By Ryan Stieg
ST. PAUL, Minn. — After Friday night’s win over Alaska Anchorage, St. Thomas head coach Rico Blasi said that the Seawolves were “going to be aggressive right from the get-go,” and he was correct with his prediction.
The Seawolves scored first in the game and even after falling behind by two goals on two separate occasions, they rallied to tie the game 4-4 early in the third period. However, the Tommies busted loose for three unanswered goals after that, including the game-winner from Lucas Van Vliet, and emerged with a 7-4 victory as well as their first sweep of the season.
“I think they threw everything at us,” Blasi said. “I thought we were ready to play that way, and you have to defend really well when you play a team like that that is just throwing everything. They’ve got essentially nothing to lose at this point. Their D corps did a great job jumping into the play, their forwards did a great job of penetrating, and if you’re not ready to track back and defend hard, they’re going to make your life miserable, and they did. We were able to score some timely goals and in stretches, I thought we did a really good job of possessing the puck. And then we were chucking the puck and just not managing it well, they were going to go on offense, and everybody goes.
“But sometimes you have to grow within a game. We stuck with it, we didn’t panic. There was no pointing fingers on the bench, which I liked and that’s good. I thought our leadership stepped up. A great play by Cole Miller on the point followed by Vlieter for the game-winner. A really good play, when a team is pressing like they were in the third, for us to use indirects and off the wall for (Kaeden) Hawkins’ breakaway, a great finish. It was a good sign. We had to battle through 60 minutes, which is good.”
The first period started off a little slow for the Tommies, and the Seawolves seemed to be the team ready to play as they aggressively kept the puck in the UST zone during the first few minutes of the game. At the 7:39 mark, Anchorage cashed in on its best scoring chance as Jacob Terpstra beat Tommies goalie Will Ingemann down low to make it 1-0 Seawolves.
However, things turned into the Tommies’ favor as Dylan Godbout skated into the Anchorage zone, intercepted an errant pass and beat Seawolves goalie Joey Rocha to the far post to tie the game at 1-1 at 14:24.
After that it was all UST. While on the power play at 16:46, defenseman Nick Williams beat Rocha from the slot to give the Tommies a 2-1 lead. Two minutes later, Nathan Pilling padded the UST lead to two goals as he went top shelf on Rocha to make it 3-1 Tommies at the end of the period.
Williams was out of the lineup at the start of the season with an injury, and he was glad to be a key contributor again.
“It’s pretty frustrating whenever you’re watching from up top,” he said. “Honestly, I haven’t liked my first few games. I thought tonight, I kind of felt like myself a little bit more. Just kind of gaining confidence as I go. It’s good to be back out.”
In the second, the Seawolves struck again just 30 seconds into it on a goal by Ethan Warrener to cut the deficit to 3-2. Anchorage also had some good chances to tie the game a few minutes later while on the power play, but instead, they gave up a shorthanded goal. After getting a long pass from Jakub Altrichter, Van Vliet skated hard into the Seawolves goal and beat Rocha five-hole to put the Tommies back up by two goals at 4-2 at the 8:10 mark.
Anchorage wouldn’t go away though. At 15:39, Warrener sent a blast from the point that snuck by Ingemann to trim UST’s lead to 4-3 heading into the third.
The Seawolves continued their momentum early in the third as Terpstra scored during a scrum in front of the net to tie the game 4-4 at the 1:29 mark. Anchorage had a couple of decent chances shortly after that to take the lead, but it couldn’t do it.
When asked if the Seawolves were better than their record, Van Vliet agreed with that assessment.
“I definitely think so,” he said. “That’s a hard team to play and we saw it this game. They kept with us the whole game, and we knew they were going to come out hard. I’m just glad to see that after that fourth goal when they tied it up that we didn’t deviate from things. We stuck to our structure, and we came out with the win. I give credit to all of them. That’s a great hockey team and they’re going to do good things.”
The period went back and forth from that point on until 11:16 when Van Vliet struck again. The Vegas Golden Knights prospect skated into the slot, made a nice move to deke out Rocha and tapped the puck into the open net to put the Tommies back up 5-4.
“I kind of saw the goalie come out of position and slide way out of his net,” Van Vliet said. “I knew I had space, so I went back and was able to get the puck off. I’m just glad it went in and glad we got the win.”
At 15:04, Hawkins pushed the lead to 6-4 as he beat Rocha low glove on a partial breakaway for his first collegiate goal. Finally with 17 seconds left, Altrichter scored an empty netter to nail down the victory.
Hawkins has earned a spot on UST’s top line with Van Vliet and Pilling, and Blasi talked about what it took for the freshman to get that opportunity.
“When young guys come in, they revert back to what they’ve done the last couple of years in junior hockey,” Blasi said. “Junior hockey is not college hockey. It’s not Division I. The details of the game, how hard you have to play away from the puck, the stick detail, all of those things come into play and sometimes it takes them a little bit of time to get used to that. As much as we would like to put them in uncomfortable situations in practice, when you’re out there in a game, it’s totally different. So he’s had to learn that. Credit to him. He’s stuck with it. We challenged him. He wasn’t in the lineup the first couple of games. So he’s had to work hard to get through that and it’s good to see him to score tonight.”
UST hosts North Dakota next weekend for its first ever NCHC home series, and Blasi knows it’s going to be a tough battle.
“Whether it’s Anchorage or North Dakota, everyone is going to work hard,” he said. “Obviously, North Dakota has some pretty good sticks on their team, so the detail of the game and making sure that you’re into it every shift is going to be important. They’ve got a lot of high-end players that we need to play the right way.”