Western Michigan hockey (9-6) kicked off it's two game home series against reigning national champs Minnesota Duluth (10-4-1) on Friday night. Minnesota enters the weekend series ranked fourth in the USCHO.com poll and third in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine poll.
WMU came into this series on a four game tear, and UMD came in off of splitting their past series with #14 North Dakota and moving down a spot in the national rankings.
This was expected to be a physical series coming in and it was nothing short of that during game 1. Both teams played physically to start the game and the intense play would carry on through the duration of the game.