They play 60 minutes in college hockey, but the final 50 at Cadet Arena on Friday night were basically window dressing.
Bentley scored four goals in the game’s first 9:22 to essentially put the Atlantic Hockey contest against Air Force in the freezer before the ice cream was out of the grocery bag during a 5-1 victory.
The visitors piled up an 11-3 shots-on-goal edge during their initial surge and made the hosts pay for seemingly every turnover and penalty committed during the process.
“That’s as tough of 10 minutes as we’ve seen in a long time, especially in our building,” Air Force associate head coach Joe Doyle said. “In all reality, the game was lost in the first 10 minutes. We did some good things after that.
“Give Bentley credit, they pressured us right from the beginning.”
Air Force had no answers for Bentley’s surge
The four-goal blitz came every which way and ended starting goaltender Guy Blessing’s night prematurely.
“Guy Blessing is our rock, he’s a guy we really have faith in, but we hung him out to dry,” co-captain Luke Rowe said. “I really didn’t think any of those goals were on him.”
“The first goal I lose my guy backdoor and he puts one in the net,” Rowe said. “It’s tough to come down from it in the first 40 seconds of the game.”
Ninety seconds later Bentley got a second goal on center Ethan Harrison’s tip of Seth Bernard-Docker’s shot from the point. Two and a half minutes later defenseman Nick Bochen scored the first of his two goals from a shot just inside the left dot, a play that was reviewed. And then Joe Winkelmann, Harrison’s left wing on the fourth line, scored from the inside of the right circle after a teammate intercepted an errant Air Force clearing pass by the left wing boards.
“We were coughing the puck up a lot,” Rowe reiterated. “It wasn’t confident play. We’re throwing it from a white jersey to a black jersey, we’re not covering guys, we’re losing guys in front. I thought we had a lack of intensity to start the game.”
The turnovers and coverage snafus led to all four of the Bentley goals being scored from inside and below the face-off dots – an area any coach would hang high-danger signs in blinking lights. In contrast, Air Force had just four shots on goal from the high-danger area in the first period.
“They had a ton of energy,” Doyle said of Bentley. “We looked like we were in quicksand with our feet and our brains.”
Air Force picked up its play but it wasn’t enough
Air Force’s best stretch of play came in the first two-thirds of the second period. At one point, the hosts had outshot Bentley 11-2 in the frame.
The pressure went for naught for two reasons. First, Nicholas Grabko (31 saves) played an excellent game in net once Air Force did get more chances close to him. When he wasn’t making glove saves or swallowing rebounds, Air Force couldn’t get to the loose rebounds in a position to do anything with them.
“We made a push and their kid was really good,” Doyle said.
The second thing that short circuited any faint comeback hopes was ill-timed penalties. Three times the Falcons prematurely ended power plays with penalties.
Nate Horn’s kneeing penalty late in the first period put a kibosh on one PP. Mitchell Digby was called for a dubious embellishment penalty after Lucas Vanroboys tripped him. And with Bernard-Docker off for a hit after the whistle late in the second, Digby took a major for cross checking while retrieving a puck in the Air Force zone. Bochen eventually scored his second goal on that ensuing power play. In between, Brandon Koch was assessed a 10-minute misconduct for arguing with the officials.
“We self-destructed again,” Doyle said. “We’re not very mature. We’re playing the situation, and we’re too engaged, which we talked about after the second period.”
Air Force played well in the third, again outshooting Bentley, and junior Jake Marti got them on the board and ended the shutout designs of Grabko with 11:23 to go in the game. Bennett Norlin tracked down a puck between the circle and made a nice right to left pass to Marti on Grabko’s backdoor.
“I actually thought we played better in the second period,” Rowe said. “Third period I thought we were playing really well, but it’s hard to come back from four-nothing in the first 10 minutes.”
Is this going to be a season-long issue?
Where this leaves Air Force is not unfamiliar territory. It’s had issues in the first games of a weekend nearly all season, including losses to Maine (4-1), Lindenwood (7-6) and Colorado College (8-0).
“Nobody saw (the start) coming,” Doyle said. “We had a good week of practice coming off a good win against Anchorage. The emphasis was on a good start. We haven’t had a good first night all season. We’re back to our old tricks – you can’t defend when you’re giving pucks away.
“If this is how we continue to be on weekends – one good to very good game and one poor game, that’s no way to live.”
Rowe took some consolation from Air Force’s play after the disaster of the first 10 minutes. Both he and Doyle know that what their team is capable of wasn’t fully on display Friday.
“We just need to be more mature, whether it’s talking to the refs, whether it’s taking stupid penalties,” he said. “It’s just resiliency. We have it in the locker room, we just didn’t demonstrate it tonight. It’s frustrating, especially coming off a good series against Anchorage and a really good Saturday against CC. But we’ll find it. Tomorrow will be a much better day.”
Notes: In addition to Rowe, fellow defenseman Luke Robinson returned to the lineup after missing most of three games due to injury. … Marti’s goal was his third of the season, as many as he had during his first two seasons combined. Sophomore defenseman Jasper Lester had a secondary assist on the play, the first point of his Air Force career. … Junior Maiszon Balboa replaced Blessing and allowed just Bochen’s second goal on the 16 shots he faced in 50:38.
©First Line Editorial 2022
