Miami’s final regular season series began promisingly enough, but ultimately ended up in the loss column.
The RedHawks jumped out to a two-goal lead against No. 15 Western Michigan before the Broncos ran off the final three tallies to edge MU, 3-2 at Lawson Arena on Friday.
Miami is winless in 13 games (0-12-1), tied for the fourth-longest streak in program history, with its last win coming on Jan. 13.
The teams wrap up their two-game series at 6 p.m. on Saturday and open the NCHC postseason next weekend.
RECAP: The RedHawks took the early lead 6:08 into the first period when Dylan Moulton backhanded a pass in heavy traffic through the top of the crease to a wide-open Albin Nilsson at the left side of the cage for a tap-in goal.
Miami (7-23-3) extended its margin two minutes into the middle frame, as Moulton took a feed by Thomas Daskas on his backhand in the high slot, went in alone and slid the puck through WMU goalie Cameron Rowe’s pads.
But at the 7:27 mark of that stanza, Luke Grainger picked the top shelf, near post on the power play as Western Michigan (19-13-1) cut its deficit to one.
With 2:19 left in the second period, the Broncos’ Matteo Constantini buried a slap shot from the top of the left faceoff circle just under the crossbar, far post to tie the score at two.
Just over four minutes into the final frame, Sam Colangelo took a feed along the half wall, carried the puck across the ice, eluded a defender, got Neaton to commit to a juke and tucked the puck into the net from the right side of the cage.
STATS: Moulton finished with a goal and an assist for his third career multi-point game. His last one was March 4, 2023, also against WMU.
The senior posted three points on Jan. 4, 2022 vs. Mercyhurst (0-3-3).
Daskas also ended the night with two points, both on assists. Despite playing all 33 games this season, he had just one prior helper (at North Dakota on Nov. 17).
In three campaigns with Miami, this was his second two-point game, as he went 1-1-2 vs. Niagara on Dec. 30, 2022, and he posted two points twice in his freshman season with Air Force before transferring.
Nilsson scored his fourth goal in 15 games this season, and he picked up a point for the second straight contest.
Spencer Cox also notched an assist, his third in seven games, for his stretch pass that led to Moulton’s tally.
— Miami struggled in both ends on special teams, going 0-for-3 on the man-advantage and allowing a power play goal on four chances.
The RedHawks have scored just one PPG in four games and are 15-for-24 on the penalty kills in their last seven, allowing at least one PPG in each contest.
At 14.4 percent, Miami is eighth-last in Division I on the power play and is 48th in the NCAA shorthanded, killing penalties at just a 77.4 percent clip.
— The second period has killed the RedHawks recently, as they have allowed nine goals in their last five games and at least one marker in 11 of 12 contests in the middle stanza.
With the benches further from the defensive zone in that period, that frame is the toughest in which to defend, and Miami has been outscored, 41-21 in the second 20 minutes, easily the most lopsided ratio of any period.
— Now the winless streaks.
Miami, 0-12-1 in its last 13 games, has only suffered longer stretches without a win three times since the team’s Division I inaugural season in 1978-79.
The last time the RedHawks endured such a win blight was a span of 15 games Nov. 23, 2018-Feb. 8, 2019, during which MU went 0-14-1.
A list of the top five longest winless streaks in Miami history:
| Streak length | Dates | Record |
| 17 | Dec. 15, 1990-Feb. 2, 1991 | 0-16-1 |
| 15 | Nov. 23, 2018-Feb. 8, 2019 | 0-11-4 |
| 14 | Nov. 2, 1985-Dec. 20, 1985 | 0-13-1 |
| 13 | Oct. 27, 1990-Dec. 8, 1990 | 0-11-2 |
| 13 | Jan. 19, 2024-present | 0-12-1 |
Also, this was the 21st straight RedHawks loss in March dating back to 2018.
Miami also clinched the worst NCHC record in the league’s 11-year history, dropping to 1-20-2. Colorado College finished 2-19-3 in 2014-15 and earned just 10 league points.
The RedHawks have seven conference points and need a regulation win just to reach double digits.
ANALYSIS: It almost feels like this team is cursed.
Could it really be a bad aura surrounding the program is ultimately the cause of all of these heartbreaking losses and its utter freefall from Division I elite a decade ago to a long-term resident in the NCHC’s basement?
Over the years we’ve discussed the demise being the possible result of poor player performance, coaching, geographic and logistics issues, finances, recruiting and other possible causes, but we’ve never seriously considered the fans and the impact of their vibes.
When you think of Miami students and fans, where do they hail from?
Three of the first places that come to mind all start with ‘C’ — Chicago, Cleveland and Cincinnati.
Who do people from those cities root for, and how’s that working for them?
Chicago?
The majority of Miami fans from the Second City root for the Cubs, and 90 percent of residents of the Chicago metroplex as well as Northwestern Indiana are Bears fans.
The Cubs finally snapped a 108-year World Series in 2016 but made their fans endure two of the most painful collapses in sports history in 1984 and 2003, blowing a 2-0 lead in the best-of-5 NL Championship series in both.
Not just imploding, doing so in dramatic fashion. The Leon Durham five hole moment. The eight-run inning sparked by a botched double play by Alex Gonzalez, and a refusal to pull an obviously fatigued Mark Prior by Dusty Baker (and not, by the way, in any way affected by the Moises Alou–Steve Bartman media narrative — sorry Thom Brennaman).
The Bears haven’t been relevant since their one Super Bowl win in 1986 and don’t seem very interested in becoming competitive anytime soon, although they did advance to the big game in 2006, when Peyton Manning carved up Rex Grossman. The double-doink kick by Cody Parkey on a should’ve-been-made-game-winning field goal in 2018 was a nice touch.
The Blackhawks appeased their decades-suffering fans by snapping a 59-year Stanley Cup drought in 2010 and won two more titles the next five years only to have the entire era shadowed by the too-close-to-home Brad Aldrich sexual assault scandal.
Cleveland?
The city has amazingly loyal fans but has been the ultimate pro sports punching bag, with the Indians riding the longest World Series drought in MLB at 76 years.
Since winning its last title, 4-games-to-2 over the Boston Braves in 1948, Cleveland was swept by the New York Giants six years later despite winning 111 games, one of the best records in MLB history.
The Indians didn’t make the playoffs again for 41 years but coming out of the infamous strike that wiped out the postseason and cut 18 games out of the 1994 postseason, Cleveland advanced to the 1995 World Series thanks to Orel Hershiser’s arm but fell to Atlanta in six games.
Then there was the Jose Mesa meltdown in 1997, a series Cleveland lost in seven games that saw Jacobs Fields games played in sub-freezing wind chills and flurries.
In 2007 the Indians again appeared poised to win a title, but their pitching imploded and Boston won Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS to end their run.
And we already mentioned 2016, a World Series Cleveland lead, 3-games-to-1 and rallied to tie Game 7 in the eighth inning on a Rajai Davis homer off Aroldis Chapman before the Cubs prevailed in extra innings.
Then there’s the Browns. We’re nearly 60 years into the Super Bowl era and they haven’t won one.
They did win the NFL championship in 1964 and advanced to the AFC title games three times in four years in the late 1980s with Bernie Kosar under center.
But they lost two years in a row to the John Elway-led Broncos, including The Drive in 1987, when Denver took over at its own 2 yard line late in the fourth quarter and drove the length of the field to win the game.
Cincinnati?
Since winning the World Series in 1990, the Reds have won a whopping two playoff games, and those were both in 2012 when they took a 2-games-to-0 lead over San Francisco on the road in the NL Division Series only to lose the final three at home.
They were also no-hit in the NLDS by Roy Halladay in 2010, who threw the second-ever postseason no-hitter in MLB history.
The Bengals have zero Super Bowl wins.
They advanced in 1982 during the famous Freezer Bowl season when wind chills plummeted to minus-50 but lost in the title game.
Joe Montana-to-John Taylor late lifted San Francisco over Cincinnati in 1989, and the Bengals again saw a late lead evaporate in the 2022 Super Bowl when the Rams scored the final 10 points, with Cooper Kupp catching the decisive one-yard TD pass with 85 seconds left.
And have those negative forces been impacting this program for years?
That would explain 2009, when Miami saw a two-goal lead evaporate in the final minute of its only-ever NCAA championship game appearance, with Boston University winning said title game on a fluky overtime tally that deflected off a RedHawks defenseman’s stick and floated in under the crossbar.
As easy as it would be to believe that the hockey gods simply have it in for fans of those aforementioned cities and by extension this program, most rational people would say that’s obviously not the case.
But a bounce here and there, a little puck luck, any kind of break would be welcome for a Miami team that hasn’t seemed to get any in 2023-24.
— Hate to single players out and we love Hampus Rydqvist, but he needs to play better defense on the decisive goal.
He pinched in the offensive zone and ole-d a poke check and missed, which led to WMU squatting in the offensive zone, and then he tried to jab the puck away from Colangelo, who skated around him and was 1-on-1 with the goalie.
Coach Chris Bergeron even called the play out in his postgame presser.
— Overall, the effort was very good. Loved seeing Daskas being rewarded for his hard work, and he made two excellent passes to set up goals.
Moulton has seemed to up his overall game lately as well and is scoring at a better clip than many of the forwards.
— The fourth line of Tanyon Bajzer, Blake Mesenburg and Teddy Lagerback were very solid and generated a lot of O-zone time.
LINEUP CHANGES: Bergeron went back to a traditional 12-forward set, with Lagerback returning to the lineup up front. He replaced defenseman Zane Demsey, who sat for the fourth time in six games.
STANDINGS: Miami has clinched eighth in the NCHC and will head to top-seeded North Dakota next weekend to open the conference tournament.
After play on Saturday, the RedHawks are ranked No. 47 in the PairWise rankings.
FINAL THOUGHTS: If there’s any good news, ultimately this game didn’t matter for Miami.
The RedHawks are locked into last place in the NCHC and will face North Dakota in a best-of-3 series in Grand Forks next weekend. And unless Miami can somehow win two of three in a rink it has eight all-time victories in 39 games, its season will end in the first round of the conference tournament for the eighth straight playoff year.
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