By Ryan Stieg
MENDOTA HEIGHTS – For the past three games, the St. Thomas men’s hockey team has gotten off to a slow start and then had to attempt a desperate rally in the third period with mixed results.
Saturday night was a different story as the Tommies scored just 38 seconds into the game and stayed in control almost the entire game en route to their first win of the season, 3-1 over Vermont.
“Last night, we talked about playing to your standard as an individual and as a team, and I thought we did that tonight from the start,” UST head coach Rico Blasi said. “Obviously, it’s always nice to score right off the bat, but that was a great shift. (Matthew) Gleason’s line was down there and our D were condensing the zone. It was just like how you draw it up in the morning, but I thought all four lines played really well. I thought our D corps did a nice job of battling that front. I know they scored one goal off it, but we did a nice job getting it out of our zone clean. The forwards did a nice job of putting pucks in places where they can go hunt them down.
“All in all, I was really happy with the structure, and I was really happy with our standard all night long. And I was really happy with the way we responded after they scored. We didn’t panic. The next shift out, we got the puck deep and we went after them again and just kept going.”
The Tommies came out fast and ready to go from the opening puck drop and as a result, they were rewarded for their efforts as Gleason tallied his first goal of the season, beating Vermont goalie Keenan Rancier on a rebound to make it 1-0 UST.
“I’m playing with the two biggest guys on the team, maybe in the country,” Gleason said. “We just switched off being in the slot and then Ryder (Donovan) had a great shot off the pass from (Caige) Sterzer and I just went back and cleaned up the rebound.”
The Tommies did a good job controlling play with some quality puck possession, but Vermont eventually started generating some scoring opportunities. The Catamounts best chance came with 2:19 left as a puck came free in front of UST goalie Aaron Trotter, who was making his first start of the year, but the netminder made a nice sprawling save to deny Vermont’s Massimo Lombardi.
“I felt pretty confident following the puck,” Trotter said. “The guys were doing a good job of boxing out. It made my job pretty easy honestly.”
“When he’s on, you can tell,” Blasi said about Trotter. “He was calm, not a lot of movement. Really poised and I thought he was like that all night long.”
UST started the first few minutes of the period on its heels after killing off a penalty, but Trotter stayed strong, making some nice saves. At the 7:59 mark, he got some more support on the scoreboard as Mason Poolman netted his third goal of the weekend. Poolman got a pass from J.D. Metz and his shot made it through traffic and past Rancier to pad UST’s lead to 2-0.
The Tommies had a great chance to push their advantage to three goals at the 9:23 mark as Cooper Gay fed Lucas Wahlin on a good rush, but Rancier denied Wahlin’s shot to keep the Catamounts’ deficit at two. Vermont also had an opportunity to get on the board with just over five minutes left, but Trotter managed to keep the puck out during a furious scrum in front.
Vermont did pot its first goal with 14:13 left on a shot by Max Strand, but it couldn’t build on it and UST got an empty netter from Gay to close out the victory.
The third period has been the Tommies best one so far this season, but Blasi said that his team played a full game tonight, not just one good period.
“Tonight was more of a 60-minute game,” he said. “I thought we did a nice job. We had some really good scoring chances that we didn’t capitalize on. Rancier played really well, but we kept going. We didn’t care about the score. We just kept playing the way we know how to play, and we’ve got to continue to do that.”
The atmosphere downstairs after the game was much more festive than Friday night with music loudly playing and the players laughing as they stretched, which gave off the vibe of a more relaxed team.
“The boys are pretty pumped up of course,” Trotter said. “Anytime you win in college hockey, it’s a big thing that I’ve learned now. We always knew that we’re the team to beat. We’re very confident. We’re a great group of guys and we work our tails off.”
“We’ve been playing good hockey and we’ve been playing hard, just not to the highest standard that we wanted to,” Gleason said. “Tonight, going out there, they’re a great team. It was a hard game, the whole time, the whole 60 minutes and then getting that win going into the bye feels really good.”
The Tommies are off next week before playing a home and home series against Minnesota with Saturday’s game at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.