By Ryan Stieg
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Heading into this season, St. Thomas forward Lucas Van Vliet was supposed to be one of the Tommies’ offensive leaders and on Friday night against Alaska Anchorage, the sophomore showed that he was performing up to expectations.
Van Vliet notched his first career hat trick and finished with four points to lead UST to a 5-2 victory over the Seawolves. That’s also the second straight game where the Tommies (3-4) have had a player finish with a hat trick as Nathan Pilling pulled off a natural hat trick last Saturday at Miami. UST goalie Will Ingemann made 23 saves to earn his first home win of the season.
“I think I’m just playing the right way,” Van Vliet said. “Lucky enough to get the bounces I’ve had. That second goal was a shot off the defenseman’s stick that goes into the net. So, I’m just trying to keep that shooting mindset and hopefully it keeps finding the back of the net.”
The first period was fairly even as the Seawolves (1-8) did a good job of keeping the Tommies to the outside and from generating quality scoring chances. However, Anchorage was whistled for tripping late in the period and Van Vliet scored on the ensuing power play with 29 seconds left to give the UST a 1-0 lead going into the break.
“Goal scorers, when they’re feeling it, they’re feeling it,” Tommies head coach Rico Blasi said. “He (Van Vliet) missed a breakaway too. I’m sure he’d want that one back, but it’s good for us. He’s got to be one of our leaders there, and certainly he’s done that the last couple weeks.”
In the second period, the Seawolves answered back at 7:14 on a nice goal by Oren Shtrom, who beat Ingemann with a shot from the slot. However, a little more than a minute later, Van Vliet netted his second goal of the night, beating Anchorage goalie Joey Rocha with a wrister from the high slot.
Later at 13:15, Tommies defenseman Bauer Berry put UST up by two goals as he sent a shot from the point through traffic and past Rocha for his first goal of the season. Finally, with 30 seconds remaining in the period, Pilling beat Rocha blocker-side from the slot to make it 4-1 Tommies going into the third.
“We call them momentum shifters,” Blasi said. “Anytime you score in the last minute of any period, it really gives you momentum. And then if you get scored on, it’s not a good feeling going into the locker room.”
The Seawolves made an aggressive push during the third and cut their deficit down to two goals thanks to a goal by Luke Helgeson at the 3:58 mark. However, Van Vliet shut down Anchorage’s hopes of a big comeback as he completed his hat trick with a power play tally at 8:12.
“I thought our discipline was really good tonight,” Blasi said. “Anytime you don’t take a penalty (that leads to a power play), that’s a good thing. That’s something we’ve been talking about a lot. So that was nice to see. I thought the first period was kind of back and forth a little bit, trying to feel each other out a little. Then once we scored, I thought that settled us down a little bit. Then they scored in the second, but I thought we took another step and had a really good response after they scored to make it 3-1. I thought Alty (Jakub Altrichter) had a pretty good chance to make it 4-1 there. So, it could’ve been 5-1 after that (period).
“I give them credit. They came out in the third period and started to play a little more aggressive, which I think is more indicative of their game. So, I think we’ll see that tomorrow night. But we had a good power play and we were able to score there. I thought we did a lot of really good things. There’s some things we need to clean up a little bit. We got a little loose at times, but for the most part, it was pretty good.”
The Seawolves have shown that they might be better than their record and Blasi said that his squad needs to be prepared if it wants to pick up its first sweep of the season and get back to .500.
“We’ve gotta be ready to go,” he said. “I think they’re going to be aggressive right from the get-go tomorrow, and we’ve got to make sure we’re managing the puck and playing to our standard.”