BEMIDJI - The Bemidji State men’s hockey team finally got the third period it wanted Saturday night against Alaska.
“The last four, five games we’ve been one goal up or one goal down going into the third period,” BSU senior winger Markus Gerbrandt said. “It was good for our confidence to finally win a third period and ultimately win a game.”
That phrase - “winning the third period” - has been a common one for BSU around the Sanford Center this season.
In their previous seven game winless streak, the Beavers had been outscored by their opponents 9-4 in the third period. They’d gone six straight games without scoring in the final 20 minutes, which made it difficult to win.
But on Saturday, after again heading into the second period tied, the Beavers scored four times - three on the power play - to beat the Nanooks 6-3.
Overall it was a solid offensive weekend for the Beavers, who ended up splitting the series after scoring nine goals overall. Five of those goals were five-on-five tallies, which had previously been a problem area for BSU.
“It was good to see,” BSU head coach Tom Serratore said. “You wouldn’t mind banking a couple of those for next week, but it doesn’t work that way.”
Serratore said he was never too worried about his team’s scoring, considering the deep forward group the Beavers possess.
“We went through a little phase there and we didn’t get the results we wanted, so it was nice to get some five-on-five goals,” he said. “We got two on Friday, three on Saturday, so we had five for the weekend. That’s all you can ask out of our guys. You get five five-on-five goals on a weekend, you’re going to win a lot of games. Especially if your power play can get one or two.”
BSU’s power play got four on the weekend, to add to its already-stellar total of 12 goals in 44 chances (27.3 percent).
That’s first in the WCHA and seventh nationally.
“I’ve been happy with the guys’ play,” Serratore said. “I really have been. It was nice on Saturday to win the third period, and that was good for the guys, and it was a good win. You want to build on it.”
Women, men sign recruits
Even though the first day of the early signing period was last Wednesday, both the BSU men’s and women’s teams signed some incoming recruits for 2016 this week.
The Beaver women’s team signed six players to letters of intent for next fall, while the men’s team signed two.
For women’s head coach Jim Scanlan’s team, five of the six signees are Minnesota natives and the sixth is from Wisconsin but played for Hill-Murray High School in Minnesota.
The group includes goaltender Lauren Bench (Eagan), forward Abby Halluska (Delano), defender Briana Jorde (Thief River Falls), forward Jacqueline Kaasa (Hudson, Wis.), forward Haley Mack (East Grand Forks) and forward Kaitlin Radke (Hastings).
“We are very excited about this group of incoming freshmen,” Scanlan said in a press release. “They will add speed, skill and depth to all three positions in our program and are all outstanding young ladies, who are also very good hockey players.”
Of the six, two (Mack and Jorde) are from northwest Minnesota; Scanlan was Mack’s coach in high school at East Grand Forks while he coached against Jorde, who was teammates with current Beaver freshmen Emily Bergland and Sylvia Marolt in Thief River Falls.
Kasa, who went to Hill-Murray, helped lead the Pioneers to back-to-back Minnesota Class AA state titles in 2014 and 2015. In all, five of the six incoming freshman for the women have state tournament experience in high school.
The men’s team signed two players: defenseman Tommy Muck and forward Ethan Somoza.
“We are very excited to add both Tommy and Ethan to the Beaver Hockey family. We have known these two athletes for a while,” said BSU assistant coach Ted Belisle, who is the Beavers’ recruiting coordinator. “They are both junior hockey veterans who possess the skill level and character necessary to be successful as a Beaver.”
Somoza, of Simi Valley, Calif., had been verbally committed to BSU since February 2013. He’s playing his third year of junior hockey, but his first in the USHL with the Bloomington Thunder. For the past two seasons he played with the Fairbanks Ice Dogs of the NAHL, where he led the team with 30 goals and had 65 points to rank sixth in the league in scoring.
Muck, from Inver Grove Heights, is in his second full season in the USHL’s Madison Capitols, where he was the team’s leading defensive scorer a season ago. He played three seasons for Eagan High School.
