Keep it close was Alaska Anchorage's strategy Friday against the heavily favored Gophers.

The Seawolves' game plan almost worked except for Erik Haula. The sophomore center from Finland scored two goals as the Gophers edged UAA 2-1 at Mariucci Arena before an announced crowd of 9,410.

His second goal, halfway through the middle period, gave the Gophers a 2-0 lead in the opening game of their best-of-three, first-round WCHA series with the Seawolves.

UAA coach Dave Shyiak said goalie interference should have been called on the play because his netminder, Chris Kamal, was run into. After a lengthy review, the referees ruled the goal counted.

"Clearly goaltender interference and [the Gophers] caught a break," Shyiak said. "That's kind of the nature of the game.

"[The referees] agreed that [Kamal] did get knocked down, but he would not have been able to get across anyway to make the save. I said, 'So you are guessing how quick he is when he is knocked down on his butt?'"As it was, Kamal was able to make a stab with his glove at Haula's short rebound. Too late.

"I was pretty confident it was a goal," said Haula, who has three goals in two games and 17 total this season. "Obviously, there was a lot of traffic and [the referees] just wanted to make sure."

The play began with Gophers defenseman Nate Schmidt's shot from the point hitting the right post. The puck then glanced off Kamal to Haula near the left hash marks.

"[Erik] went through a little frustrating part, when you are not scoring for an extended period of time," Gophers coach Don Lucia said. "[But] Erik has a good shot and now he seems to be finding his rhythm again."

Haula scored the tying goal last Saturday when the Gophers, ranked fourth and fifth nationally in this week's polls, beat Wisconsin 2-1 to clinch the MacNaugton Cup outright.

Friday, in the second minute of the middle period, he scored the Gophers' first goal on one of the few odd-man rushes given up by the Seawolves (9-24-2).

"It is kind of frustrating, actually, playing against them," Haula said, "because they are so defensive and they have so many guys back all the time."

The Gophers (25-12-1) outshot the 12th-seeded Seawolves 34-17.

"Other than the penalties we took tonight, I thought we played a pretty efficient game," Lucia said. "We had a couple of goal-mouth scrambles that we had an opportunity to get a couple more [goals], but their goaltender played well. And they played well in front of him."

The Seawolves' goal came with two seconds left in the middle period. Brad Gorham scored on a power play, one of seven UAA had.

"The shots were heavily favored to their side," Shyiak said, "but again, there were not a lot of grade-A scoring chances. At the end of the day, it is 2-1 going into the third period and I will take that trade-off.

"We had two, three great looks in the third period. Eric Scheid was in alone tight [early] and right at the end there, [Daniel] Naslund. He got slashed and they took a penalty."

Naslund carried the puck down the slot, directly at Gophers goalie Kent Patterson. The senior made his 16th save with three seconds left, finally ensuring the win.