By Tim Schmitt
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — So much for fast starts and slow finishes. After blowing leads in their first three contests, the Niagara men’s hockey team did just the opposite on Thursday, spotting powerful Michigan three goals before roaring back to make it interesting.
In the end, though, the result was the same — Niagara failed to register its first win of the year, dropping a 3-2 decision to the fourth-ranked Wolverines before a raucous crowd of 6,295 at Yost Arena.
Coach Dave Burkholder was pleased with his team’s effort after falling behind, but surrendering a pair of early power-play goals proved too difficult to overcome.
“Our third period has been our worst period, that’s the trend we were setting in the first three games,” Burkholder said. “To come out and play as well as we did in the third, we had some big-time body checks, and we out-shot them.
“But unfortunately, we’re going to have to learn from this. We need to stay out of the box. We had no rhythm at all going for 40 minutes because we were in penalty trouble.”
Ryan Olidis and Paul Zanette scored for Niagara (0-3-1), but the Purple Eagles couldn’t get the tying goal despite a number of chances in the third. Niagara out-shot Michigan (2-1-0) on the night, 34-33.
A.J. Treais and Carl Hagelin scored power-play markers early for the Wolverines, then Robbie Czarnik registered his second point of the period, as he banged in a perfect goalmouth pass from Steve Kampfer.
Down 3-0 in a hostile environment, though, the Purple Eagles trudged on. Ryan Olidis snuck one past Michigan goalie Bryan Hogan after Tyler Gotto lobbed a shot from the point. Olidis corralled a loose puck, went to his backhand and got Niagara on the board.
In the second period, Michigan had a pair of great chances, but couldn’t extend the lead. First, David Wohlberg rang a shot off the post after a great pass from Louie Caporusso. Later in the period, Hobey Baker candidate Caporusso had a clean-cut breakaway, but Adam Avramenko made a great glove save to keep the deficit at two.
Avramenko was fighting in the puck early, but fought back to keep the Purple Eagles in it.
“He didn’t have the greatest start,” Burkholder said. “But for him to settle in, I think he showed a lot of maturity. And he held us in there. He at least gave us a chance to come back.”
Zanette scored in the final minute before the second intermission, making things really interesting. Burkholder was pleased that his club kept plugging after falling behind, and said other teams in the past have failed to get up when getting smacked down early by a Michigan team that had a dozen NHL draft choices in the lineup.
“It can happen in this building on any given night. They’ve done that to many good teams,” Burkholder said. “But for us to hang in there, we just stuck with it. We said, let’s win some shifts and worry about our next shot. We slowly got it going.”
But Michigan goalie Bryan Hogan kept his net clean in the third, stopping chances from Zanette, Chris Moran, David Ross and Egor Mironov as Niagara failed to break into the win column.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Burkholder said. “If you work this hard good things have to happen for you.”Contact sports editor Tim Schmitt at 282-2311, ext. 2266.
