By DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
 
MOORHEAD, Minn. — After scoring the game's first two goals in Friday's 5-4, overtime loss to Concordia, the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota men's hockey team took a different approach to Saturday's rematch.
 
This time, the Cardinals let the Cobbers score the game's first two goals.
 
And the end result was much more pleasing to coach Bill Moore.
 
The Cardinals rattled off four unanswered goals—and got a goal and two assists from both Kelvin Walz and Chad Cesarz—en route to a 5-3 victory over the Cobbers, and a split in the team's two-game Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference series.
 
Unlike Friday, when Andrew Cummings (Anchorage, Alaska) and Jay Heinle (York, Pa.) scored 41 seconds apart before the game was barely four minutes old, it was the Cobbers who struck quickly on Saturday—getting back-to-back goals from Dalton Mills and Zach Doerring 31 seconds apart early in the opening stanza.
 
Walz cut the gap to one, 2-1, with a goal at 12:17 of the first period and the Cardinals would take that one-goal deficit into the locker room after 20 minutes of play.
 
Kyle Meeh (Fenton, Mo.) scored for the second straight game to pull the Cardinals even, 2-2 at 5:56 of the second period, with Cesarz and Kellen Wasell (Edmonds, Wash.) scoring back-to-back goals in a four-minute span to make it a 4-2 Saint Mary's.
 
The Cobbers' Mario Bianchi cut the gap to 4-3 with 54 seconds remaining in the middle period, but Saint Mary's would not allow Concordia to net the equalizer, and the Cardinals got an insurance goal from Michael Cimba (Willmette, Ill.) late in the period to ice the victory.
 
The Cardinals (2-5-1 MIAC, 4-10-2 overall) step out of conference play for the final time next Friday, heading to Dunn County Ice Arena in Menomonie, Wis., for a 7:30 p.m. matchup against UW-Stout.