Hoosiers drop 2 to defending champions

The IU club hockey team struggled last weekend against Davenport, losing both games.

On Friday, the Panthers dominated the Hoosiers, winning 9-2. Saturday’s game was closer, as they went into the latter part of the game tied 4-4, but Davenport rallied with three goals in the third period to take the 7-4 win.

Davenport extends its undefeated season and is now at 13-0. The Hoosiers take its first two losses of the season and now stand at 6-2.

In Friday’s game, the score was tied 1-1 at the end of the first period. However, in the second period Davenport opened up the game by scoring several early goals.

“It was pretty interesting,” said IU coach Tom Orr. “We played pretty well. We just had some bad luck.”

Davenport jumped out to a big lead partly because the Hoosiers played a more offensive game in an attempt to catch up, Orr said.

“Once you get down on a team, you take more chances to get more goals,” he said. “We opened up offensively and whenever you do that, it kind of makes it easier for them to score.”

After Friday’s 9-2 loss, Saturday’s game was more dramatic.

Davenport secured an early lead, but the Hoosiers scored two goals to tie up the game going into the third period.

It would seem IU had learned from its mistakes the day before and were going to avenge the loss, but Orr said a botched penalty call hurt the Hoosiers’ chances.

“We got absolutely robbed,” Orr said. “Two of their players ran into each other, and the ref misinterpreted the play and thought it was us and called a high-sticking.”

Orr said another high-sticking penalty was called against his team 10 seconds later, exciting Hoosier senior forward Dan Keeney who was given a 10-minute misconduct penalty for arguing with the referee.

With a five-on-three powerplay, Davenport capitalized. The Hoosiers never seemed to recover from the penalties and lost 7-4.

“I yelled at (the ref) as much as I could,” Orr said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Despite the two loses, Orr said his team still played well against the team who defeated them in the national championship a year ago.

“The score wasn’t reflective of what happened,” Orr said.

IU senior forward Keith Koorsen clearly felt momentum was on his team’s side before Saturday’s penalty.

“When we tied it up, honestly I thought we were going to win the game,” Koorsen said. “When they got their fifth goal, it kind of took the wind out of us. We just kind of fell apart and couldn’t put anything on the board.”

Despite the pair of losses, Koorsen said he felt it was a productive weekend for his team.

“We showed signs that we can play with Davenport,” he said. “We didn’t come out Friday and play our best game, but I would say we took the positives from the game. We have no reason to be afraid of the players, and we can gain confidence from this weekend.”

Orr said he still has a positive outlook of his team.

“One of the things I told the team after Friday’s loss was that we lost the least important game we’ll ever play against them,” he said. “We didn’t get the wins, but in a lot of ways it was a good loss. It taught us what we needed to do against them.”

Orr said he knows his team must be perfect against Davenport.

“If you make 10 mistakes against them, they’ll score nine goals on you,” he said. “All things considered, they have an absolutely great team.”