Box Score
WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University men's hockey team scored early Friday evening, but it was Saint John's that scored often, as the Johnnies erased an early 1-0 SMU lead with three unanswered goals in handing the Cardinals a 5-2 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference setback at the SMU Ice Arena.
“Overall, I thought we played pretty solid,” said SMU coach
Bill Moore. “It was nice to see us jump out to that early lead, we just couldn't seem to build off that offensively.”
Nate Percy (Inver Grove Heights, Minn.) scored his first collegiate goal six minutes into the opening period to give SMU that 1-0 advantage, but the Johnnies answered with back-to-back goals four minutes apart midway through the first, then added a third eight minutes into the second period to push their lead to 3-1.
#A.J. Woodward# (Lenexa, Kan.) got his first of the season on the powerplay at 16:46 of the second period, as the Cardinals cut the deficit to one goal, 3-2, heading into the final stanza, but in those final 20 minutes, it was SJU's offense that continued to sizzle, as the Johnnies' Gabriel Harren and Axel Wikstrom beat SMU goalie
Greg Moore (Woodbury, Minn.) to seal the Saint John's victory.
Moore, one of eight SMU seniors honored between the first and second periods as part of Senior Night, finished with 32 saves in the losing effort, while SJU's Stu Van Ess kicked out 25 of the Cardinals' 27 shots — including 12 of 13 in the second period alone.
“Tonight was another one of those games in which we played very well, probably well enough to win, but we just couldn't keep the momentum going after we scored that first goal,” said Moore, whose team gets another shot at the Johnnies on Saturday, when the two teams square off in a 2 p.m. conference tilt at the SMU Ice Arena. “Our problem is those stretches where we let our opponents get on a roll — Saint John's scored their first two goals four minutes apart (in the first period) and their last two were six minutes apart (in the third period).
“We've got to be able to do a better job of bouncing back once we've given up a goal.”
