STREET. Louis -owen Michaels scored his second goal for 26 seconds into the second overtime and Western Michigan defeated the champion Denver 3-2 on Thursday evening to advance to his first frozen four title game.
Brian Kramer also scored and the newcomer Hampton Slovesky stopped 20 shots for the veteran western Michigan team, which in his 10th performance in the NCAA tournament froze. Broncos (33-7-1) set a one-time record for victory, expanded his winning lane to nine and won after threw the lead 2-0 third periods.
Western Michigan will face the winners of Boston University-Penn State on Saturday evening in Championship.
Michaels’ decisive goal came to the rush to the Denver zone with Matte Costantini, who rode on the right wing and swept the puck in the center. Michaels accepted the pass and shot a shot over the goalkeeper Matt Davis’s right shoulder.
“He darkened a little,” said Michaels, Sophomore of Northville, Michigan. “It was a little bit of a broken game, I just saw the puck to spray on me. I was in the middle of the ice and had some open time and space and decided to put it on the net. And quite happy it went inside.”
Jared Wright, with a binding goal with 2:39, left in regulation and Aidan Thompson scored and Davis had 44 savings for Denver (31-12-1). The pioneers who have won 10 titles in the previous three years and two in the last three years did not become a NCAA team in their offer to repeat themselves as champions, and first from Minnesota-Duluth in 2018 and 2019.
The pioneers of the defender and finalist Hobey Baker Zeev Bium was more focused on how his season ended in loss than to play his final university game. Sophomore, led by NCAA defender with 48 points, has the opportunity to jump to the NHL after Minnesota Wild was on 12th place last June.
“I don’t know,” the cell said. “It’s hard. We’ve just lost a big game. I hate loss. I love this place more than anything in the world. So I think I’m going to spend time with my teammates and enjoy with them and see what happens. I’ll have to think about those next few days and see what happens.”
With the exception of the result, the game resembled the last meeting of NCHC rivals last month at the conference tournament championship. This time Western Michigan gathered from the three goal of the third period to win 4-3 2ot.
Broncos dominated most of Thursday’s game, with Michaels and Kramer scored second periodic goals and western Michigan with shots 32-8. Zach Nehring had the best chance of scoring a minute into the game when he fired a shot from the partition and faced an open right side.
“It is a focused group. They never lose faith in themselves,” said Pat Ferschweiler coach, who led broncos to the tournament berth in each of his four seasons in Kalamazoo.
“They came with the third period.
