With its future league commissioner among the 6,198 in attendance at Qwest Center Omaha on Friday night, the No. 11 Nebraska-Omaha hockey team knew that it had a golden opportunity to make a good impression.<\/p>\n
Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n
UNO had its most complete game of the season on Friday, riding atop big performances from wingers Rich Purslow and Brandon Richardson as well as goaltender Jeremie Dupont\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s third collegiate shutout along the way to a comfortable 4-0 win over visiting league rival Lake Superior State.<\/p>\n
The hosts controlled the game from the outset, with Richardson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first goal as a Maverick and Purslow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sixth strike of the season coming 4:02 apart in the first period to send the Mavericks back to the dressing room with a 2-0 lead after the opening 20 minutes of play. <\/p>\n
Purslow then beat LSSU goaltender Brian Mahoney-Wilson once again at 2:51 of the second period, this time in the slot with a wrist shot that beat the Laker netminder into the far bottom corner of the net to make it 3-0. Finally, junior forward Joey Martin put the game on ice mid-way through the third period with the Mavericks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 second power-play goal of the night, thus capping off the rout. <\/p>\n
UNO (5-1-3 overall, 2-1-2-1 in the CCHA) did experience a handful of defensive lapses in Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s middle frame, thereby enlisting Dupont for his busiest part of a night that eventually saw him stop 22 shots for the shutout. But the Lakers rarely looked like they would find their way back into the teams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 first of four regular-season meetings against each other.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We played a good team game,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d UNO head coach Dean Blais said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When it was 3-0, we had a few lackadaisical shifts, but then I thought we played a smart third period.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lake State\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a big, physical, grinding team, so we had to earn everything we got. They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give us anything, and on the goals that we got, we worked hard and moved the puck well and made plays.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Almost as important for the Mavericks, though, was their performance in front of WCHA commissioner Bruce McLeod, whom Blais believes is leaving Omaha this weekend with a good feeling about what the WCHA leader saw from one of his league\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two new additions for next season — the other being Bemidji State from the CHA.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think he was happy with the crowd, and the support and enthusiasm in the building,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Blais said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what kind of crowd we had (numbers-wise), but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been looking at whether we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re worthy of being in WCHA, and I knew he thought we were. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been admitted otherwise, and I think he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leaving with a good feeling about the support from the (Omaha) community.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
As for LSSU, Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s game marked the Lakers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sixth loss in a row against CCHA opposition, including a shootout loss at Western Michigan a week ago Friday, and Lake State head coach Jim Roque was less than enthralled with what he saw from his team in this weekend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s series opener.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We played well at times, but not for enough shifts in a row,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Roque said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just inconsistent in our play, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been over the last three weeks for us. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t played consistent hockey shift-in, shift-out, and we have to find a way to show up tomorrow night and give a much better effort than we did tonight.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Roque and his charges will get their chance to do just that on Saturday night, with the Lakers (4-6-1, 1-5-1) once again squaring off with the Mavericks in Omaha at 7:05 Central time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With its future league commissioner among the 6,198 in attendance at Qwest Center Omaha on Friday night, the No. 11 Nebraska-Omaha hockey team knew that it had a golden opportunity to make a good impression. Mission accomplished. UNO had its most complete game of the season on Friday, riding atop big performances from wingers Rich […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9829"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}