By John Wawrow Hockey editor AP
ST. Louis – Owen Michaels scored his second goal 26 seconds after the second extension and west of Michigan beat the title champion Denver, 3-2, Thursday evening to go to his first title match Frozen Four.
Western Michigan will face the University of Boston – a 3-1 winner against Penn State in the second semi -final – during the league match on Saturday evening.
Brian Kramer also scored and the Hampton Slukynsky recruit stopped 20 shots for a team from western Michigan, in charge of veterans, starting on Frozen Four during his 10th appearance of the NCAA tournament. The Broncos (33-7-1) set a season record for victories, extended their sequence of new victories and won a 2-0 lead in the third period.
Michaels’ decisive objective came to the Denver area with Matteo Costantini by climbing the right wing and sweeping the washer in the middle. Michaels accepted the pass and stained a shot on the right shoulder of goalkeeper Matt Davis.
“Flying.” I was in the middle of the ice and I had a time open and a space and I thought I was putting it on the net. And quite happy that he entered. “
Jared Wright, with the purpose of link with 2:39 to do in settlement, and Aidan Thompson scored, and Davis succeeded 44 stops for Denver (31-12-1). The pioneers, who won a better 10 titles and two tournament in the previous three years, failed in their attempt to become the ninth NCAA team to repeat as champions, and first since Minnesota-Duluth in 2018 and 2019.
The defender of the pioneers and finalist of Hobey Baker, Zeev Buium, was more disappointed with the end of the end of his season with a defeat than starting to wonder if he had just played his last university match. The second year student, who leads the NCAA defenders with 48 points, has the possibility of making the NHL jump after being drafted 12th in the general classification by Minnesota Wild in June.
“I don’t know. It’s difficult. We just lost a big game. I hate to lose. I love this place more than anything in the world,” said Buium. “So I think that for the moment I’m just going to spend time with my teammates and enjoying these days with them and we will see what’s going on. I’m going to have to think about these next days and I will see what’s going on.”
With the exception of the result, the match recalled the last meeting of the NCHC rivals at the conference tournament championship last month. This time, western Michigan rallied from a deficit of three goals and third period in a 4-3 double counter-outer victory.
The Broncos dominated a large part of the game with Michaels and Kramer marking second-time goals and western Michigan with an advantage of 32-8 in fire. Zach Nehring had the best chance of scoring a minute in the match when he took a shot from the transverse bar while facing an open right side.
“It is a targeted group. They never lose the belief in themselves,” said coach Pat Ferschweiler, who led the broncos to a tournament place in each of his four seasons in Kalamazoo.
“They came unhappy from the third period. But I think that our greatest error was not to score on all our chances in the second,” he added. “Denver has a championship pedigree. They will push and make you difficult for you. … But we knew about the entire game, I thought we were the best team.”
In the second semi-final …
Boston University 3, Penn State 1: Jack Hughes and Cole Eissonman scored goals in the second period and Boston qualified for his first title match Frozen Four in 10 years.
First year student Mikhail Yegorov stopped 32 shots and Jack Harvey scored an empty network with a minute for BU (24-12-2), who lost in the semi-finals in each of the last two years. The burrows are five times champions, who lost to Providence in 2015 and have been looking for their first title since he beat Miami (Ohio) in 2009.
“We have all come here for a reason to win a national championship, so think about having the opportunity to do it in a few days is exciting,” said Hughes. “So, it’s a bit of relief for now, then we’re going to go back to work and we hope everything is fine.”
Nicholas Degraves scored 2:15 in the third for Penn State (22-14-4). The Nittany Lions – another Frozen Four First -Timer – only made their fourth appearance of the NCAA tournament since their creation in 2011-2012. Arsenii Sergeev made 31 stops in a confrontation of two guards of Russian origin.
Hughes opened the score 1:35 while sweeping a loose washer after Sergeev could not find it seated in the fold after stopping the initial shot of Matt Copponi.
EIERMAN marked nine minutes later by converting a break of 2 against 1. Cole Hutson rolled at the bottom on the left side and swung to feed a pass through the fold to EIERMAN, which unique in the open side.
Yegorov has kept the victory with several key stops. He put his blocker to turn away from Dane Dowlak from a breakaway with seven minutes to do in the second period. And the 19 -year -old briefly took a look behind him after choking Jarod Crespo’s hard shot from the right circle with 4:19 on the left in the third.
Yegorov improved at 11-5-1 since he joined BU in January after opening the season in the USHL. He was selected by New Jersey in the second round of the NHL draft in June.
The Nittany Lions have still completed a lot in a season in which they opened 0-8-1 in game Big Ten before finishing 9-11-4 and closing with a 4-3 defeat against Ohio State during the conference tournament.
“It’s always difficult at the end of the season. But honestly, I can’t help but feel so grateful and positive about this year and this team,” said coach Guy Gadowsky. “We were left for dead not long ago and for these guys to come back to play in Saint-Louis, it is remarkable, and better than that is how they did.”
The burrow coach and double winner of the Stanley Cup, Jay Pandolfo, reached the Frozen Four seven times combined, four as a player and in each of his three seasons behind the BU bench. He was a member of the 1995 championship team trained by the American hockey renowned temple Jack Parker.
“I had the chance to play in very good teams when I was BU player, and we only won once, so I have a fairly good understanding of the difficulty of winning,” said Pandolfo.
“It has certainly been short in the past two years, and I think it has helped our team understand that you have to play in a certain way if you want to arrive at this last match,” he added. “Yeah, it feels good to get there, but we certainly hope that work is not yet done.”
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
