The St. Cloud State University Huskies defeated the Northern Michigan University Wildcats on Friday night with a 4-3 2OT victory at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN. Last nights victory marked the first win in 8 trips to the NCAA tournament for the Huskies and propelled them to a spot where they could compete for a trip to the Frozen Four.
The Huskies got off to a hot start in the game, scoring the first two goals of the game to give the Huskies their largest lead ever in an NCAA tourney game. The Huskies Drew LeBlanc found a wide open Travis Novak streaking down the slot to put the Huskies up 1-0 8:14 into the game. The Huskies struck again four minutes later on a Ryan Lasch power play goal to give the Huskies their first two goal lead of the game. Less than two minutes later, NMU scored a PPG of their own to get back with in one, and that's how the first period ended.
The second period was pretty well dominated by NMU after they got blitzed by SCSU in the first, but no scoring occurred until Garrett Roe sniped a shot into the near corner on the power play to put the Huskies up 3-1. Less than four minutes later, Roe committed a turnover in his defensive zone and Northern's Ray Kaunisto scored to bring them within two goals to close the game.
Period three was mostly dominated by NMU as they desperately were trying to tie the game to send it into overtime. Finally, at the 16:11 mark of the period they did. Northern's Erik Spady took a shot from the blue line and got a lucky deflection off of the skate of SCSU's Taylor Johnson to put the puck into the top near corner of the net and tie the game at three. The Huskies then went into to overdrive to win the game in regulation and had three opportunities to end the game. They just couldn't seem to get a handle on the puck.
The first overtime started out pretty even, but as it wore on the Huskies got stronger and dominated the play. The posted 22 shots in the first OT compared to Northern's 12, but neither team was able to score. The Huskies had one power play in the middle of the OT they were unable to score on and were fortunate enough to draw another penalty with less than a minute remaining in the first OT.
Then, :23 into the second OT, on the PP, the Huskies did it. The got setup on the PP and started working the puck around. LeBlanc and Roe were playing "catch" with the puck and Roe ended up down in the corner where he sent a perfect pass, through sticks and skates, on the blade of Tony Mosey who redirected the puck five-hole on Stewart to seal the victory for the Huskies.
All-in-all, it was a fun game to watch as a casual observer, but as a Husky fan it was a nightmare. I think most of us were thinking "here we go again..." I know I couldn't bear to lose another game in this tournament, and I'm thankful we didn't have to. The monkey is officially off of the Huskies back in the tourney. It's time to take care of business tonight!
No comments:
Post a Comment