ST. PAUL, Minn. — Saint Mary's University men's hockey coach Don Olson figures his team might have "stole" a win Friday evening, getting three goals from
Matt Staehely (Shorewood, Ill.) in a 5-4 overtime victory over Hamline at the SMU Ice Arena.
In the teams' Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference rematch Saturday, Olson rated his team's performance "four times better than we played Friday night."
And they lost.
Go figure.
"It's disappointing, because there's no doubt we play much better tonight than we did Friday," said Olson, whose team came out on the short end of a 4-2 decision Saturday. "(On Friday), we got outshot (36-32), and for large parts of the game, we got outplayed, and yet, in the end we still find a way to come out with a win.
"And then tonight, we turn around and control the play for most of the game and lose — I just don't get it," said Olson, whose Cardinals held a 31-18 advantage in shots on goal, but had to settle for a second-period goal by
Jesse Polk (Hastings, Minn.) and a third-period tally from
Adam Gill (Rochester, Minn.). "(Hamline's) powerplay really hurt us. They went 0-for-5 on the powerplay last night, but scored three powerplay goals tonight — that was the difference."
Hamline jumped out to a 2-0 first-period lead Saturday, getting powerplay goals from Dustin Fulton and Joe Long 11 minutes apart. SMU cut the gap to 2-1 on Polk's eighth of the season four minutes into the second period, then tied it on Gill's team-leading 11th goal a minute into the third.
That, however, was as close as SMU would get, as Fulton put the Pipers back in front with his second of the night at 3:32 and Long gave Hamline some breathing room with his second of the game — on the powerplay — with less than four minutes remaining in regulation.
"This is one of those games you'd like to have back," said Olson. "We created good scoring chances, we played pretty well in our defensive zone, we just couldn't catch a break.
"Hamline made the most of its (offensive) chances, and we didn't — that's the bottom line."
