By Ryan Stieg
ST. PAUL, Minn. — On Friday night, the St. Thomas men’s hockey team played a 55-minute game before giving up two late goals in the third period and having to settle for a 3-3 tie with Augustana.
In the rematch on Saturday, the Tommies were looking to put together a full 60-minute performance, but a three-goal third period surge lifted the Vikings to a 4-0 victory. Augie goalie Josh Kotai made 28 saves for his fifth shutout of the season, which ties him for the national lead. Tommies goalie Aaron Trotter finished with 18 saves in his last home regular season start.
“At this time of the year, you’ve got to play a little bit desperate,” UST head coach Rico Blasi said. “You’ve got to have a little controlled urgency and controlled desperation. Our guys know that, bur I think now it’s sinking in a little bit. You saw a team in Augustana this weekend that this were their last two games, and they were desperate, and they played that way. So we have to match that going forward.”
After taking five of the possible six league points this weekend, Augie moved into first place in the CCHA standings with 50 points, while St. Thomas fell into a second-place tie with Michigan Tech with 48 points apiece. The Vikings’ regular season has ended and they’ve earned home ice in the first round of the CCHA playoffs. The Tommies can do the same next weekend with a win during their series at Bemidji State.
Just like on Friday, the first period was evenly played. Both teams had power plays, but both goalies made good saves, and both penalties were killed off. True quality scoring chances were limited though as offenses were kept to the outside. The shots were 10-10 going into the second.
It was more of the same as the second period wore on. After getting denied twice by Trotter in the opening minute and then again a few minutes later thanks to a good defensive play by Mason Poolman, Augie got on the scoreboard at the 6:06 mark. With the Vikings on a rush, forward Leo Bulgakov sent a wrist shot from the high slot past Trotter to make it 1-0.
The Tommies struggled to get much going offensively as they continued to struggle making their way to the inside. The best chance UST had in the period happened with just over three minutes remaining in the period when Quinton Pepper tried a wraparound that almost went in, but after a brief scrum in front of the net, Kotai covered the puck in time to keep the score 1-0.
“They (the Vikings) played hard, they blocked shots,” Blasi said. “Kotai is a premier goalie in the conference, probably in the country. I thought in the second period we had 15 scoring chances, we were all over them, and we just didn’t get real good looks. We hit the post in the third period. We didn’t get second opportunities, so they did a really good job on that.”
UST finally started to put some consistent pressure on Kotai in the first few minutes of the third period. While on the power play, Lucas Van Vliet got a good look, but his shot was gloved by Kotai and later, on that same PP, defenseman Hayes Hundley sent a good shot on net that rang off the pipe and out.
“You’ve got to score on the power play,” Blasi said. “We hit the post, we had a couple of good chances, but we weren’t clean on the power play. Willy (defenseman Nick Williams) being hurt and not being out there, that hurts us. Now we had to change some things around, and we’ve got to get comfortable with Willy not being around. So that’s a big loss for our team.”
However, after that failed power play, it was all Vikings. At 13:35, Augie’s Cole Burtch stole the puck at the red line, raced into the Tommies zone and beat Trotter to make it 2-0. Two minutes later, the Vikings struck again. Right before getting hit, Augie forward Will Howard sent a long pass to Joey DelGreco, who skated into the zone and fed the puck to Jacob Jastrzebski, who fired it past Trotter to push the lead to 3-0. Finally, with Trotter pulled for the extra attacker, Vikings winger Owen Bohn finished off the scoring with an empty netter to make it 4-0.
“I thought it was a pretty good hockey game,” Blasi said. “We had our chances. I thought both teams played pretty hard. I didn’t think we were awful. I didn’t mind our game, but a big turnover to make it 2-0, it’s too late in the game to do that.”