By Ryan Stieg
MENDOTA HEIGHTS – To win games against quality opponents, teams have to play a full 60 minutes and on Friday night, the St. Thomas men’s team played around 45 minutes or so.
Early in the third period, the Tommies held a 3-1 lead over No. 16 Minnesota State, but then they started turning the puck over and spending time in the penalty box. The Mavericks took advantage of those mistakes and scored four straight goals to hand UST a 5-3 loss.
“I thought it was a good hockey game,” Tommies head coach Rico Blasi said. “Obviously, a couple of undisciplined penalties there at the end and not managing the puck in the third period cost us the game.”
The Tommies knew they had a tough task ahead of them as they had to keep arguably the best player in the CCHA under wraps in Mankato’s Rhett Pitlick. However, UST did a good job keeping him at bay during the first period and it took care of business at the other end of the rink as well.
UST got on the scoreboard first on a power play tally by Cooper Gay. Tommies forward Chase Foley sent a shot on net that Gay tipped past Mavericks goalie Alex Tracy to make it 1-0 at the 13:46 mark. Later on in the period, the Tommies struck again with the man advantage as Lucas Wahlin tapped a rebound past Tracy with a little more than a minute remaining to make it 2-0 heading into the next period.
Mankato started to turn things around offensively in the second as it started to put more pressure on Tommies goalie Aaron Trotter. The junior netminder kept the Mavericks at bay through the first four minutes, but they picked up their first goal at the 4:29 mark on a nice one by Brian Carrabes. With the puck on the verge of getting cleared out of the UST zone, Carrabes collected it and sniped a shot past Trotter to cut the Mavs’ deficit to 2-1.
UST appeared to go back up by two goals with just over three minutes remaining as Liam Malmquist fired a shot past Tracy, but the officials waved it off quickly as they called goalie interference after Tracy was bumped into by a Tommies player.
The Mavericks committed a penalty shortly before the second period expired and then were whistled for another just seconds into the third, which proved costly as the Tommies made them pay. With UST circling the puck, Wahlin got it down by the right post and sent a pass across the crease to Malmquist, who tapped it into the open net to make it 3-1.
The lead didn’t last though as Mankato’s Luke Ashton sent a shot on net that Trotter got a piece of, but it went into the back of the net to trim UST’s lead to 3-2 at 3:06. Later, at 6:43, the Mavericks tied things up as Luc Wilson scored on a 2-on-1 breakaway to make it 3-3. Things continued to get worse for the Tommies as back-to-back penalties near the midway point of the period gave Mankato a 5-on-3 power play and the Mavericks took a 4-3 lead as Adam Eisele tipped a Carrabes shot past Trotter. Mankato completed its big comeback with an empty netter from Brett Moravec during a 5-on-3 power play.
“I thought we were playing to our identity,” Blasi said. “Obviously, they’re a good hockey team and they’re going to push back. So, we expected that in the second period and in the third period, I’m not sure what to make of that. Of course, a lot of special teams. Sometimes you’ve got to manage the game a little bit differently and I didn’t think we did a very good job of managing the game in the third period.”