WWU Pays Back Huskies with OT Goal of Their Own

BELLINGHAM - It was a wild and wicked Saturday night in northwest Washington state for both University of Washington Huskies and Western Washington University Vikings hockey clubs.  The windy, stormy weather did not prevent these two clubs from making it out to the Sportsplex ice rink for the weekend / regular-season series finale.  Fortunately the lights stayed on the whole night.

The Huskies would score three answered goals after being down 3-0 in the second period to force overtime, but Vikings' team captain Joe Glithero scored on the power play just 59 seconds into the extra session as WWU held on for the 4-3 win.

WWU played aggressive offense through most of the first period, making Huskies goaltender James Feldman face some timely but difficult shots.  But the Viking offense found ways to beat Feldman early on in the first period.  Derek Binder would score 3:40 into the opening contest for the 1-0 lead.  Exactly three minutes later, Canadian import Ryan Kondolay would make it 2-0 for WWU.  In the second period, Andrew Liebel would extend his point-streak on the weekend to six with another goal at 11:47 to give the Vikings a 3-0 advantage.  It would be his fifth goal on the Huskies on that weekend.

Penalties were much lighter than Friday night's as only six minor penalties were called throughout the night with WWU getting the majority of them with four.

Tyler Jennings would begin the scoring at 13:37 of the second period by beating WWU goaltender Phil Schwartz for his tenth goal of the season after Mason Friedman passed the puck over to Devin Garg.  From there, Garg took a shot, ricocheted off the end boards to Jennings and cutting the Viking deficit to 3-1.  Garg and Friedman would assist on that goal.  Later in the third period, Kawcak would win the faceoff where Keenan Smith would take the puck and move it to the left side near the corners.  It appeared Ryan Jaromin had a piece of it near the post but it was tapped in by Eli Dingles, who would receive the pass from Smith instead putting it past Schwartz for only his second goal on the year at 6:51 of the third period.  The Huskies felt their momentum coming, and with a 3-2 deficit, things were not going WWU's way.  After a big sprawling save by Feldman on the other end of the ice, Alex Black took the puck the other way towards the corners and decided to go around the net.  He would pass to Jaromin, who would shoot the puck towards the net, but after Schwartz blocked it, JD White would tap in his ninth goal on the season at 18:06 of the final period and the Huskies would tie it up at three.

Just 20 seconds after the game-tying goal, WWU's Aaron Hack would commit a roughing penalty, giving Washington a huge opportunity to at least carry the power play into overtime.  But with 50 seconds remaining, Husky defenseman Troy Gasser would get caught for interference killing off the UW man-advantage going 4-on-4 for the remainder of regulation, which would then be a brief 3-on-3 before WWU would go on the power play.

After Gasser received a four-minute fighting "minor" plus ten-minute unsportsmanlike conduct late in Friday night's game, his weekend would not end so well because immediately following Hack's penalty expired and while Gasser was still in the box for his interference minor, Glithero would beat Feldman from the slot and the Vikings would prevail on their home ice, paying back the Huskies for what they did to them on Halloween night when Alex Black would also score the game-winner in overtime at Olympicview Arena.

Feldman would suffer his first loss on the season dropping to 4-0-0-1 (wins-regulation losses-ties-OT/SO losses).  Schwartz would go to 2-0-0 in his first two games on the weekend.

Washington would fall to 10-7-1-1 on the season; Western Washington would improve to 6-4-1.

Huskies will return to action after the new year with a Pac-8 conference weekend series against the UCLA Bruins on January 8th & 9th at Olympicview Arena.