Inside College Hockey | Bowling Green Trio Has Everything But a Name

November 20, 2008

Bowling Green Trio Has Everything But a Name

By James V. Dowd

Anyone who had a part in naming Ottawa’s famous Pizza Line, Detroit’s old Grind Line or Philadelphia’s Legion of Doom might find their next great project in northern Ohio.

It’s there that they’ll find a trio that doesn’t yet have a catchy nickname and whose individual names the average fan might not yet know. But this group of three forwards, who ended up together by chance rather than design, has started to make quite a bit of noise as their Bowling Green team holds serve with the CCHA’s elite in the early stages of this season.

Senior Brandon Svendsen and his sophomore linemates David Solway and Dan Sexton returned from summer vacation unsure of where exactly they would fit into this year’s Falcon offense. So, like the rest of their teammates, they were jockeyed around in early practices as coach Scott Paluch looked for a good fit.

There were some past ties between the three Falcons’ forwards, as Svendsen and Solway developed a fairly good chemistry while playing together on the penalty kill last year. In addition, Solway had played with Sexton on the USHL’s Sioux Falls Stampede prior to arriving in Bowling Green. But with both Svendsen and Sexton always playing right wing, there was never the opportunity for the three of them to play together.

Once Paluch tried Svendsen out on the left side, there was a pleasant surprise in the form of an instant visible connection amongst the three.

“It was not a design over the summer,” Paluch said. “It was just something that came when we were looking at different combinations throughout our team. Brandon is not a left wing, he’s always played on the right side, but right from the start, those three guys moved their feet well, battled for the puck and really kind of clicked.”

According to Solway, everything just felt right when Svendsen joined him and Sexton, which produced the sort of comfort that brings success.

“We got together this one practice and we were running around, getting shots and scoring goals,” Solway said. “Everyone was happy and we went into a game and scored a goal, then into the next game and scored again and haven’t looked back.”

Because there were already some past ties established and a level of comfort with each others’ assets and deficiencies it was easy for Solway, Sexton and Svendsen to develop trust in each other. Knowing that they can count on their linemates to be good teammates and having faith in their ability has led to some opportunistic goal scoring.

Take Solway’s overtime winner from last Saturday night at Northern Michigan, for example. Svendsen threw the puck towards the goal, knowing that if it didn’t make it past goaltender Brian Stewart, one of his teammates was likely to be there. And there Solway was, picking up a rebound off of the end boards and knocking it in.

“It’s obviously hard work, but every line works hard,” Sexton said. “It’s not like other lines don’t work as hard, it’s just being consistent with hard work every shift and not taking shifts off and being unselfish. We can give up the puck knowing we’ll get it back and we trust each other and play our positions, and it’s paying off right now.”

As the Falcons prepare to meet Notre Dame this coming weekend in a home-and-home series, Solway, Sexton and Svendsen will be looking to put on some early offensive pressure. In doing so, Sexton believes they can put the Irish on their heels and keep them from establishing a trap.

“If they score the first goal, they go into a big shutdown defensively,” Sexton said. “They have a good transition game, but if we can get that first goal or first two goals, then we can force them to get outside of their game plan.”

If Bowling Green is to be successful to that end, it’ll like be one of the three top line forwards to break the ice. Solway leads the team with seven goals, while Sexton and Svendsen have notched five each, accounting for more than 60-percent of the Falcons’ offensive output this year. That production also ranks all three of them amongst the league’s top ten goal scorers.

While they do enjoy being counted on to play such a big role, all three scorers would welcome a little bit of puck luck for supporting forwards like Kai Kantola, who has scored four times, and sophomore Jacob Cepis who has scored once and has experienced more than his share of bad bounces while playing extremely well.

Should Kantola continue to produce and Cepis finally get over the hump and return to his 15-goal form of a year ago, Bowling Green’s offense will be a force to be seriously reckoned with in league play.