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ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Motzko knows best, or at least it certainly felt that way Friday night.
After watching his team get smacked up for four goals and tossed around by the University of Maine men’s ice hockey squad, the St. Cloud State head coach didn’t have to be prolific. Nor did he have to be poetic. He just had to be honest. And that he was.
“We’ve never seen that before,” Motzko said about what occurred on the ice inside Blue Cross Arena during UMaine’s 4-1 thwopping of the Huskies.
At the time, Motzko was talking about the performance of netminder and Hobey Baker finalist Bobby Goepfert. Yet he could have been discussing a wide array of topics – the team’s power play, their physical play, the ability to transition successfully. One thing was clear – this wasn’t the same St. Cloud State team fans had read about on paper.
But then again, this wasn’t the same UMaine team either.
After receiving little to no press last week, the Black Bears came into Rochester light years away from their woes in Amherst.
The energy was different. The mood was different. And most importantly, the play was different. Taking a cue from Cyndi Lauper, the Black Bears just wanted to have fun.
“It was nice to get back out there and play,” said netminder Ben Bishop. “It was a lot of fun. It was fun playing how we played. Everyone was playing hard. It’s fun when everyone is clicking. We didn’t have that pressure that we had at the end of the season, when we had to make the tournament. Nobody expected us to win and nobody expects us to win again, so we carry that underdog attitude with us and just have fun. The guys enjoyed this.”
From the beginning, the vibe amongst the 25 Black Bears was something freshman.
“It was a weird feeling, it almost felt like the first game of the season,” said Mike Lundin. “We’ve been off for a while. I was pretty nervous coming in, probably the most nervous I’ve been since that Minnesota game at the first of the season. We were as prepared as best as we could be.”
According to captain Michel Leveille, there were no bones about it. The layoff in between competition was an added bonus.
“As weird as it was, I think it was a great wake-up call for us to lose four in a row. It was definitely really disappointing,” Leveille said. “But knowing that we would get a chance to bounce back and actually get a chance to go to the Frozen Four was huge. The entire week we really practiced hard. Guys want to prove themselves, we wanted to do things right.”
“I thought our focus all week was unbelievable, we practiced really hard,” said junior Billy Ryan. “They were some of our hardest practices all year. Everyone has been giving it 100 percent every day and it’s starting to finally pay off.”
On Friday, that payoff came in a variety of forms, but most notably the penalty kill – shutting down the Huskies nine times.
“Tonight was probably the best game penalty kill-wise that I’ve seen in a while from us,” said Bishop. “Guys were all over them, I don’t even think they had a chance to set up. And when they did, their shots were from the point and I saw most of them. Plus, the D did a great job of clearing out rebounds.”
Arguably the biggest payoff on the kill arrived on a 5-on-3 around nine minutes into the first, when UMaine clogged up the lane and denied the Huskies any chance of getting back into the game. During the stretch Bishop also felt his confidence upgrade.
“It was right on that 5-on-3; I had quite a few shots and things started to change,” said Bishop. “I was moving around and didn’t have to wait three minutes later to make another one.”
“People think goals change the momentum of the game but a lot of times it’s the penalty kill,” said Ryan. “The coaches spend a lot of time with video on it and now it’s paying off.”
The looseness also carried over to the Black Bears’ shooting. Refusing to clutch up on their sticks, the team took it to Goepfert on a night where he only had 17 saves – a rather strange and minimal statistic for the star netminder.
“Obviously, at this point there are always great goalies, there’s no mystery on that,” said Leveille. “You just have to get shots to the net and take the goalie’s eyes away. I scored the third goal, but I shouldn’t get any credit. You got to give all the credit to Brent Shepheard. He did the dirty job in front of the net.”
“He’s a Hobey Baker finalist -an unbelievable goalie,” said Lundin. “But we crashed the net and got some ugly goals and that’s what you have to do.”
Two of the tallies came on what could be interpreted as soft goals.
“A couple plays like that -sometimes they happen,” said Motzko. “In two years, we’ve never seen that. They were fluke plays.”
Like Motzko said early on after his team’s dismissal, sometimes these things happen. From the Black Bears standpoint, it’s about time they did.
Bangor Daily News