newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — Senior goaltender Chad Johnson just didn’t reserve his composure for the Lake Superior State Lakers. It came in handy against his own Alaska Nanooks during Friday’s opener of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association series at the Carlson Center.

The Nanooks, before they ended the night with a 4-1 win, were skating short-handed after freshman center Ron Meyers collected a tripping penalty with 1 minute, 2 seconds left in the game.

Seventeen seconds later, senior defenseman Steve Vanoosten was in the low slot attempting to block a Lakers pass. The puck, instead, deflected off his stick and onto the crossbar of the goal. Fortunately for Johnson, the puck bounced over the back of the net and out of play.

“After the play, he was kind of standing there looking at me like, ‘Wow! That was close,’“ Johnson said. “I kind of just looked at him, calmed him down and told him, ‘Nice tip, Vannie.’ He kind of shook his head.

“It was close, but it was kind of one of those plays that happened so fast; it went off his stick and it got a good bounce there.”

Johnson, who has been key to the Nanooks’ success this season, stopped 58 of 60 shots from the Lakers, marking the second straight week he allowed only two goals in a CCHA series. He backstopped a 3-2 and 2-0 sweep against Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich., on Nov. 21-22, leading to the CCHA Goaltender of the Week honor.

After Saturday’s 2-1 shootout win over Lake Superior (which, by NCAA standards, is a 1-1 tie), Johnson is 6-4-2 and leads the CCHA with a 1.57 goals against average and a .944 saves percentage that also ranks fourth in NCAA Division I.

“It’s almost like he doesn’t have a pulse,” Alaska assistant coach Lance West said of Johnson’s composure. “He’s so calm and I think that’s a quality that a good goaltender has to have —there’s not a lot of panic in them, they have short memories.

“When something does happen, he has those qualities.”

Back to Omaha

The Nanooks return this weekend to the Qwest Center in downtown Omaha, Neb., where their 2007-08 season ended with a 2-1 triple-overtime loss to the University of Nebraska-Omaha on March 9 in the third and deciding game of a first-round CCHA playoff series. The 104-minute, 13-second thriller is the longest game in Alaska history and the ninth-longest in NCAA hockey history. One day earlier in Game 2, the Nanooks downed the Mavericks 5-3 for Alaska’s ninth, and final, win of the season.

A victory this weekend in Omaha will match the Nanooks’ win total for all of last season, when they finished 9-21-5 overall under then head coach Doc DelCastillo.

Last season, though, seems to be a distant memory to this season’s Nanooks, who head into the Qwest Center with an 8-4-2 overall and 6-3-1-1 CCHA for a share of third place with the Ferris State Bulldogs and Ohio State Buckeyes, who swept the Mavericks 4-3 Friday and 3-2 Saturday in Columbus, Ohio.

“Obviously, it means a lot,” Johnson said of being close to matching last season’s win total, “but we’re not really too worried about what happened last year (season). There’s a new coach this year (Dallas Ferguson), a lot of new players this year, a new atmosphere around the rink ... we’re just worried about this year.

“What happened last year or the year before, we aren’t too worried about. We’re just worried about coming out every weekend and getting points when we know we should and just playing our game, and hopefully, it will turn out that we continue to keep winning.”

The sweep by Ohio State dropped Nebraska-Omaha from second place to sixth place with a 9-4-1 overall and 5-4-1-1 CCHA record.

Blade bits

• Dustin Molle’s game-tying goal in the first period Saturday gave the Alaska junior defenseman his first point in 10 games this season and only his second career goal in 45 games for the Nanooks.

His first goal occured in a 2-2 tie on Jan. 12 at Ferris State.

Molle had no points in three games as a freshman for the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2005-06.

• Left wing Kyle Greentree, the Nanooks’ leading scorer from 2004-07, had his ninth goal of the season and an assist for the visiting Quad City (Iowa) Flames in a 4-3 loss to Chicago Wolves in Saturday’s American Hockey League game ... Former Nanooks goaltender Wylie Rogers (2004-08) registered 41 saves for the Rio Grande Valley (Texas) Killer Bees in a 4-3 win over the host Wichita (Kan.) Thunder in Saturday’s Central Hockey League game. Rogers is 5-3-1 on the season with a 2.94 goals against average and .919 saves percentage ... Alaska Aces right wing Cam Keith, a Nanook from 2000-04, scored the game’s first goal, and his fifth of the season, on a power play in the first period of a 4-3 loss Friday to the Stockton Thunder in an ECHL contest in Stockton, Calif.