Penn State Hockey Travels to Alaska

This weekend, the Penn State Men’s Ice Hockey team will travel to Fairbanks, Alaska for the Brice Goal Rush tournament.

The PSU Nittany Lions will play University of Alaska Anchorage on Friday, Oct 17 at 9:07 p.m ET. The next day, they will take on the Alaska Nanooks, on Saturday, Oct. 18 at 11:07 p.m. ET.

The Penn State team has a few connections to Alaska that make this tournament more exciting for the team. Casey Bailey, the Junior forward grew up in Anchorage, Alaska. Head coach Guy Gadowsky coached the Alaska Nanooks for five seasons (1999-2004) and the redshirt-senior forward Eric Scheid also played for Alaska Anchorage for the 2010-11 season.

Bailey knew about this tournament since his freshman year and expressed his excitement in an interview with Julie Bacanskas, a GOPSUSports.com writer.

“I was pushing for the Anchorage one because I’d much rather play in my hometown rather than a neighboring city, but I think I was honestly excited. I told my parents about it when it was further down the road, but now that it’s here it’s definitely really exciting,” Bailey said.

Penn State starts there season at 1-0-1 after facing University of Connecticut in their opening weekend.

In their game on Friday Oct. 10, the season and home opener at Pegula Ice Arena, Penn State tied UConn 2-2. While the Nittany Lions trailed by a goal late in the third, they pulled goalie Matt Skoff and forward David Goodwin scored the equalizer to send it to overtime.

On Saturday Oct. 11, the two teams faced off again. The game started with Penn State killing off a 5-3 UConn power play, which set the tone for the remainder of the game. The Nittany Lions had goals from David Glen, Eric Scheid, Taylor Holstrom (2), David Goodwin, Jonathan Milley and Casey Bailey to give them the 7-1 win over UConn.

After the weekend against UConn, Penn State junior goalie Matt Skoff was named the Big Ten third star of the week for his performance. Skoff stopped 94.7 percent of shots and posted 1.44 goals against average. He also managed to kill off 1:20 of 5-3 UConn power play.

In addition to Skoff’s individual success, Penn State also received its first ever ranking votes in team history.

Photo Courtesy of GoPSUSports.com