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 move to the championship game on Saturday evening against the University of Boston, which advanced to its first frozen four finals in 10 years with a victory of 3-1 over Penn State in the second semifinal.
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 took the passage and shot a shot over the right shoulder of the goalkeeper Matt Davis.
“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 goals 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 have failed in their efforts to become the ninth NCAA team to repeat themselves as a champion, and first since the Minnesota-Duluth in 2018 and 2019.
Pioneers finalist Defender and Hobey Baker Award Zeev Bium focused more 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.”
The game resembled the last meeting last month concerned rivals at the National College Hockey Conference Championship (NCHC). 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.
In the second semi-final later on Thursday, Boston U. The second targets from Jack Hughes and Cole Eiserman and newcomer Mikhail Yegorov stopped 32 shots for Terriers (24-12-2) who lost in the semifinals in each of the last two years.
Jack Harvey added an empty network with a minute remaining for terriers, a five -time champion to look for his first title from Beat Miami (Ohio) in 2009.
Nicholas Degraves scored 2:15 to the third for Penn State (22-14-4). Nittany Lions, another frozen four first timer, have only developed their fourth look of the NCAA tournament since its foundation in 2011–12. Arsenii Sergeev performed 31 savings in settling Russian goals.
Hughes opened the scoring 1:35 sweeping in a free puck after Sergeev couldn’t find when he sat in the fold after stopping Matt Copponi.
Eiserman scored nine minutes later by turning 2 to 1.
YEGOROV, preserved victory with several key stops. He gained a blocker to avert Dane Dowlak’s shot from the secession with seven minutes remaining in the second period. And the 19 -year -old man briefly looked after him after Jarod Crespo from the right circle with 4:19 on the left in the third.
YEGOROV has improved to 11-5-1 from connection to B in January after opening the USHL season. In June, New Jersey was selected in the second round of the NHL draft.
Terriers Coach and the double winner of the Stanley Cup Jay Pandolfo have reached frozen four combined seven times, four as a player, and in each of his three seasons behind the bench. He was a member of the 1995 championship team, trained by the American Hockey Hall Famer Jack Parker.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
