Falcons Post 4-0 Win Over Michigan State On

Saturday, February 21

Bowling Green, Ohio

5:05 PM

Bowling Green State University

MICHIGAN STATE

February 21, 2009 | Ice Hockey

Feb. 21, 2009

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BOWLING GREEN, OHIO - The Bowling Green State University hockey team rallied around their three veterans on "Senior Night" and played one of their most complete games of the season posting a 4-0 victory over Michigan State Saturday evening at the BGSU Ice Arena.

Before the game started the three seniors, forward Brandon Svendsen, goalie Jimmy Spratt and defenseman Kevin Schmidt were honored for their four years of commitment to the program. All three would play a big role in the victory as the Falcons controlled the play from the opening face-off.

The Falcons more than doubled the shots of the Spartans in the opening 20 minutes, both overall (29-14) and shots on goal (18-7). Despite that difference in shots, it took a Bowling Green short-handed goal, their eighth of the season, to get the Falcons on the board.

Junior David Solway, who has been mired in a scoring slump for a couple months after starting the season with 14 points in the first 13 games, intercepted a MSU pass at the blue line and skated in on a breakaway faking Spartan senior goalie Jeff Lerg to his left and coming back to the other side to put the puck in a open net. The unassisted goal, BG's sixth of the season, came at the 8:29 mark of the first period, 1:29 into the MSU power play, and would be the only scoring in the stanza. It was the 12th goal of the season for Solway.

The Falcons broke open the game in the middle period, scoring three times, their best period of the season since they had four goals at Lake Superior on Nov. 8, the 10th game of the season.

Sophomore Dan Sexton scored a power-play tally at 4:06 of the period on assists from Svendsen and junior Kyle Page. It was Sexton's team-leading 14th goal of the season.

BG then put the game away with a pair of goals less than three minutes apart in the middle part of the second period.

Page started it out with a slap shot from the point that found the back of the net with traffic in front of Lerg at the 9:31 mark on assists from James McIntosh, the first point of his career, and Solway. The Falcons then extended their lead at the 12:29 mark as Sexton and Solway teamed up on a goal. A pass from Sexton to Solway, who was below the goal line to the left of the net, came right back to Sexton in front and he made sure it found the netting. It was the third two-goal game of the season for the Falcons' leading scorer.

The rest was up to the defense and Spratt. And the BG goalie kept the Spartans off the board the rest of the way, making 19 stops in the game, to record his third shutout this season, tying the school record set by Tyler Masters in the 2000-01 season. Spratt has now allowed three or fewer goals in 11 of his last 13 games and two or less in seven of those, including two of his three whitewashings this season.

BG was one-of-six with the man-advantage while MSU came up empty on five tries. BG has now held 11 of its last 18 opponents without a power play goal.

Lerg was credited with 32 saves for the Spartans, who were outshot, 36-19.

With the win the Falcons improve to 11-20-3 overall and 8-17-1-0 in Central Collegiate Hockey Association play. Michigan State, which was shutout for the fourth time this season, falls to 10-19-5 overall and 7-15-4-3 in conference play. Michigan State won the Friday game by a 3-2 score in East Lansing.

The Falcons complete the regular season next weekend with a road series at Western Michigan.

head coach Scott Paluch
"It was certainly a real good win to finish out the home portion of our schedule this year. Especially for the seniors. They (the seniors) all played well and the rest of the team wanted to play well for them. I was impressed with the way our whole team responded for the seniors. It was a complete effort from the start."

"We found a way to get four pucks by an outstanding goalie. He (MSU goalie Jeff Lerg) showed why we respect him so much. He was outstanding and battled us the whole way."

"We will certainly use this as a building block as we move forward toward the playoffs."

"Our penalty kill gave us a chance last night and it was good again tonight, especially killing off another lengthy five-on-three."

"We had a lot of chances early and didn't score. Then to have Solway score short-handed to get us on the board was really big. I really liked the way we stayed with it early even though we did not score."