Game Summary

WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary's University men's hockey coach Don Olson didn't have trouble pinpointing the difference in Saturday's nonconference game against St. Scholastica.

Work ethic.

Or, in the Cardinals' case — according to Olson — the lack there of.

The Saints scored the game's first goal 16 seconds into the opening period and never looked back in beating the Cardinals 6-2 at the SMU Ice Arena.

"The difference in this game was obvious, they just outworked us, plain and simple," said Olson, whose dropped its third straight. "(St. Scholastica) has a nice team, and it's all built on work ethic — they came out tonight and won 80 percent of the battles for loose pucks.

"We just didn't compete."

And Olson doesn't know why.

"We had a good week of practice — we worked hard with a high level of intensity. We just weren't able to transfer that to the ice (against the Saints)," said Olson. "And that's disappointing."

Matt Stengl got the Saints on the board off the opening face-off, taking a picture-perfect feed from Joey Martini and tapping the puck past SMU goalie Nick Berra (St. Louis, Mo.).

The Cardinals got the equalizer 10 minutes later when Andy Roberts (Rochester, Minn.) netted his third goal of the season, but the game didn't stay tied long, as Martini beat Berra less than two minutes later to give CSS a 2-1 advantage.

Shawn Bartlette pushed the Saints' lead to 3-1 at the 16:58 mark, but SMU's Adam Gill (Rochester, Minn.) tallied his team-leading eighth goal of the season to pull the Cardinals within one, 3-2, after one period.

The Saints picked up right where they left off in the second period — and the Cardinals didn't — as St. Scholastica netted three more goals on 17 second-period shots to give CSS a commanding 6-2 lead heading into the final 20 minutes.

"I'm at a loss for words," said Olson, whose team falls to 2-9-1 with the loss. "This team is so much better than they are playing right now. I don't know what it is, they just don't seem like they want to put forth the effort needed to be successful.

"If we are going to turn this thing around, we've got to compete a lot harder than we did tonight."