Game Summary

MOORHEAD, Minn. — When the Saint Mary's University men's hockey team broke out of its season-long scoring funk with a seven-goal effort against Concordia on Friday, the Cardinals did so by jumping on the shoulders of David Gross (Grasston, Minn.), Adam Gill (Rochester, Minn.) and Jesse Polk (Hastings, Minn.).

Gross, Gill and Polk accounted for six of the Cardinals' seven goals as they snapped a season-high seven-game losing streak with their 7-0 rout of the Cobbers.

Saturday afternoon in the rematch, the Cardinals once again netted seven goals against the Cobbers — but this time they decided to spread around the wealth a bit.

Polk and Gill both did their part, netting their third goals of the weekend, but Adam Fleishman (Vernon Hills, Ill.), Devin Firl (Red Wing, Minn.), Tim McNamara (Hastings, Minn.) and Marcus Reszka (Winona, Minn.) also got into the act as SMU completed its sweep of the Cobbers with a 7-2 victory.

"It was nice to see our offense finally get on track," understated SMU coach Don Olson, whose team scored 14 goals in two games, after managing just 13 during its seven-game losing streak. "Offensive we created some very good scoring opportunities, and cashed in on a bunch of them — which is something we haven't been doing this season.

"We've had our share of (scoring) chances all season, we just haven't been finishing them."

Until this weekend.

The Cardinals netted the game's first five goals Saturday, as McNamara, Fleishman and Firl tallied first-period goals, while Polk and Fleishman added second-period tallies to give SMU a commanding 5-0 advantage. The Cobbers cut the cap to 5-1 before the end of the second period, but that was as close as they would get, as Reszka and Gill rounded out the Cardinal scoring with third-period tallies.

Curtis Nosal (Omaha, Neb.) — who stopped all 37 shots he faced in posting his first collegiate shutout on Friday night — was near-perfect again Saturday, allowing just Dan Perry's second-period goal among the 31 shots he faced. Nosal gave way to Andy Nadeau (Winona, Minn.) with 5:50 remaining in regulation, and the SMU junior stopped four of the five shots he faced.

"I can't say enough about the way Curtis played — he was on top of his game this weekend," said Olson of his senior netminder, who dropped his goals-against-average to 3.61, and pushed his save percentage to .903. "(Friday's) game was probably the best game he's played, and he followed that up with another outstanding performance (on Saturday).

"This was a good weekend for us," continued Olson, whose team improved to 3-7-0 in the MIAC and 4-13-1 overall. "It was nice to see us get our offensive clicking a bit. We gained some nice momentum this weekend, hopefully we can carry it over into next weekend (against Hamline)."