The Colorado Mesa University hockey team won both games against Colorado School of Mines (CSM) on Friday and the Pink the Rink game on Saturday. The Mavericks won the first game in commanding fashion 5-2. However, they had to fight an uphill battle in the second game. The overtime thriller resulted in a 5-4 Maverick victory.
Saturday’s game started off with CMU accumulating four minor penalties and one major penalty in the first period. Mines took advantage of the major penalty and managed to score a goal to take the early lead. The Mavericks quickly found themselves down 4-1 midway through the second period. CMU managed to close the deficit to 4-2 before intermission.
With a strong third period, CMU was able to tie the game thanks to freshman Jack Michel which sent the game into overtime. Their junior defenseman Marcus Eliasson scored 26 seconds into the extra period to cap off the comeback.
“I went into the locker room between the second and the third period and I just knew, it was one of those gut feelings, we’re going to win this hockey game,” Head coach Tim Winegard said. “I told the boys ‘we’re going to win this hockey game, it’s not going to be easy, but I promise you we’re going to win this hockey game. And they worked their tails off in the third period, we just dominated from the puck drop in the third right through overtime and eventually, pucks are going to go in if you work that hard and dominate a team as we did in the third period.”
[media-credit id=11 align=”alignleft” width=”200″]
[/media-credit]
Captain Chase Engdahl and Alternate Captain Antonio Falcon, were the ones who organized the Pink the Rink game, also shared their thoughts on the game.
“I don’t think you could beat this,” Engdahl said. “This is probably the best hockey game I’ve ever played in. The fans definitely kept us in it, I don’t think we would have had the energy to bounce back. I think we battled adversity all night, we showed good leadership and we had a lot of guys step up. We needed guys to fill some big roles and everybody chipped in and this was a team win for sure.”
“With great leadership in the locker room, we needed to keep the energy up and the fans definitely helped us with that,” Falcon said. “Once we started popping goals I think the floodgates finally started opening.”
The powerplay percentage was 33.3 percent while the penalty kill was 85.7 percent after the Mavericks stopped six of seven. The shots were fairly balanced for the first and second period while CMU had a lot more opportunities than CSM in the third.
The Mavericks are now 7-5-1-0 on the season and are heading on the road. They begin with a neutral ice game against Metro State University of Denver in Breckenridge, Colo. on Nov. 11 and then play Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz. the Friday and Saturday after. The Mavericks have not played either one of the two this season.