Box Score

	vs.
2		6

Game Summary / GameDay Online

WINONA, Minn. — If you happened to bump into Saint Mary's University men's hockey coach Don Olson following Friday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game against Bethel, you'd be hard-pressed to know whether his team won or lost.

In fact, it's not very often a coach feels good about his team's performance following a 6-2 loss — but that's exactly the way Olson felt following his Cardinals' setback against league-leading and defending conference champion Bethel.

"It was a weird game — the final score doesn't even come close to telling the story of the game," said Olson, whose team dropped third straight and fifth in its last six games. "Despite what the score might say, we played very well, well enough to win, no question about that.

"We just weren't able to get our offense going the way we needed to," added Olson. "We dominated play in the first and second periods, and yet, we were down 4-2. It's been that kind of year for us."

The Royals got back-to-back goals from Kent Bostrum and Kyle Ronning two minutes apart early in the first period, before Mike Glaesmer (Traverse City, Mich.) cut the lead in half with his team-leading 13th goal of the season midway through the peirod.

Bethel would tack on another goal before the first period ended, then made it 4-1 on Christian Fogerty's second goal of the night 12 minutes  into the middle period. Jesse Polk (Hastings, Minn.) once again cut the Royals' lead in half, 4-2, with his eighth of the season, but that was as close as the Cardinals would get, as Bethel scored two goals in a three-minute span of the third period to ice the win.

"Offensively, we're struggling a bit — we getting good chances, we're just not converting on enough of them," said Olson, whose team outshot the Royals 25-17 through two periods, but was on the short end of a 13-3 shot margin in the game's final 20 minutes. "This was a disappointing loss, because I really felt like we played well enough to win — it was a good all-around effort on our part."