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MARQUETTE — It’s not so easy trying to play eight hockey games in two weeks as the Northern Michigan University hockey team found out over the weekend.

During the first five games of that stretch, the Wildcats (8-13-1, 6-5-1 WCHA) only lost once, but then in the third period against Bowling Green State on Sunday, they finally hit a wall as the Falcons scored three goals to turn what was a close game into a 6-2 blowout loss.

Looking back at that stretch, NMU head coach Grant Potulny said Monday he thought his team ran out of gas against BG, but he said that the rest of his postgame sentiments remained the same, adding that the recent power play struggles didn’t help as the Falcons scored a shorthanded goal to break the game open.

Northern Michigan University's Andre Ghantous, top center, passes the puck out front near the Michigan Tech net as fellow Wildcat Mack Byers, right, and Michigan Tech's Logan Ganie, left, and Tristan Ashbrook look on during the first period on Jan. 25 at the Berry Events Center in Marquette. (Photo courtesy Shannon Stieg)

“Here’s the thing that’s hard,” he said. “You go into this stretch and it’s eight games. So it’s Saturday-Sunday at Lake (Superior) State and then you come back and then go to Bemidji (State) Friday-Saturday. Then you come back, you get home at 5, 5:30 in the morning, 6 o’clock on Sunday.

“Then it’s Tuesday-Wednesday (against Alabama-Huntsville) and it’s Saturday-Sunday. Part of me thinks that we just maybe ran out of juice a little bit on Sunday.

“The rest, it’s the same. I didn’t think that they necessarily started the game any differently than we did. They just found a way to make a couple plays to get to their game and conversely, we didn’t make a couple plays. And even when we tied it, I thought at that point, maybe that we could be in it.

“And then going into the third period, really, as of late, (what’s) been killing us is the power play. It’s one thing not to score on the power play. That’s going to happen. I’ve always said it, I don’t care what our power play percentage is. It doesn’t matter. You’ve got to score when you need it.

“Scoring a goal to make it whatever we scored against Huntsville, to make it 6-2 instead of 5-2. So you win the game 8-2 instead of 7-2. That doesn’t matter. You have to score timely goals and you always have to generate momentum and we’re at a point where when we do get a power play, it almost seems like it’s sucking the life out of our team.

“That’s something that needs to be fixed and we’re at the point where you just got to keep working on stuff to improve it, but there’s nobody that works on the power play more than we do.

“So maybe we’ll have to adjust the players, maybe you have to adjust the scheme because it doesn’t make sense. Whatever we have in the league, guys in the top five in scoring and that’s not even including Griff (Loughran) who led the league in scoring last year, but for whatever reason, whether it’s the way that they are together, whether it’s the plan that we have, whatever it is, it’s got to be adjusted, and we’re going to keep trying to fix it until we get it right.”

The Wildcats now only have two games left in their regular season — a home-and-home series this weekend against rival Michigan Tech (14-8-1, 4-5), a team that has had Northern’s number this year as the Huskies have beaten the ‘Cats four times.

When asked what he thinks might help his team change their fortunes, Potulny mentioned new goalie Rico DiMatteo and Loughran, but admitted his team has been hampered by injuries.

“I think the addition of Rico has changed our team a little bit for sure, giving us some stability there,” he said. “So that’ll be a tick in our favor. Hopefully getting Griff going back the right way will be another tick in our favor. I don’t know if Vinny (de Mey) is going to be available. I don’t know if Noah (Ganske) is going to be available.

“That’s the other thing that’s been challenging is depth. We have not had, since the second game of the year, when Hank got hurt, we haven’t been healthy. We have not had our (full) roster available since the second game of the year and that’s been tough.”

Heading into the weekend, the Wildcats are third in the WCHA standings, two points behind BG and two ahead of Lake Superior State. However, Bemidji and Tech are in the thick of things as well and have the potential to knock Northern out of a home-ice spot in the first round of the playoffs. After all, the ‘Cats are off next week, while both the Beavers and Huskies are in action with Bemidji playing four games that week.

Potulny said his team is paying attention to the standings and that he’s not necessarily focusing on the fact that the last two games are against the Huskies.

“I think you’re always kind of looking at where things are going to fall, but here’s the reality is we’ll finish our games next weekend and we’ll be done playing, but we’ll have no idea where we’re going to finish because there’s COVID makeup games the following week,” he said. “So there’s going to be some jockeying there.

“On the point about Tech, I had mentioned to the guys after the game, wherever you finish in this year’s league, which is just crazy this year, 2 through 6 (seeds), it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s almost exactly the same. We’ve played everybody. I don’t think anybody’s necessarily better than anybody else.

“Do you hope to have home ice? Yeah, for sure you do. There’s going to be for surely a road team or two that moves on past the first round, for sure. So that doesn’t matter.

“On the fact that we’re playing Tech, to me it doesn’t matter. I want to see us play well two games in a row and put this game behind us, really this week behind us. We stubbed our toe on Tuesday and then ran a big number up on Wednesday. I thought (we) played very well on Saturday and kind of didn’t have it on Sunday.

“So where are we at as a group? These are our last two games going into the playoffs. Yes, they’re against Tech, but we have a whole week off after this. So we have to make sure that we end our regular season on a good note, so that going into the playoffs, we’re in a position that we feel good about the last two games we played because we could definitely play them again. They’re in that stretch of 2 to 6. So you could for sure play them again.”

The puck drops in Houghton at 7 p.m. Friday and in Marquette at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Ryan Stieg can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is rstieg@miningjournal.net.