Game Summary

WINONA, Minn. — There was nothing easy about the Saint Mary's University men's hockey team's 5-4 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win over Bethel Saturday night.

And Cardinal coaches Terry Mannor and Don Olson wouldn't have it any other way.

"That was great college hockey," said Mannor. "It was a battle the whole night, both teams were working hard, creating good scoring chances, playing tough defense … it's what college hockey is all about."

Olson agreed.

"You've got to give Bethel a lot of credit," he said. "They never stopped working. Everytime we got them down by two goals, they just seemed to work that much harder to get back in it. We made some mistakes that gave (Bethel) some good scoring opportunities, but that's college hockey.

"From a fan's standpoint, it was an exciting game."

From a coach's standpoint, maybe a little too exciting.

SMU held leads of 3-1, 4-2 and 5-3, but each time the Royals battled back, the final time getting a goal from Dan Ubl with just over five minutes remaining in regulation to pull Bethel to within 5-4.

Desperately clinging to that one-goal lead, the Cardinals' Sam Phillips (Red Wing, Minn.) was whistled for a cross-checking penalty, giving Bethel a two-minute powerplay with 2:10 remaining in regulation.

"That was a big, big penalty kill," said Olson. "Our guys won some big draws, Ryne (Ess) made some big saves, and we did a nice job of killing that off."

Killing off the penalty, and securing their fifth straight win.

Lenny Hofmann (Sartell, Minn.) opened the scoring for the Cardinals, netting his team-leading 10th of the season 1:30 into the first period. Josh Storm responded for Bethel to tie the game midway through the period, but Al Schumacherr's (Oakdale, Minn.) powerplay goal at 16:57 and another goal by Jason Fillipp (Fox River Grove, Ill.) 38 seconds later, gave SMU a 3-1 lead after the opening 20 minutes.

Bethel sandwiched a pair of goals around one by Phillips to cut the lead to 4-3 heading into the third. Nick Meeker (Rochester, Minn.) broke in free and beat Bethel goalie Tony Ciro with a backhander at the 5:04 mark of the third to make it a 5-3 game, but again Bethel responded, getting Ubl's goal at 14:29.

"It was a good weekend," understated Olson, whose team opened the two-game series with a 4-1 win at Bethel Friday night. "Every game from here on out is going to be a battle just like this one. Hopefully, we learned a little about what it takes to win the close games and we can carry that over into next weekend (against St. Thomas)."