Kirk Allen stopped all 35 shots that came his way and the defense killed the mountain of penalties they faced to secure the UM-Flint hockey team’s 4-0 win over University of Detroit-Mercy on Friday night at Flint’s Iceland Arena. The 35 saves gave Allen his second shut out of the season.
“Anytime you can get a shut out, it’s a good thing,” coach Bill Golling said.
The UM-Flint team was neck and neck with the smaller UD-Mercy team through the first period, which left both teams going into the first intermission scoreless and left fans murmuring to each other about how close of a game it would be.
But Coach Golling noticed a change in his team halfway through the first period.
“They really got the wind in their sails and it carried them over through the next two periods,” Golling said.
“We came out a little over-confidant,” captain Joe Berry said of the first period. “We kind of regrouped in locker room and came out stronger.”
UM-Flint scored three times in the second period from Trevor Carpenter, Curtis Flinn and Ryan Stevenson which put the fans on their feet.
Despite being marred by seemingly one-sided penalties, Mike Blackstock added the fourth and final goal in the third period.
“They’re doing a great job on penalty killing,” Golling added. “Unfortunately, we’re getting a little more practice in that than I’d like to have.”
Neither team lacked in being physical with each other. Despite being smaller, UD-Mercy put up a fight, even when it led to two injuries that stopped play for more than a few minutes, including one on what was UD-Mercy’s only dressed goalie, Nate Spurlin.
The win puts another notch in the win column for the impressive semester the team has had.
“We lost two key players this semester and we also gained two players,” goaltender Kirk Allen said. “We weren’t sure how the rest of the season was gonna go. But we definitely capitalized and regrouped as a team.”
This was the team’s seventh win of 2010, having played only ten games so far. Both players and coach Golling said that student support is more important than ever at this point in the season.
“We need their help to come out and win the rest of this weekend,” Berry said of having students come out.
“I saw a lot of students from some of my classes,” Allen said of the fans. “It’s worth coming out to see. It’s exciting.”
The team faces Holy Cross at Notre Dame both Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Regardless of their previous wins over the Saints this season, the team won’t be taking the weekend lightly.
“We played them earlier in the season. I don’t expect them to be the same team they were back then, I expect them to be a little bit tougher,” Golling said. “We’re going to have to come out and execute.”
“We can’t overlook any teams,” Allen added. “We need all the wins that we can – we need both wins this weekend and both next weekend – to get into the top ten to make playoffs and we have a chance at making playoffs. If we can do that, we’re pretty good.”
Krystle can be reached at khollema@umflint.edu.
Hockey Club blanks UDM, makes push for playoffs
Published: Saturday, February 6, 2010
Updated: Monday, August 16, 2010 09:08
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