By DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
 
MOORHEAD, Minn. — The last time the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota and Concordia men's hockey teams met in the post-season, the Cardinals needed 60 minutes of regulation — and 21:05 of overtime — to beat the Cobbers 4-3 in the 2016 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament semifinals.
 
Two years later, the Cardinals were back in the MIAC tourney semifinals — and once again it took more than the allotted three periods to determine a winner, as Augsburg scored 1:56 into OT to edge Saint Mary's 5-4.
 
Saint Mary's made its third MIAC Tournament appearance in the last five years on Thursday evening — and this time around, there would be no need for an overtime period or two.
 
The Cardinals made sure of that.
 
Saint Mary's scored the game's first three goals, survived a slight hiccup late in the third period, and cruised to a 5-2 win over the Cobbers — earning the Cardinals' another post-season shot at the top-seeded Auggies on Saturday in Minneapolis, Minn.
 
"This was a great team win — we put together 60 solid minutes and that's exactly what we needed to do," said Saint Mary's coach Bill Moore, whose Cardinals will now head to Ed Saugestad Rink in Minneapolis, Minn., for Saturday's 7 p.m. matchup against Augsburg. "The big key for us tonight was we once again did a great job on the penalty kill, and we didn't get frazzled — or lose our composure — when Concordia came back to make it 3-2 (in the third period).
 
"The guys didn't panic, instead, they went out and scored less than two minutes later — that was huge, and really, that proved to be the difference in the game."
 
The Cardinals struck first, getting a goal from Andrew Cummings (Anchorage, Alaska), who tipped an Alex Rickoff (Winona, Minn.) shot from the point past Concordia goalie Jacob Stephan midway through the opening period.
 
Saint Mary's maintained that one-goal advantage over the rest of the game's opening 20 minutes — thanks in part to a 10-save period by Cardinal goalie Nick Nast (Oxnard, Calif.) and a tenacious penalty kill that stymied the Cobbers on a five-minute power-play late in the stanza.
 
Saint Mary's got its first power-play opportunity — also a five-minute man-advantage — at 4:12 of the second period, and, just like the Cobbers, the Cardinals came up empty, leading SMU clinging to a 1-0 lead through the first 10 minutes of the middle frame.
 
Lance Herning (St. Charles, Ill.) gave the Cardinals a little breathing room, netting his second goal of the season — off an assist from Cummings — at 14:04 of the second to give Saint Mary's a two-goal advantage heading into the third period.
 
Dylan Robertson (Alpharetta, Ga.) padded the Saint Mary's lead to 3-0 at 7:31 of the third period, only to have Concordia score back-to-back goals off the sticks of Blake Berg and Tyler Bossert seven minutes apart to make it a 3-2 game with 4:53 to play.
 
Ryan Stoynich (Calgary, Alberta) answered Bossert's goal less than two minutes later to make it a two-goal game and Tommy Stang (Mendota Heights, Minn.) scored his team-leading 14^th of the season into an empty net with four seconds on the clock to ice the win.
 
Nast certainly did his part in helping the Cardinals reach the MIAC Tournament semifinals for the first time since dropping the Cobbers in 2016, stopping 32 of the 34 Cobber shots he faced. Stephan finished with 27 saves in goal for Concordia.