Michigan Tech forward Henry Bartle battles to keep the puck away from a Bemidji State defender during a game Saturday at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena in Houghton. (David Archambeau/For the Gazette)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — After a tough weekend at home against Bemidji State, where the Michigan Tech Huskies hockey team acquired only one of six available points, the Huskies fell to fourth in the CCHA standings.

Huskies coach Joe Shawhan credited the play of the Beavers as being more than the Huskies were prepared for.

“Bemidji was really good,” he said. “We have to face it. Bemidji was really good. They came in with a really good game plan. I thought they irritated people that they needed to irritate and got people off their game and made us uncomfortable. That’s part of the maturing process, is us learning how to overcome. I mean, really overcome adversity.

“We had a couple players that I thought were really consistent, really sharp through the weekend. But for the most part, it was a lot of trying to find ourselves, and 1-by-1, we got a little bit better.”

There was one area of the Huskies’ game that was very successful throughout the weekend was the power play, which went 5-for-6. The one power play they did not score on, they did strike just after it ended.

“Without the power play, probably both games would have been very similar in score,” said Shawhan. “We were successful in the power play, and we were able to bring it to overtime (Saturday). Our power players are outstanding.”

A big piece of what helped the power play succeed was the play of freshman forward Elias Janssen, who scored three goals on Saturday night, all on the man advantage.

“He got to the net on the power play,” Shawhan said. “That’s really what we have to get better at, fighting for ice. Our power play is good. We can make plays with time and space. We’ve felt, we’ve said all along we feel we have good talent and we need to have talent that can grow.”

Shawhan said that in meetings with the players this week, the coaching staff tried to address where things went wrong.

“We tried to prepare our group for it, and that was the talk we had (Monday),” he said. “‘OK, do we change something here, fellas?’ We got together as a staff and talked, do we change something? Then we discussed, when we did our video, our summary or recap of the weekend, we really addressed this. In the last two weeks, we really addressed this.”

Shawhan lamented the fact that all three times the Huskies had a bye week this season, they have struggled the following weekend, partially because they have struggled to focus on the concepts the coaching staff want to implement.

“I think that’s what caused the frustration with the group,” said Shawhan. The areas that we really worked on, knowing two things, knowing what we have to improve at and trying to use the off week as a building block for that, and, secondly, what Bemidji was going to bring, having known ‘Ernie’ (Tom Serratore), knowing his pride, the way that he is, he’s probably a lot like me in a lot of ways. Certainly, he would say, ‘Hey, Joe, I’m way different in a lot of ways.’ But, knowing how they come in and how they play, I felt we prepared for that. So our best of the group, unless you guys think we really need to change something, we’re intent on status quo and continuing to work on what we need to work on, because we think what we need to work on didn’t really show up this weekend.”

One player who really struggled with the way the weekend went was junior center Stiven Sardarian. Sardarian had two assists on Friday night, but also took a double minor in the first period for tripping and unsportsmanlike conduct. Then, Saturday night, he took a major penalty for contact to the head and was given a game misconduct.

“He’s got to show more resiliency, and he’s got to know that he’s going to draw attention,” Shawhan said. “That’s just part of it. It gets frustrating for an offensive player to go through (what) he goes through.”

One of the other highlights Saturday night was the first career goal for senior forward Alex Nordstrom at the MacInnes Student Ice Arena.

“He had a breakaway prior to that, went blocker side,” said Shawhan, “and then on the second one went glove side. He’s a tremendous young man.”

SCOUTING THE VIKINGS

The Augustana Vikings are having a very strong second season at the DI level. They are 16-9-3 overall and 8-5-1 in CCHA play. However, they come into this weekend having been swept last weekend by Minnesota State.

“First of all, we don’t know a whole lot about them,” Shawhan said. “We saw them so early last year. They were a few weeks in when we saw them last year here. So, they’re two years into their program now, and they’re probably older than we are, I’d say, probably. It’s a very safe bet to say that with the transfer portal and stuff, they’re an older team than we are, more experienced team.

“They have good goaltending. We know that they compete hard. We know they have some players up front that can score, and we know that they have a really good supporting cast around that. So, (they are a) good hockey team. They’re obviously well-coached.”

The Vikings are led offensively by senior forward Payton Matsui, who has seven goals and 19 points in 28 games. Sophomore forward Hunter Bischoff has five goals and 17 points in 28 games.

Senior forward Luke Mobley leads the team in goals (11), and has 16 points in 28 games.

In goal, sophomore Josh Kotai has been a tremendous netminder all season. In 25 appearances, he is 15-7-3 with three shutouts, a 1.76 goals against average, and a .943 save percentage.

GAME TIMES

The Huskies and Vikings will battle Friday night at 8:07 p.m. at Midco Arena in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Saturday, the teams will go at it again at 7:07 p.m.