Saturday may have been the first game of the NCAA season for Miami and Ferris State, but it felt like three different hockey contests were played in a single contest.
Miami dominated the first period, treaded water in the second and collapsed in the third.
Then Ferris State’s Jason Brancheau completed the comeback with 27 seconds left in overtime by batting a loose puck into a vacated net as the Bulldogs edged the RedHawks, 5-4 at Ewigleben Ice Arena.
Miami (0-1) held leads of 3-0 and 4-1, which was the score entering the final period, but Ferris State (1-0) scored the final four goals to earn its first win of the season.
RECAP: Miami took the lead 3:47 into the first period when a Hampus Rydqvist wrister from the blue line hit a body at the side of the net and caromed to a wide-open John Waldron in the slot, and he buried it.
The RedHawks extended their lead to two just 92 seconds later when Matthew Barbolini tipped home a blue line slap shot by defenseman Spencer Cox on the power play.
Miami made it 3-0 with 7:40 left in the first period when Ryan Sullivan won a battle along the half wall and fed Frankie Carogioiello for a one-time blast at the left faceoff dot that beat Bulldogs goalie Noah Giesbrecht.
Ferris State cut the deficit to two 2:39 into the middle stanza when he took a feed from the point by Stepan Pokorny at side of the net and banked it in off the back of RedHawks goalie Logan Neaton.
MU went back up by three with 4:57 left in that frame when a rip from the top of the left faceoff circle by P.J. Fletcher trickled through Giesbrecht, and Thomas Daskas crashed the crease and jammed it in as he took a hit.
But Ferris State made it 4-2 just 84 seconds into the third period when Kaleb Ergang centered a pass from behind the crease that deflected to Caiden Gault, whose shot from the slot was denied by Neaton, but the rebound pinballed to Ergang, who snuck it through traffic and in.
The Bulldogs pulled within one 67 seconds later when Jake Mesic took a drop pass at the blue line, whipped a shot from the top of the faceoff circle that Neaton denied, but Mesic snagged the rebound and fired it past Neaton.
Ferris State pulled Giesbrecht with a minute remaining, and Travis Shoudy fired an outside shot that Neaton stopped, but Venuto picked up the rebound in the slot with his back facing the net, turned and buried the tying goal with 20 seconds left in regulation.
With 27 seconds left in overtime, Shoudy drove the net from the right wing, fired a shot off Neaton from the slot. The momentum carried the Miami netminder out of the crease, and Brancheau buried the loose puck into the vacated net to win it.
STATS: The two top returning Miami goal scorers — Barbolini and Waldron — both found the net in the season opener.
Waldron led all rookies and finished third on the team with nine goals in 2022-23, and the RedHawks got a team-best 10 from the big guy last season.
Carogioiello’s marker was the first of his career, and Daskas netted his 10th in Division I, seven of which have come with Miami.
Three other transfers earned their first career points: Cox, Sullivan and first-line center Raimonds Vitolins all picked up an assist.
Fletcher and Rydqvist also notched helpers.
— Neaton finished with 40 saves, the third-most stops of his Miami career. His career high of 42 came March 3 in, coincidentally, another 5-4 overtime loss.
— Miami got off to a solid start in special teams, going 1-for-4 on the power play and killing off all four Ferris State man-advantage opportunities.
— The RedHawks are still winless in overtime under coach Chris Bergeron. He is 0-8-13 at Miami and has lost 10 consecutive OT decisions dating back to his Bowling Green days.
— That’s five straight games MU has allowed five or more goals. The RedHawks surrendered 23 goals the final four games of 2022-23.
THOUGHTS: The honeymoon period of this season lasted appoximately 2 1/2 hours.
As in any sport, at any level, the promise of a new season always brings hope and tends to cleanse the mind, which — with human beings optimistic by nature — always seems to partially erase the follies of the previous campaign.
Four straight consecutive late goals against in Big Rapids later and we’re right back in Miami Hockeyland. Despite its success in the early 2010s, frankly, surviving the final minutes has been a recurring issue since Miami’s most historic loss vs. Boston University in the 2009 title game.
Now here we go again. 3-0 lead after 20 minutes. 4-1 after two periods. And Game 1 ends up in the loss column.
Miami still has a solid, loyal base of hockey fans. They buy season tickets and merchandise, they travel, they follow the team closely. And the fact the RedHawks lost this game in such a Charlie-Brown-football-pull fashion shocked exactly zero members of its base is in itself shocking.
Let’s throw in some very-necessary positive.
— Raimonds Vitolins was a natural on the top line and looked like he’d played with Barbolini and Waldron for years. He was 15-9 on faceoffs, a metric Miami has struggled in mightily for over a decade, and hopefully he can continue to win draws at an above-.500 clip.
— The fourth line buzzed with energy the way Carogioiello and Blake Mesenberg did midway though last season before Mesenberg was injured. Sullivan meshed well on that line and hopefully more good things are ahead from that threesome.
— Miami allowed 45 shots, but Michael Feenstra was arguably the best shut-down defenseman on the team.
— Cox looked like a natural on the power play point, earning an assist on the man-advantage. Miami did not have a true puck-moving defenseman on power plays last season and struggled as a result.
Back to reality…
— 20 seconds left in regulation. That’s when Ferris tied it. Niagara scored its game-winner with 20 seconds left on New Year’s, and Miami imploded from that point forward.
— What sucks more is Ferris State coach Bob Daniels still believes in the old-school one-minute rule when it comes to pulling goalies, so the Bulldogs had even less time to convert a 6-on-5 than most teams would in that situation.
— The turnovers and flat-footedness in the final 40 minutes made watching the migrane-inducing Ferris State even tougher to watch.
Like we led with, this was like three different games in one: Good Miami, so-so Miami and bad Miami.
— Neaton has to hate this building. His last appearance here was Game 2 in 2021 when he allowed a 3-on-4 overtime goal the first day the NCAA’s current all-or-nothing 3-on-3 rule was formally implemented.
— Can anyone explain why these teams are playing a Saturday-Sunday series? For no reason we’ve been able to ascertain, the first weekend of NCAA hockey starts on a Saturday, when anyone who’s followed the game for more than a week knows Friday nights are way better draws. Opening-week Sundays compete with the NFL, and both of these schools have drawn poorly for the series finale. By the way, Miami has a bye in two weeks and Ferris State has one easily reschedulable exhibition that weekend.
— Freshman goalie Bruno Bruveris is ineligible this weekend but will hopefully be cleared to play for Miami’s home-opening series vs. Arizona State starting in six days.
— A surprising lineup scratch was defenseman Zane Demsey. He had left shoulder surgery late last season and missed the final few games but was supposedly 100 percent entering this weekend. As a freshman in 2022-23, Demsey emerged as a solid shut-down defensemen.
STANDINGS: Only one NCHC team (Denver) won on Saturday. Minn.-Duluth tied and St. Cloud State lost — 5-4 to Enrico Blasi’s St. Thomas team.
FINAL THOUGHTS: This past off-season we posed a few possible reasons for Miami’s atrocious overall results based on personal observations and those of knowledgeable acquaintances in the field, and if anything, this outcome further advanced those hypotheses.
It’s just one game with lots of new skaters, so we don’t want to be too harsh, but internal communication seemed subpar and Ferris State seemed way better on X’s and O’s while too often Miami appeared disorganized and sloppy, especially the final 40 minutes.
We’ve questioned conditioning as well, and the Bulldogs seemed to skate circles around the RedHawks as the game progressed despite Bergeron being conservative about overplaying his top skaters.
Blowing a three-goal lead is demoralizing, but fortunately that was Game 1 of a weekend series, and Miami can avenge that loss today. A win in the finale would do wonders to bury the RedHawks’ nightmarish opening-night start.
View From the Glass 