By Ryan Stieg
MENDOTA HEIGHTS – Halloween may have been yesterday, but the St. Thomas men’s hockey team still found some tasty leftover treats in their bags Friday night.
The Tommies got two goals from Matthew Gleason and a strong outing in net from Aaron Trotter to earn their first CCHA win of the season, 4-0 over Augustana. That was also UST’s first victory over the Vikings and Trotter made 20 saves to get his third career shutout.
“We played to our standard tonight, which is something we’ve been working on for two months now,” Tommies head coach Rico Blasi said. “I thought our guys were determined and I thought our guys were relentless in what they were trying to accomplish tonight. The first period could’ve gone either way and Trots made some big saves and we had some good chances. And I thought the second period, we played to our standard.”
Naturally, the players were in good spirits and felt they put forth a good performance after getting swept last weekend by Minnesota.
“It was a big bounce back game for us,” Gleason said. “First CCHA game at home. I think overall, we played a great game. Trotter had a heck of a game. That 5-on-3 save at the end was unbelievable. It’s great that he got the shutout and for us, it was just about playing together. I think we did a great job bouncing back and getting ready for the new season tonight, starting CCHA play, and it was really good to get the win.”
Trotter said the shutout was “the easiest” one of the three he’s earned so far at UST and said the team has put last week’s rough series behind them.
“I think our eyes were set on CCHA play right away,” Trotter said. “Memory of a goldfish, right? That’s the tough thing about being a hockey player is you want to think about what happened last week or whatever, but you’ve just got to focus on what you can do.”
The first period was evenly played throughout with both goalies making nice stops. The first good scoring chance for UST came just over a minute into the game as Casy Laylin broke free on a rush, but his shot went just wide of the net. Another good opportunity came from Cooper Gay at the 16:36 mark as he also led a rush up the ice, but Vikings goalie Josh Kotai just got a piece of his shot to keep the game knotted at 0-0. At the other end of the ice, Trotter stood tall and made a nifty save to the left post to deny the Vikings’ Callum Gau with 8:35 left in the period.
Things stayed fairly even in the second period, but then a sneaky shot by Laylin gave the Tommies a spark. With traffic in front of the net at the 13:57 mark, Laylin flung a shot from his knees in the high slot that somehow got through Kotai’s legs to put UST up 1-0. Two minutes later, the Tommies struck again on a good hustle play by Gleason. The center brought the puck into the Augie zone, weaved around a defender and beat Kotai to the far post to make it 2-0 UST heading into the third.
The Tommies kept rolling offensively into the final period. At the 7:17 mark, captain Lucas Wahlin beat a Vikings player to the puck at the Augie blue line, charged toward the net and beat Kotai with a backhand to push the lead to 3-0. Finally, at the 15:11 mark with the Tommies trying to kill off a penalty, Gleason sent a no-look shot down the ice for an empty netter to cap off the scoring at 4-0.