight NCAA appearance because an automatic bid with a Final Five title is the only way BSU can get a berth.<\/p>\n
UMD has already earned itself a spot in the tournament with a 22-10-6 record and is likely looking at a No. 3 seed, depending on how conference tournaments across the nation turn out. <\/p>\n
Video:<\/b> Bemidji State’s Shea Walters:<\/p>\n
httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jEIi_sT4288<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shea Walters’ overtime goal for the Beavers on Thursday was his first score of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[668],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n