Bowling Green High School hockey had a big weekend, handing Findlay their first league loss, 4-2 on the road at The Cube on Friday, and then taking down Toledo St. John’s, 6-2, on Saturday at Bowling Green State University’s Slater Family Ice Arena.

“It was a great weekend,” BG coach Connor Rogowski said. “We’ve been building up all year to play the type of game that we want to play.

“We just continue to build and continue to form our identity and the culture that we have here and we’re starting to really exemplify it here. We play hard, we play gritty, and we found ways to win games, and we just keep going and keep getting better.”

Both were Northwest Hockey Conference Red Division wins, allowing the Bobcats to improve to 11-6-1 overall and 4-1, just three points behind league leader Toledo St. Francis (10-4-1, 5-0).

“I think it was two big league wins that we very much needed and hopefully it will give us momentum into next week and future league games,” said BG junior forward Rhett Winger, who led the team with four goals and four assists in the two games.

The Bobcats, for the first time in years, have three solid lines and even extend quality varsity players into a fourth line.

“We’re in a good place and a lot of credit goes to the kids — they are buying into it — they are buying into the way and the style that we are going to play and how we are going to be successful, and they continue to do that,” Rogowski said.

Not only is there depth on the ice, there is depth in goal as senior Matthew Brinkman and Cade Contris are splitting time.

That doesn’t mean one plays the important games and one the not-so-important — that means they typically trade starts no matter who the Bobcats face. There is that pressure if one does not perform well, the other comes in to pick up the slack.

“They are taking turns playing and they are both very good goalies,” Rhett Winger said. “We can depend on either of them, no matter who is in net.”

In the win over St. John’s, Contris had 15 saves, and in the win over the Trojans Friday, Brinkman had 18 saves.

BG took an early 3-0 lead over St. John’s on three 25-foot shots from just short of the point — two scored by 6-foot-1, 190-pound senior forward Drake Joseph.

BG senior defenseman Casey Moore was the first to send a long distance slapshot into the net with 6:15 remaining in the first period, assisted by Rhett Winger and Drake’s younger brother, sophomore forward Colby Joseph.

On a power play, Drake Joseph followed suit with a similar shot with 2:26 remaining in the first, assisted by Winger and junior forward Tanner Amos.

Assisted by senior forward Cooper Feehan, Drake Joseph scored another power play goal on a shot from just short of the right point with 12:14 remaining in the middle period.

However, St. John’s picked up their energy, and scored two goals in second to get it back to a one-goal game. It all started with a rash of penalties against both teams.

St. John’s senior wing Declan Loisel scored a power play goal, assisted by senior wing Anderson Parker, to get the Titans on the board with 8:19 remaining in the second period.

Less than four minutes later, Parker scored on a breakaway, assisted by junior wing Anthony Leech and sophomore defenseman Roman Juhnke to make it a one-goal game.

That is when Winger took over, scoring two straight unassisted goals, although BG sophomore defenseman Cash Wisniewski had a major role in helping Winger score the second.

On the first, Hayden Joseph sent a perfectly placed slaptshot over the left shoulder of St. John’s junior goaltender Lucas Borda, but Borda made a remarkable one-armed save before the puck could find the upper right corner of the net, knocking the puck away.

A scrum in front of the net took over, Rhett Winger took possession and forced the puck past Borda to give the Bobcats a 4-2 lead almost three minutes into the third period.

Then with Wisniewski’s help, Winger, on a breakaway, faked right and went left to beat Borda, scoring into a partially-empty net at Borda’s right to put the Bobcats up, 5-2.

Hayden Joseph scored BG’s final goal on a 10-foot slapshot, assisted by his older brother Drake, to account for the Bobcats’ final goal with 3:29 remaining.

Rogowski said the Bobcats remained poised even when St. John’s closed to within a goal.

“The way this team battles is that we don’t panic this year. We never did,” Rogowski said. “We know that if we come out, and if we change the game and we get back to our game, we are going to be in control and we are going to be in games.

“We know that when we come to play our game that we can compete with the best of them, so have to continue to do that, continue to keep building up, getting better and working hard.”

St. John’s coach Matt Butler thought the tide was turning, but BG’s penalty kill unit was up to the task, and it killed the Titans’ momentum.

“We fed off the 5-on-3, but once they killed it off we got off that energy and stopped competing,” Butler said. “We kind of got away from that in the third and we had too many turnovers in our end and Bowling Green capitalized on it.”

Butler, who saw his team fall to 1-13 overall and 1-4 in the NHC Red, noted that BG hockey may be back, based on the way they played Saturday. The Bobcats outshot the Titans, 45-17.

“They are very physical and they get pucks to the net, they like to take it up top and get it to the net and they get rewarded for it and they played well today,” Butler said.

Bowling Green 4, Findlay 2

FINDLAY — At The Cube Friday night, Rhett Winger, just like in Saturday’s game, had two goals and two assists. BG scored in almost every way imaginable.

“It was a couple power play goals, an empty netter, and I think we capitalized on Findlay’s mistakes and used them for ourselves,” Winger said.

Findlay still owned a narrow 21-20 advantage in shots, and it took a while for the Bobcats to get rolling.

“It was a huge high playing away on the road at Findlay,” Rogowski said. “We had a little bit of a lull coming out of the gate, and we figured it out, we kept battling and we didn’t panic, and we had a great third period to end that game.”

On an assist from Winger, Amos found the net to break a scoreless tie with 2:24 remaining in the first, and it would be the only goal of the period by either team.

The second period saw each team score twice — but Findlay scored their goals first to take a 2-1 lead.

Both of the Trojans’ goals were scored by Conner Stearns, the first assisted by Turner Merrill and Simon Tanner just two minutes and 34 seconds after the period’s opening faceoff, and Stearns was assisted by A.J. Savage during his second score a little over five minutes later.

Sixty-nine seconds later, Winger scored a power play goal, assisted by Drake Joseph to tie the game, and Feehan scored on another power play goal, assisted by Drake Joseph and Winger, to give the Bobcats a lead they would not relinquish with 2:21 remaining in the middle period.

Winger got to pad his scoring stats with an incidental empty-netter with three seconds remaining in the game.

The Trojans fall to 10-8-1 overall and 3-1-1 in the NHC Red.