WINONA, Minn. — Last season, it took the Saint Mary's University men's hockey team 22 games before having a play record a multiple-goal game.
 
This year, it took the Cardinals less than two periods of Game 1.
 
Not even Bud Winter's (St. Louis, Mo.) two-goal effort, however, would be enough to carry the Cardinals to a victory, as Saint Mary's had to settle for a 5-5 season-opening tie with Lake Forest Friday evening at the Saint Mary's Ice Arena.
 
As if a combined 10 goals wasn't enough, the two team also teamed up for five goals in the shootout, including the winner by SMU's Brady Lindauer (Cary, Ill.).
 
Lake Forest struck first, as David Cohen beat Cardinal goalie Matt Sankner (Pennington, N.J.) just seven minutes into the opening period.
 
The Cardinals would strike back before the period ended, thanks to Laudon Poellinger (La Crescent, Minn.) took a feed from Colin Tushie (Prior Lake, Minn.) and whistled a shot over the shoulder of Lake Forest goalie Carson Poulin at 16:35 to knot the gamge at 1-1 heading into the first intermission.
 
Saint Mary's grabbed its first lead of the game on Winter's first tally of the evening less than four minutes into the middle stanza.
 
And that was just the tip of the second-period offensive iceberg.
 
Lake Forest pulled even at 2-2 on a goal by Tyler Nielsen at 9:26 of the period, only to have Winter answer with goal No. 2 with five minutes to play to give Saint Mary's a 3-2 lead.
 
It appeared as if the Cardinals would head into the locker room clinging to that one-goal advantage, only to have the Foresters score twice in the final 37 seconds to grab their own one-goal cushion with 20 minutes to play.
 
The late-period momentum shift didn't seem to faze the Cardinals, who came out buzzing to open the third period, eventually netting the equalizer off the stick of Trevor Schroder (Des Moines, Iowa) just four minutes into the stanza.
 
Saint Mary's recorded its second goal of the period on a breakaway tally by Andrew Froese (Traverse City, Mich.), but once again the Cardinals could not maintain a stranglehold on the lead, as the Foresters' Colin Bella beat Sankner at 14:33 to square things up at 5-5.
 
Neither team would score over the final five minutes of regulation, or in the five-minute overtime session — although Sankner had to come up big on several occasions while SMU killed a penalty over the final 1:14 of OT.
 
Sankner finished with 34 saves in goal for Saint Mary's, while Poulin stopped 33 of the Cardinals' 38 shots on goal.
 
The Cardinals (0-0-1 overall) and Foresters will return to the Saint Mary's Ice Arena on Saturday for the second game of their two-game nonconference series. Puck drop is slated for 2 p.m.
  Read Full Article