Men's Hockey Suffers Sweep To Start Season

MSU 3, BSU 4; MSU 3, BSU 7

by Brad Wheeler
October 18, 2005

A beaver is an animal that builds dams and lodges in its habitat. This weekend the Mavericks’ habitat was the penalty box and on Friday night they died in their own home.

“We try to play as hard as anybody but we got caught a couple times,” captain David Backes said. “Unless you score a lot of short-handed goals or shut down their power play, you're going to have trouble. And we didn't do either of those.”

Bemidji State scored 1:34 into the first period on the power play when sophomore Ryan Carter got a game misconduct for checking from behind just 1:06 into the game. Carter said he had to decide whether to finish his check or not.

“It was the wrong decision,” he said. “Taking a shower 1:06 into the game isn't very fun.”

Halfway through the first period, the Beavers scored another power play goal making it 2-0 early. MSU made it 2-1 when senior Brock Becker scored off of a rebound when the Mavericks had a 5-on-3 power play advantage. MSU was actually out shooting Bemidji State 13 to 6 after the first period.

“I don't blame the effort. We had a lot of opportunities where we should have scored and we didn't,” head coach Troy Jutting said. “And they scored goals when they shouldn't have.”

The only goal in the second period came off another Bemidji State power play to make it 3-1.

MSU eventually tied the game in the third period with scoring from Travis Morin on the power play and Kurtis Kisio when the teams were even strength.

The tie lasted for about three minutes as the Beavers got one more power play goal with 6:24 left in the third period to win the game 4-3. Bemidji State went 4 for 11 on the power play.

“You never want to give up four goals on the power play and if you do, you can't expect to win,” Carter said. “And we didn't win.”

MSU was just 2 for 9 on its power play chances.

“Not scoring on the power play when we had chances hurt us,” Jutting said.

Saturday, the two teams had a lot of penalties again but this time MSU was perfect on their penalty kill and the Beavers went 0 for five.

“That's a positive in Saturday's game in a 7-3 loss if there is one,” Carter said.

That didn't slow the Beavers down one bit though as Bemidji State scored the first four goals of the game and never missed a beat. Once again the Mavericks outshot the Beavers 13 to 10 in the first period but they couldn't capitalize.

“I think the first four minutes of the game the puck was in their zone and we had three or four really good opportunities,” Jutting said. “And then they come down the ice and the puck is in the back of our net.”

In the second period MSU cut the lead to 4-2 as seniors Jeff Marler and Rob Rankin scored just 1:16 apart. But that was as close as it would get for the Mavericks when the next two goals went to the Beavers.

“[Bemidji State] just went with it,” Carter said. “They dug us in a hole early and we never completely got out.”

Kurtis Kisio got his second goal of the weekend when he made it 6-3 but Bemidji State tallied on one more at the end of the game to win 7-3

Junior Chris Clark had the start between the pipes in Friday's game and freshman Dan Tormey made his Maverick debut Saturday.

“I don't fault our goalies by any means,” Backes said. “They [Bemidji State] had a lot of quality shots and they took advantage of them.”