Bowling Green’s hockey team faces a difficult challenge tonight and Saturday.
The Falcons, 7-15-2 overall and 2-12-2-0 in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association, visit 12th-ranked
Miami (11-8-3, 8-6-2-1).
Although Miami is loaded with talent and experience, it’s lost three straight games and is 3-5 in its
last eight games.
"They’re just fighting a mid-season deal," said BG coach Chris Bergeron, who is in his first
season after serving as an assistant at Miami for 10 seasons. "They still have talent and they
still have as much depth as any team in the country."
Miami is ninth nationally in scoring (3.55 goals per game) and in power-play conversions (22.5 percent,
23-of-102), 13th in goals allowed (2.36 gpg) and seventh in penalty-killing (86.8 percent, 99-of-114).
JST: No decision has been made on whether sophomore forward Jordan Samuels-Thomas, BG’s leading scorer,
will play tonight.
The 6-foot-3, 198-pounder was a healthy scratch for last Saturday’s game against Ferris State, the second
time this season he’s been scratched.
"We want him to be a power forward ," Bergeron said. "The three things we’ve asked him to
focus on are being relentless, putting more pucks on the net, and just continue to move his feet all
over the ice. If he can be relentless and hard to play against, he could be a top forward in this league
consistently. He struggles sometimes with trying to beat too many people 1-on-1 at the offensive
blueline."
Samuels-Thomas, who has six goals and 10 assists in 22 games, was a seventh-round NHL draft of the
Atlanta Thrashers in 2009.
"He’s got a great skill of being able to beat people down below the tops of the circle in the
offensive zone," Bergeron said. "He’s really good at that. It’s very difficult at this level
to beat guys consistently off the rush 1-on-1. And then what ends up happening is you start turning the
puck over and they end up going the other way. That’s what he ran into Friday night (against Ferris).
"Like our team, it’s a work in progress with a lot of individuals. He just needs to focus on every
day in practice and do the best he can do and I feel he will."
REMATCH: Miami swept the Falcons in November, winning 4-3, 3-0 at BG.
