It was the sort of game fans love but coaches hate. Lots of goals on chances galore with a fair number of penalties mixed in.

Air Force settled down more in the third period and pulled away for a 6-3 non-conference victory against Bemidji State (8-9-3) on Sunday night at Cadet Arena. The Falcons (10-7-1) took three of four points on the weekend.

“Winning validates how far we’ve come as a program over the past 12, 15 years,” Falcons coach Frank Serratore said. “It wasn’t a thing of beauty, and these were two evenly matched teams.”

Twelve Falcons hit the scoresheet and six scored goals, led by Brady Tomlak with three points. Marshall Bowery and Dan Bailey scored their first goals of the season and Joe Tyran scored for the second night in a row. Kyle Haak and Matt Pulver also struck.

“I was trying to work on my timing, trying to stay underneath pucks, and my linemates did a good job getting me pucks tonight,” Tomlak said. “We had a lot of looks from a lot of different guys. That was big for us.”

Air Force scored nine goals on the weekend, a high-water mark for the season. They had eight at Army West Point and eight against Bentley.

More net gains

There were two other pivotal factors for the Falcons.

First, Billy Christopoulos made 31 saves, including at least a half dozen of them on breakaways and point-blank chances. Once Bailey scored after doing his best Johnny Cash impersonation, walking the line after receiving a Tomlak feed and firing a wrister past Henry Johnson (seven saves) with 8:02 to play in the second, Christopoulos found another level.

“The difference in the game tonight was Bill made the saves and their guy didn’t,” Serratore said. “The backbone of the big weekend was Bill. We gave up two breakaways in the third. One of those goes in and things get interesting.

“They’re an opportunistic team and they got some chances, and for the most part Bill was there.”

After Bailey’s goal gave the Falcons the lead for good at 4-3, Johnson was pulled in favor of fellow sophomore Zach Driscoll.

Four minutes later Air Force took two penalties two seconds apart and faced their second 5-on-3 kill of the night, having held Bemidji State to just one shot on its first two-man advantage midway through the first period.

The Beavers brought much more pressure on the second, but keeping them off the board supercharged the Falcons, co-captain Evan Giesler said.

“When we’re able to kill off not one but two 5-on-3s that just gets the energy up on the bench and rolls into the next shift,” the senior said.

Added Serratore, “They had two full-service 5-on-3s. They had their chances. We overcame a lot, including that. I’m proud of the guys for finding a way to win, they persevered.”

The third period was the Falcons’ best of the night – they outscored the Beavers, 2-0, to seal the outcome and outshot them for the only period all night.

Alex Mehnert made a beautiful pass from the left point that Tyran tipped in 8:25 into the period to make it 5-3, and Pulver finished things off an empty-net goal with 2:40 to go after he forced a turnover.

Fast start

The Falcons built their first two-goal lead of the weekend in the first period when Bowery scored off a nice feed from Tomlak, whom Giesler had found alone between the circles after he tracked down the puck in the right corner.

Tomlak got the next one after Jake Levin held the puck in and wheeled around the right half of the Beavers zone, slowing just short of the cage to feed Tomlak, who again was alone near the bottom of the circles and finished the play with 2:30 to play for his third of the season.

The Beavers answered 53 seconds later when Alex Ierullo got behind the Falcons defense and scored on a snapper. Then one minute into the second Ethan Somoza tied the score at 2 on a two-on-one, scoring from inside the left circle after the Falcons got caught and the lone defenseman back stayed tight on Ross Armour, who dished to Somoza.

“We’ve got to tighten things up a bit,” Serratore said. “We don’t want to have to rely on Bill like that every night. Eventually that’s going to catch up to you.”

Special teams figured into the next two goals – one for each team.

Eight seconds into an Air Force power play, Giesler’s backhand pass from near the left wall foundHaak on the lower inside of the left circle, and the senior snapped his sixth goal of the season past Johnson 6:34 into the second.

“We made one adjustment on the power play,” Giesler said. “Last night, we were having a tough time keeping sustained pressure in the offensive zone. We opened up the guy in soft area of their pressure, on Haaker’s goal that’s exactly what it was. I looked up like I was going to pass it to the D and shoveled it to the middle, Haaker was wide open and he buried it.”

But 2:13 later, the Beavers ended Air Force’s penalty kill streak at 36 when Aaron Miller scored for the second night in a row after several Bemidji chances, including one that rang off a post.

Note

The Falcons made one lineup change, inserting sophomore wing Shawn Knowlton into the lineup in place of junior Pierce Pluemer.

Air Force’s three stars

1. Brady Tomlak. The junior had the primary assist on the winning goal and earlier set up scored the Falcons’ first two goals.
2. Billy Christopoulos. The senior made 31 saves, more than a couple of the highlight variety.
3. Dan Bailey. The senior’s first goal of the season was a big one, giving the Falcons a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

Up next

The Falcons travel to Las Vegas next weekend for the Ice Vegas Invitational. They will play St. Lawrence of the ECAC on Friday at 9:35 p.m. MST. The Saints (3-12-1) went 1-1-1 in their three December games. Connecticut and Western Michigan are the other two teams in tournament.

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