Senior goaltender Marc Kielkucki made 40 saves as Air Force defeated Findlay, 2-1, in the play-in game at the College Hockey America tournament Thursday at the Von Braun Center.<\/p>\n
Air Force, 16-15-4 overall, advances to the semifinals against regular-season champion Alabama-Huntsville Friday at 7:05 CST. Findlay finishes its season at 10-15-2 overall.<\/p>\n
Despite being outshot 15-6 in the first period, Air Force took the first lead. Brian Rodgers opened the scoring for the Falcons at 12:58 from Andy Berg, whose pass from behind the net found Rodgers on the doorstep for his 11th goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Air Force senior Scott Bradley then gave the Falcons a two-goal advantage with a power-play goal at 14:29 of the second period. Brian Gornick skated the puck down the right wing and fired a shot that was saved by Finday netminder Kevin Fines, but Bradley cleaned up the rebound for his fourth goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Findlay made the game interesting late in the third period as the Oilers pulled Fines with just under two minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
With the extra skater on the ice, Brant Somerville scored on a slapshot from Jeff Seeds at the 18:42 mark. With the goalie still out of the net, Findlay had several shots late in the period, but Kielkucki made 15 saves in the final period to preserve the win.<\/p>\n
The two teams combined for just six penalties in a clean game. The Falcons won the battle of the special teams as Air Force was 1-for-3 on the power play and killed all three of Findlay’s power plays.<\/p>\n
The CHA tournament continues Friday as third-seeded Wayne State takes on second seed Niagara in the first semifinal at 4:05 p.m. CST at the Von Braun Center. Following that game, fifth-seeded Air Force and regular-season champion Alabama-Huntsville will battle for the other slot in the finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senior goaltender Marc Kielkucki made 40 saves as Air Force defeated Findlay, 2-1, in the play-in game at the College Hockey America tournament Thursday at the Von Braun Center. Air Force, 16-15-4 overall, advances to the semifinals against regular-season champion Alabama-Huntsville Friday at 7:05 CST. Findlay finishes its season at 10-15-2 overall. Despite being outshot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2035"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}