{"id":150922,"date":"2025-01-29T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-29T16:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/?p=150922"},"modified":"2025-01-28T17:33:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T23:33:18","slug":"this-week-in-ccha-hockey-augustana-being-led-between-the-pipes-by-kotai-who-says-emphasis-and-intensity-winning-games-for-vikings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2025\/01\/29\/this-week-in-ccha-hockey-augustana-being-led-between-the-pipes-by-kotai-who-says-emphasis-and-intensity-winning-games-for-vikings\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in CCHA Hockey: Augustana being led between the pipes by Kotai, who says ’emphasis and intensity’ winning games for Vikings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Josh Kotai has been solid between the pipes this season for Augustana (photo: Dave Eggen\/Inertia).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last weekend\u2019s series at Slater Family Ice Arena in Bowling Green was a feast for goaltending fans.<\/p>\n

Occupying the nets across from one another were the No. 1 and No. 2 goalies in the nation in save percentage in Augustana\u2019s Josh Kotai (.950) and Bowling Green\u2019s Christian Stoever (.948). Fittingly, only three goals were scored all weekend, over nearly 130 minutes of play. And in the end, it was Kotai who got the better of Stoever, stopping 74 of 75 shots on the weekend as Augustana won 1-0 in overtime on Friday before earning a 1-1 tie Saturday with a shootout victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tight weekend, but that really made it lots of fun,\u201d Kotai said. \u201cTo be able to compete in those games, it was really like a playoff kind of atmosphere, but coming away with a win and a tie gives you lots of confidence moving forward and is a good test for the playoff games coming up here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kotai, a sophomore from Abbotsford, B.C., has been playing like this all season. In 21 of Augustana\u2019s 24 games, he has three shutouts and a 1.59 goals-against average to go with that best-in-the-country save percentage. After splitting time with senior Zach Rose last season as a freshman, Kotai said earning the trust of his coaches to start nearly every game as a sophomore was his goal coming into the season. Kotai went 2-9-2 last season with a .904 save percentage and a 3.32 GAA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like, OK, Rose is leaving, and so there’s the opportunity to be able to step up into the starting role, so that kind of drove my offseason and gave me kind of a clear vision of how I want to see this year coming along,\u201d Kotai said. \u201cSo then at the start of the year, it’s just battling to have the net. Then I got in against North Dakota [a 4-1 exhibition win at the start of the season] and had a good game, so I guess I just kind of kept it rolling from there. And so it’s been good, I’ve been able to find a rhythm each week, which has been a huge thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kotai credits some of his success this year to head coach Garret Raboin bringing him to Augustana and giving him the chance to play so much as a freshman. It did wonders for his development.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really liked ‘Rabs’ as a coach, and I thought, you know, he had a good vision for where he wants this team to go, and he knew what it takes to get there, being at St. Cloud,\u201d Kotai said. \u201cAnd so talking with him, I kind of got excited about that idea of being part of the inaugural team and the history of it, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut having a chance to go out there and having an opportunity to go and play right away was the biggest thing for me. I really wanted to get my feet wet and find some success at the college level right away, and not having to wait a year or something to be able to get in the game. I think the experiences I got from last year were really huge in my development. And I learned so many lessons on and off the ice and then being in college for your first year, too, it was big.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last season, the Vikings went 12-18-4 — not world-beating, but certainly better than most people\u2019s expectations of a first-year Division I program. The players who got their seasoning on that team as freshman are key contributors to this season\u2019s team\u2013one that is 14-7-3, just got its first-ever national ranking (No. 19 in the latest USCHO.com poll) and is still in the conversation for an at-large NCAA tournament bid when it comes to the Pairwise.<\/p>\n

Sophomores Brett Meerman and Hunter Bischoff are tied for second on the team with 15 points, while Owen Bohn is second in goals with six. Luke Mobley — a senior who transferred to Augustana last season from Clarkson — leads the team with eight goals.<\/p>\n

Kotai said that while the national accolade is nice, it\u2019s not something they\u2019ve really thought about — nor is it as goal of theirs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cool that we\u2019re ranked, and it\u2019s nice that people are seeing us, whereas before, maybe they don’t know anything about us. And so, OK, maybe people take more interest in, \u2018Who is Augustana?\u2019 and stuff like that. But that doesn’t change what we’re trying to accomplish,\u201d Kotai said. \u201cAs for the Pairwise, we know that if we move up a few spots, there’s a possibility of getting to the tournament, but we can do that anyways, by playing well and winning our conference. So it’s not a huge deal for us. It’s just a cool little thing you put in the back of the pocket, it\u2019s motivation to keep working hard each and every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vikings are currently in second place in the CCHA standings, behind Minnesota State and ahead of Michigan Tech. But because Augustana didn\u2019t officially join the league as a full member until late in the summer, the conference standings are based on points-percentage this year.<\/p>\n

Right now, Minnesota State is at .704, Augustana is at .667 and Michigan Tech is at .630. The math is a little confusing — because Augustana has played half as many conference games as everyone else — but Kotai said the easiest math for the Vikings will simply be to win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had been out of conference play for a while before last weekend, and we hadn\u2019t really been thinking about it, but last week before the Bowling Green series, we said, ‘OK we\u2019ve got four weekends in a row of conference play here. Each of them means so much.’ And so you have to go into each weekend focusing on, ‘OK, we got to win this game, and then from there, win the second one,’\u201d Kotai said. \u201cIt just comes down to, when you get to playoffs, you want to have that home ice advantage. So it makes a huge difference. There\u2019s definitely that emphasis and intensity and like how we approach those CCHA games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Vikings host fifth-place Lake Superior State this weekend before traveling to Minnesota State next week. Their final conference series is against Michigan Tech in Sioux Falls on Feb. 14-15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend\u2019s series at Slater Family Ice Arena in Bowling Green was a feast for goaltending fans. Occupying the nets across from one another were the No. 1 and No. 2 goalies in the nation in save percentage in Augustana\u2019s Josh Kotai (.950) and Bowling Green\u2019s Christian Stoever (.948). Fittingly, only three goals were scored […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":149185,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[854],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis Week in CCHA Hockey: Augustana being led between the pipes by Kotai, who says 'emphasis and intensity' winning games for Vikings - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last weekend\u2019s series at Slater Family Ice Arena in Bowling Green was a feast for goaltending fans. 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