The Bulldogs split their season-opening series against Alabama-Huntsville this weekend.

Ferris opened its sea­son with an impres­sive per­for­mance as the Bulldogs coasted to a 4–1 vic­tory over the Chargers. Junior Chad Billins was the star of the night as he scored the team’s first goal of the year and then scored the even­tual game win­ner after the Chargers had tied it at 1 apiece.

Senior Zach Redmond pat­ted the Bulldogs’ lead in the third period with 9:25 remain­ing and senior Mike Embach added an empty net­ter to round out the scor­ing. Sophomore Travis Ouellette added two assists in the victory.

Senior goal­tender Pat Nagle was not tested often in the con­test as he picked up the win by mak­ing 11 saves on the night.

“It felt great for our team to have a big first night,” said Billins. “We have been train­ing and prac­tic­ing hard and it was nice to see it pay off in our first reg­u­lar sea­son game.”

The sec­ond game of the series was a dif­fer­ent story for the Bulldogs as they fell 4–2.

Alabama-Huntsville scored only 42 sec­onds in the con­test and was up 2–0 after the first period. Ferris was able to erase that deficit in the sec­ond period as junior Jordie Johnston and senior Nate Hennig scored back-to-back goals. The Chargers then reclaimed the lead for good in the wan­ing sec­onds of the sec­ond period, as they would add another goal in the third period to send Ferris to its first loss of the season.

“The dif­fer­ence between the first game and the sec­ond was pretty small but they cap­i­tal­ized on their scor­ing chances in the sec­ond game and we took a few penal­ties out of frus­tra­tion that ended up cost­ing us,” said Redmond.

Those penal­ties proved to be costly for the Bulldogs in the con­test as the Chargers went three of five on the power play.

“I would con­sider the week­end a bit dis­ap­point­ing because we would have liked to sweep,” said Redmond.

Ferris will con­tinue action against non-conference oppo­nents as it takes on the St. Lawrence Saints in the home-opening series on Oct. 15 and 16. n