Grand Forks, ND –
Fighting Sioux defenseman senior
Ben Blood last week that, "the playoffs are the best time of year; you
get to end other team's seasons."
The Fighting Sioux are looking
to end the
Bemidji State Beavers season and advance to the
WCHA Final
Five in
St Paul next weekend.
The Fighting Sioux have hosted the
first round of the
WCHA playoffs for 10 seasons in a row and have made
the
Final Five nine seasons in a row.
That is currently the WCHA’s longest streak. The Fighting Sioux are looking to make it 10 straight trips to the Final Five.
The Fighting Sioux are one game closer to that feat as they won game one of the series 4-1.
Eliminating
the Beavers is not going to be an easy task; the Bemidji State Beavers
are a small, quick and tenacious team that gets pucks deep and fore
checks the opposition relentlessly. The Beavers are on top of you from
the drop of the first puck to the final horn of the game.
Tonight was no different.
True
to form, the upstart Beavers didn’t disappoint and they bottled up the
Fighting Sioux and gave them a small number of offensive opportunities
and carried the play for a good part of the game.
The Beavers
proved against tonight that they are a tough team to play against and
they didn’t give the Fighting Sioux very much and they took away the
Fighting Sioux’s time and space.
Fighting Sioux
head coach Dave Hakstol seemed happy to get the win in tonight’s game.
“Well we got a win in game one of the series, playing against a good hockey team, that played awful hard tonight,” Hakstol said.
“If
you look at our performance there was a lot of good to it, much too
sporadic for playoff time. We need to challenge ourselves tomorrow to
be at a higher level, on a more consistence basis throughout our game.”
Tonight, was the night of the goaltender.
Fighting
Sioux junior goalie
Aaron Dell brought his “A” game against the Beavers
and he kept them off of the score sheet for the first 54.08 of the
game, stopping many grade “A” opportunities, many of them many of them
down low, the Beavers also hit three pipes.
Dell would finally get
beat by an Aaron McLeod goal on the power play at 14:08 mark of the
third period. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that Aaron Dell was
the difference in this game and a bright spot for the Fighting Sioux
tonight. Fighting Sioux head coach Dave Hakstol agreed.
“I thought
it was a close game, scoring chances were probably close to even if not
dead even,” Hakstol said. “Aaron [Dell] did a good job tonight; he has
done for us the last few weeks.”
On the other end of the ice
Bemidji State Beaver senior goalie Dan Bakala was also very good
stopping 19 of 23 shots many of them were grade “A” scoring chances as
well. Beaver head coach Tom Serratore was impressed with both
goaltenders. “I thought both goaltenders played very well,” Serratore
said. “It was a very good goaltending duel.”
For the Fighting Sioux, junior forward Carter Rowney led the Fighting Sioux with three assists tonight.
With
the loss tonight, the Beavers drop to their record to 17-17-3 and need
to win game two of tomorrow night’s series to stay alive. Tomorrow
night, it’s win or go home for the Beavers.
With the win tonight
the Fighting Sioux improve their record to 21-12-3. Game two in the best
of three series is tomorrow night at 07:07 pm.
