Box Score

	vs.
1		5

Game Summary / GameDay Online

WINONA, Minn. — For the Saint Mary's University men's hockey team, Friday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game had a little good news, and a little bad news.

The good news: Despite the Cardinals' 5-1 loss to St. Thomas at the SMU Ice Arena, SMU is still mathematically alive in the quest for one of the five berths in the MIAC playoffs — sitting four points behind idle Saint John's with three games to play.

The bad news: The Cardinals' margin for error keeps getting slimmer and slimmer.

"Mathematically, we are still alive, but we certainly can't afford to play any more games like we played tonight," said SMU coach Don Olson, whose team fell behind 3-0 in the first period and never recovered in losing for the fourth time in their last five games. "We did not play very well at all — the effort wasn't there, and that's very disappointing.

"When you got into a season that's as important as this one, and you put forth the lackluster kind of effort that we did, that's pretty discouraging."

Rob Johnson scored back-to-back goals two minutes apart midway through the first period, and Nick Parmula added his 10th of the season — and the Tommies' second powerplay goal of the period — to push the Tommies' lead to 3-0 before Karl Reinke (Duluth, Minn.) cut the gap to 3-1 with 3:03 remaining in the first period.

The lead quickly ballooned to 4-1 as Parmula tallied his second of the game 23 seconds into the second period, before Nate Ryan closed out the scoring with his team-leading 17th goal of the season seven minutes later.

"We came out flat and never got anything going," said Olson, whose team travels to Mendota Heights, Minn., to take on the Tommies in the second game of their two-game MIAC series Saturday evening. "(St. Thomas) really took it to us in the first period and we didn't respond the way I had hoped we would.

"This was not the type of performance I would have expected — we've definitely got to come out with a better effort (Saturday)."