Madison. WI () -- By the end of the series between Wisconsin and Minnesota State the term "special teams" seemed to have lost its meaning.
In both Friday's 3-1 loss and Saturday's 1-1 tie. Wisconsin was nonexistent with the man-advantage.
"If you look at the flat line of the game - the breakdown - special teams was the difference," UW head coach Mike Eaves said.
The Badgers managed just one power play goal on 14 opportunities to put a damper on what the team had hoped would be a productive weekend heading into winter break.
Of late the unit hasn't exactly been stellar. Not since the Robert Morris series in mid-October have the Badgers scored more than two power play goals in a game and have gone just 4-of-39. 10.3 percent in their last 10 games.
UW failed to score on any of its five chances including two extended 5-on-3s.
"Those are huge and we want to at least get one [goal] out of them," Wisconsin defenseman Kyle Klubertanz said. "If we capitalize on one or two there it's a different game."
Perhaps the most mindboggling result of all wasn't that the Badgers failed to score with the two-man advantage for over three minutes later in the game it was that the Mavericks looked during those penalty kills as though they were playing at even strength. Wisconsin simply was out of sync.
"We missed one-time shots we missed passes and those are the details that hurt us in the power play," Eaves said.
Joel Hanson. R. J. Linder and Jon Kalinski had everything to do with Wisconsin's struggles with the man-advantage according to Minnesota State head coach Troy Jutting.
"I think Jon Kalinski is the best penalty killer in the league," Jutting said.
"They did their job on penalty kills - nothing special - but we have to find a way to get around that and score," said UW freshman Kyle Turris who had two points on the weekend.
If not scoring on the power play wasn't frustrating enough for Wisconsin its penalty kill got snake-bitten as well. While it only gave up one goal it came at an inopportune time both in the game and on the kill.
With MSU leading 2-1 in the second period. MSU's Rylan Galiardi flipped the puck past UW goaltender Shane Connelly off a rebound with just 12 seconds remaining on the man-advantage. This came just three minutes after the Mavericks broke a 1-1 tie as another power play was expiring.
"We do all that work for two minutes to block shots and work our guys out and if they put one in at the end there it's tough," Klubertanz said.
The focus put into improving on special teams from Friday night's game to Saturday paid off but not before five more opportunities went to waste.
Finally early in the third period defenseman Jaime McBain put what would eventually be the game-tying goal past MSU goaltender Mike Zacharias.
"We've been getting the chances now we finally got the production out of it," McBain said of his goal.
Wisconsin got one more 5-on-3 opportunity toward the end of the third period but it could not come away with a goal despite hitting the post on one shot and controlling the puck in MSU's zone for much of the power play.
While it was yet another missed opportunity. Eaves felt that the quality of shots and the movement on that two-man advantage was a step in the right direction.
"Every time we had a 5-on-3 it was a missed opportunity," Eaves said. "We had a better idea of what we wanted to do and unless you score you're thinking it wasn't a very good 5-on-3 but we made them make some saves and we had people in the right spots and doing the right things. We just couldn't get the puck in the net."
Adjustments were also made on the penalty kill. Minnesota State finished 0-of-5 with the man-advantage thanks in large part to a great game by Connelly. McBain said.
"He was on tonight," he said. "He kept us in the game when we needed it and was rock-solid back there."
Forex Groups - Tips on Trading
Related article:
http://feeds.cstv.com/~r/cstv/headline-m-hockey-rss/~3/198285718/121007aai.html
comments | Add comment | Report as Spam
|