Faceoff Success; Rowe’s Great Perspective; and Rockin’ in the Locker Room
by Anthony Travalgia/CHN Reporter (@atravalgia)
ST. LOUIS Western Michigan has been building towards this moment, step-by-step, brick-by-brick. It’s made the NCAA Tournament in each of Pat Ferschweiler’s four seasons as head coach.
The road to the Frozen Four was never easy. It took a lot of heartbreak and tough lessons learned along the way. That difficulty, that heartbreak, those lessons; all of that made what the Broncos were able to do Thursday night — defeating Denver to advance to the national championship — more special.
“It’s been a special year, we have a special group of guys. I’ve been fortunate to be on this team for a couple years now, being able to come to the tournament. I think it’s my fourth tournament, so just a little bit of experience there,” WMU forward Tim Washe said. “It’s just so fun to be a part of, be with these guys, a lot of belief in this room, it’s exciting.”
Players like Washe and Cam Knuble have been here since day one of the Ferschweiler era. They’ve been a big part of laying the foundation of Broncos hockey, building on that each year.
“It takes a little bit to set in because it is such a huge event and a huge accomplishment,” Knuble said. “But Bronco hockey has had good teams over these last couple years and then this year, the team really did make that extra push when it counts the most.”
Success At The Dot
Western Michigan opened the scoring against Denver on Thursday on a play it’s practiced hundreds of times.
Washe won a faceoff directly back to defenseman Brian Kramer. Kramer took a quick stride towards the Denver goal and sent the puck past the glove of Denver’s Matt Davis.
“[Tim and I] we kind of talked about their faceoff alignment and having one guy back that we get a quick strike off the draw,” Kramer said. “Saw that opportunity and Tim definitely made as clean of a faceoff win as you can get. Unbelievable faceoff win right on my stick, I couldn’t ask it for a better spot.”
Western Michigan is one of the top faceoff teams in the nation at 53.5 percent, just shy of Denver’s 53.9 percent success rate. Washe takes the majority of the Broncos faceoffs, 753 in total. Owen Michaels and Grant…
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