Less than 10 minutes after their final home game of the 2025-26 season, the Oregon club hockey players were sliding along the ice, taking pictures with friends and family and reflecting on the season that most recently brought them 9-3 and 6-3 wins over Oakland University.<\/p>\n
Oregon (13\u201312) returned from a two-week break, looking to recover from a sweep at North Carolina State University. The Ducks came into the rematch with Oakland University (3-28\u20132) with strong chances of achieving that goal after sweeping the Golden Grizzlies earlier in their arduous season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oregon opened both games with each of its four seniors \u2014 Jackson Henningsgard, Ryan Green, Jacob Saenger and Hunter Voyles \u2014 on the ice with its senior night ceremony before game two.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been great all year, and to have two wins at home \u2014 and two big wins at that \u2014 to get to the double digit mark (against Division I opponents) for the first time in program history, it\u2019s great,\u201d Oregon head coach Jack Hyman said. \u201cI\u2019m happy for them, happy for the guys, and, you know, one more weekend on the road to finally close it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither team managed any threatening chances in a back-and-forth start to the period, but the Ducks established a physical advantage from that first shift.<\/p>\n
Sophomore Griffin Browne found the opening goal for the Ducks 7:19 into the game, when a deflection out of the corner landed between the circles with a lane to beat Oakland goalie Ethan Jordan to the far side. Saenger won the puck battle in the corner to record his first point of the season in his season debut, after playing 46 games for the Ducks across the past three seasons.<\/p>\n
Freshman Jackson Ebott quickly extended the lead 1:18 later, deflecting sophomore Axel Wyatt\u2019s shot from the point with his leg to beat Jordan, who never saw the shot.<\/p>\n
While the two goals sparked the Ducks\u2019 offense, Oakland weathered the storm for the remainder of the first period, finishing with six shots on goal to Oregon\u2019s 19.<\/p>\n
Oregon\u2019s first line of Ebbott, Henningsgard and Inde Abresch, which has dominated in the second half of its season, broke through for two goals early in the second period to put the Ducks ahead 4-0.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey started playing together in the second or third week of the season, and (their chemistry) only just continued to get better and better, so, Jackson (Ebbott) and Inde have been great additions as freshmen, and I know Henningsgard really likes playing with them,\u201d Hyman said.<\/p>\n
Oakland senior Lance Markowitz scored the Golden Grizzlies\u2019 first goal 6:18 into the second period when a high-arcing dump-in from the neutral zone fooled Oregon goalie George Serbin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Soon after Markowitz\u2019s goal, Oakland senior Connor Carroll was forced to take over for Jordan when the Golden Grizzlies\u2019 starter went down with an injury. Henningsgard put a near-impossible shot to stop on the cold goaltender at 12:52, winning an offensive-zone faceoff through his opponent\u2019s legs, faking to his forehand and tucking the puck behind a falling Carroll.<\/p>\n
Ebbott extended the Ducks\u2019 lead with a wraparound, and sophomore Alex Ulyanov sent Oakland to the second intermission trailing 7-1, burying a goalline pass from freshman Bobby Anselmo.<\/p>\n
Oakland pushed back early in the third period with shorthanded goals by junior James Talmers and Markowitz, but Anselmo pushed Oregon\u2019s lead back to five goals 3:45 into the period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oregon freshman Zachary Orwig finished a two-on-one with sophomore Dylan Chapman for the 9-3 final score.<\/p>\n
Facing a season sweep, Oakland matched up with Oregon significantly better early in game two. Golden Grizzlies defenseman Keith Pilut capitalized on the strong start 9:42 into the game with a shot from the point, which Serbin lost sight of through a screen.<\/p>\n
Green, who also joined the Ducks midway through the season, provided Oregon\u2019s first goal on senior night, deflecting in a pass along the ice from defenseman Austin Kluksdahl to tie the game 16:12 into the first period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(Green and Saenger) came back, and they knew they would be role guys after a conversation with them, and it didn\u2019t matter what I asked of them \u2014 they were more than willing to play any role,\u201d Hyman said.<\/p>\n
The tie held into the first intermission, but Henningsgard gave Oregon its first lead 4:03 into the second period when Oakland lost track of him at the point and left too much space for him to beat Carroll to the short side. Sophomore Arthur Corbin extended the Ducks\u2019 lead within a minute by taking a two-one-one opportunity himself.<\/p>\n
Oakland withstood Oregon\u2019s surge of momentum when senior Sebastian Stukel poke-checked the puck away from Oregon defenseman Carson Streich attempting to exit the zone, and freshman Joe Aiello quickly fired the loose puck past Serbin.<\/p>\n
Abresch recovered the Ducks\u2019 two-goal lead 9:33 into the period, finishing a cross-ice pass from freshman Toby Kerr on the power play. Anselmo cued a Golden Grizzlies timeout with a wide-open tap-in in front of the net 26 seconds later.<\/p>\n
Oakland head coach Nick Mammel couldn\u2019t have prepared his team for Henningsgard\u2019s second goal of the game 6:16 into the period. Henningsgard received a pass from defenseman Colin Gabriel in the left circle, waited as an Oakland defender slid by, and finished with a wrist shot into the top left corner to put Oregon ahead 6-2.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore Ryan and Jacob came in January, (Henningsgard) was the only senior forward on the team, and just to be able to sort of take the reins and help the many, many freshmen that we have, especially two of his linemates, and lead by example, has been huge,\u201d Hyman said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to score to win, and if there\u2019s one thing Jackson does well, it\u2019s score,\u201d<\/p>\n
Oakland senior Stefano Mini set up another third-period push less than a minute in, chipping in a loose puck in Oregon\u2019s goal crease. While the Ducks were unable to find the third period goals from game one, Oregon dominated possession and held the 6-3 final score.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our forwards can control the game from down low, and that\u2019s where a lot of our goals generated or with speed through the neutral zone, so just making the right decisions with the puck ultimately led us to finally open up the game in the second period, and then we were able to close it out in the third,\u201d Hyman said.<\/p>\n
Oregon, already in possession of its Division I win record with ten, will finish the season with a chance for two more on the road against San Diego State University on Feb. 20 and 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Less than 10 minutes after their final home game of the 2025-26 season, the Oregon club hockey players…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-178895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}