Hockey splits series in heated battle at Grand Forks
John LaForest
Staff Writer
The men’s hockey team suffered their first lost in a tight matchup Saturday night against University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
This past weekend, the Mavericks traveled to Grand Forks to play a couple of games that took place on Friday and Saturday. The team ultimately split the two games with plenty of scoring happening in both games.
In Friday night’s game, the Mavs were able to prevail 7-4 in a game with a lot of offense for the Mavs, which featured three goals scored within 47 seconds of each other before the game was three minutes old.
The first period featured UND striking first, when Nick Jones fed Collin Adams and capitalized on a power play, who one-timed a shot from right in front of the Maverick freshman goaltender Dryden McKay at the 1:57 mark.
Then, at 2:34, junior Parker Tuomie, took a feed from behind the goal line from junior Marc Michaelis and pushed the puck past Peter Thome for his third goal of the season.
UND’s Zach Yon’s goal seven seconds later allowed the Fighting Hawks to regain the lead, but Maverick senior forward Max Coatta’s first goal of the year at 10:46 tied the score at 2-2 and that’s how things ended after the first 20 minutes of action.
The fireworks continued in the middle frame with Minnesota State outscoring North Dakota by a 4-2 margin.
Coatta scored twice, completing his second career hat-trick, with Tuomie getting his second goal of the game and junior forward Nick Rivera scoring his first goal of the year.
UND managed to outshoot the Mavericks by a 17-7 margin in the period, but Minnesota State held a 6-4 advantage.
The Fighting Hawks lead the shots on goal 38-21 and mainly every other statiscally category from faceoff wins to limiting their penalties. The Mavericks took advantage of their opportunities and won the game 7-4.
In their second game of the weekend on Saturday, the Mavs fell behind 2-0, but the deficit was short lived.
Freshman Julian Napravnik got his first goal of his career striking first for the Mavs coming off a pass from Coatta. Moments later, Coatta captured the hat-trick, and his fourth goal of the weekend, evening the score before the end of the first period.
The game was tied 3-3 after 40 minutes of play until Smith of North Dakota hit the game-winning goal at 11:35 of the final period after grabbing a loose puck behind the net and scoring on a wraparound attempt.
After the game, head coach Mike Hastings said, “We battled back tremendously and are overall proud of the effort.”
The Mavs will look to bounce back from their first loss of the season when Alaska comes to town as they embark on a couple of weekend matchups starting Friday at 7:07 p.m. local time.
Feature photo by Mansoor Ahmad | MSU Reporter.