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MENDOTA HEIGHTS, Minn. — After going 65 minutes without a goal on Friday, the Saint Mary's University and St. Thomas men's hockey team's decided to turn up the offensive heat Saturday evening.

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the Tommies had a bit more firepower, as UST scored five of the game's first seven goals and cruised to a 7-2 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory at the St. Thomas Ice Arena.

“We just weren't able to put together the same kind of effort that we did (Friday),” said SMU coach Bill Moore. “They came at us pretty hard in the first period, got up by those two goals, and we just never recovered.”

The Tommies wasted little time getting on the board in the teams' rematch on Saturday, as Rob Vannelli beat SMU goalie Andy Scheib (Sun Prairie, Wis.) top shelf put UST up 1-0 at 7:38 of the opening period.

Vannelli's goal snapped Scheib's scoreless string at 119:00. The Cardinal senior — who recorded his first collegiate shutout with a 38-save effort in Friday's 0-0 deadlock — had not allowed a goal since the 13:30 mark of the first period in SMU's 5-1 win over Bethel last Saturday.

Unfortunately for Scheib and the Cardinals, that first-period goal was just a sign of things to come, as Riley Horgan pushed the Tommies' lead to 2-0 with six minutes remaining in the opening period.

The second period proved to be a goal-fest, as the two teams traded a pair of goals — SMU's coming from Nick Gorup (Omaha, Neb.) and Austin Balko (Midland, Mich.) — before the Tommies' Alex Niestrom gave UST a 5-2 advantage, beating Scheib with one second showing on the clock.

And while waiting until the last second to net their fifth goal of the game, the Tommies needed only two minutes into the third period to tally No. 6, as Tyler Gubb found the back of the net to push UST's advantage to 6-2 — and the Cardinals could not recover, in falling for just the second time in eight MIAC games this season.

“Our goal was to come in here and come away with a win — just like it is every game,” Moore said. “We weren't able to get the job done tonight, but there's still a lot of hockey left to be played.

“What we have to do now is put (Saturday's) game behind us and get be ready to go again next weekend.”

Scheib finished with 37 saves, giving the Cardinal senior 75 saves against the league-leading Tommies in the two-game conference series, while SMU managed just 18 shots on the UST net.

The Cardinals (5-2-1 MIAC, 7-9-1 overall) are back in action on Friday, when the Cardinals head to Ed Saugestad Arena in Minneapolis, Minn., for a 7:05 p.m. conference game against Augsburg. The same two teams will then head to the SMU Ice Arena on Saturday for the second game of the two-game MIAC series.