The Bulldogs clinched a first-round bye in the CCHA play­offs, cap­ping off the best reg­u­lar sea­son in seven years.

After a week­end series against Western Michigan that saw the teams face-off in two straight shootouts after reg­u­la­tion, the Bulldogs have secured a third-place fin­ish in the CCHA while also lock­ing down home ice for the quar­ter­fi­nal round of the CCHA playoffs.

Ferris took the first shootout vic­tory of the home-and-home series on Friday in Big Rapids.

In a first period where the Bulldogs held a 17–7 lead in shots on goal, they jumped out to an early lead just five min­utes in when fresh­man right wing Travis Ouellette knocked a shot from the right cir­cle into the Bronco net.

Western Michigan’s Ryan Watson knot­ted the score on a goal fol­low­ing a Ferris turnover in its own zone 40 sec­onds after the Bulldogs got on the board.

After a back-and-forth first period, nei­ther team could break the tie for the major­ity of the sec­ond period until the Broncos tipped in a rebound past Ferris junior goalie Pat Nagle with less than four min­utes left.

Trailing by one goal head­ing into the final period of reg­u­la­tion, the Bulldogs scored the equal­izer two min­utes into the third period when senior cap­tain Cody Chupp wristed a shot from the right cir­cle into the Western net to tie the con­test at 2–2.

“We knew we were going to get the best effort from those guys, even with them being at the bot­tom of the con­fer­ence,” said Chupp.

As nei­ther team could cap­i­tal­ize for the rest of the period, the match went to an over­time period. In the five-minute over­time period, nei­ther Ferris nor Western scored and the game went to a shootout to decide the victor.

The Bulldogs started off the shootout and con­verted on their first attempt as senior left wing Blair Riley knocked in the puck off of Bronco goalie Jerry Kuhn.

After a stop by Nagle on Western’s first shot attempt, Ferris pushed the lead to 2–0 when sopho­more defense­man Chad Billins fired the puck past Kuhn, giv­ing the Bulldogs the shootout vic­tory and two league points. Ferris won four of its six shootouts this sea­son, sec­ond most in the conference.

With the vic­tory clinch­ing a first-round bye and home-ice for the second-round series in the CCHA play­offs, Ferris head coach Bob Daniels cred­ited the team for a suc­cess­ful season.

“I was really happy to clinch the home ice for the play­offs and I know the guys are too,” said Daniels. “I’m really proud of the guys and I can’t fault the effort they’ve been giv­ing all season.”

The Bulldogs headed to Kalamazoo on Feb. 27 and skated to a 1–1 tie in the reg­u­lar sea­son finale, with the Broncos claim­ing a 1–0 shootout victory.

With the reg­u­la­tion tie, Ferris gained its 49^th league point of the sea­son, giv­ing the team a third place fin­ish in the CCHA, one point behind sec­ond place Michigan State.

The Bulldogs will have the open­ing week­end of the CCHA play­offs off while they pre­pare to return to the ice on March 12–14 to host a quarterfinal-round series of the play­offs at Ewigleben Ice Arena.

Heading into the play­offs, the team feels very con­fi­dent that they will be able to make a deep run towards a championship.

“We had a lit­tle bit of a rough stretch towards the end of the sea­son,” said Chupp. “But we’re start­ing to look good at the time that it mat­ters most, so we’re excited.”

Update: .