Freddy's three thoughts of the game ...
1. No place like home: I, for one, am glad that there will be no travel the next three weeks. I'm sure the Mavericks are, too, as they secured home ice throughout the WCHA tournament with Saturday's victory. MSU will host eighth-seeded Alaska Anchorage in the best-of-three first round on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (if necessary), while Bemidji State will get Lake Superior State. If the Mavericks and Beavers meet again (and they sure could, considering the only each has lost to in 2020 has been the other), it will be in Mankato, not Bemidji. As the announcer said before the game, "This is a big one." And it was. The league playoffs are not completely set yet but will be later tonight.
2. Keys to the game: I joked with Mike Hastings recently about the keys to the game, and how they're almost always: 1. Good start, 2. Good goaltender, 3. Special teams. Well, the first two definitely were keys to Saturday's win, as the Mavericks scored first on a nice play by Nick Rivera from Walker Duehr, and got a great bounce-back performance from Dryden McKay, who made 38 saves after a tough Friday. "Dryden McKay was outstanding tonight," Hastings said. "To win a championship on the road, your goaltender’s going to have to be that, and tonight he was." As for special teams, there just wasn't much of that all weekend. Just one penalty Friday, and each team went 0 for 2 on the power play on Saturday. Good PKs.
3. Vets club: Juniors and seniors win you games, and Nick Rivera, Riese Zmolek, Josh French and Connor Mackey had the goals on Saturday. French, Hastings, said played one of his finest weekends of hockey. On Saturday he was plus-1 with three shots on goal and three blocks and scored an empty-net goal from just above the blue paint at his own end of the rink, backhanding the puck high into the air and giving the term "Bemidji flip" a bit of a new meaning. Senior Edwin Hookenson blocked four shots, two or three of them on a third-period PK after he had lost his stick. Marc Michaelis had a huge faceoff win on Zmolek's goal with 24.5 seconds left in the second period.
Around the WCHA: Bowling Green 4, Alabama Huntsville 1 ... Lake Superior State 4, Ferris State 2 ... Northern Michigan 3, Michigan Tech 2 ... Alaska Anchorage at Alaska (late)
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