MENDOTA HEIGHTS, Minn. – Goalie Alise Riedel backstopped the St. Thomas women’s hockey team with 34 saves on 35 shots and stole a 1-1 draw for her team against Concordia-Moorhead Saturday afternoon at St. Thomas Ice Arena.
After Tommie forward Hannah Burns opened scoring early in the third period, the Cobbers responded with a goal from forward Anna Westmark to round out the game’s scoring. Despite getting a point for the tie and remaining undefeated in the MIAC, coach Tom Palkowski said his team was lucky to draw with the Cobbers.
“They outplayed us. They were a desperate team, and they played well,” Palkowski said. “We sat back for two periods, and our goalie bailed us out. Then we got the lead, and we made a poor mistake. They capitalized, so we end up with the tie.”
After suffering a 3-0 loss to the Tommies in the first game of the series Friday night, the Cobbers were looking to earn their first MIAC win of the season Saturday. From the drop of the puck, the Cobbers were aggressive and had the majority of scoring chances throughout the game; however, Riedel was the star of the show for the Tommies from start to finish.
About halfway through the first period, Riedel stopped a Concordia shot from just outside the crease. The rebound bounced to a Cobber forward, who fired the puck to the front of the net, where it hit a Tommie defender in the shin, ricocheted off the left post and came to a stop in the crease before Riedel covered the puck.
Riedel’s jaw-dropping saves became the norm for the snakebit Concordia attackers who have struggled to score all season.
“(Concordia is) a team that’s battling to try and get something going. They’re a good hockey team, but they’ve been struggling to score. They were pinching and putting a lot of pressure on taking some chances,” Palkowski said.
Defender Maria Bothwell said having a goalie who is on top of her game is important for the Tommie defense.
“It definitely helps to have someone that you can trust back there. You can step up and take chances to step up as a defenseman, and you know you have a wall behind you to rely on in case you do get beat,” Bothwell said. “Not many teams are lucky enough to have (a goalie) like we do.”
After Burns netted her second goal of the season on a turnaround shot from the faceoff dot about three minutes into the third period, it looked like the Tommies were going to steal a victory despite being outshot for the entirety of the game. But with less than 10 minutes remaining in the third, the Tommies turned the puck over in their own defensive zone. Concordia’s Westmark took the puck, skated around the St. Thomas defense and fired a point-blank shot into the top left corner of the net, knotting the score at 1-1.
“We need to be a little more poised (with the puck). Make that one good pass and up out of the zone you go,” Palkowski said. “But we were just kind of throwing the puck, slapping it … and that kind of got us into some trouble.”
After three periods, the Cobbers held a 34-26 shot advantage, and the teams went to overtime. Both sides skated a quiet first four minutes of overtime until Concordia mishandled a pass in the neutral zone, and St. Thomas forward Paige Baldwin picked up the loose puck without a defender in sight. With only 20 seconds remaining in the game, Baldwin found herself with a clean breakaway, but Concordia goaltender Madison Denny made a game-saving block with her glove.
The tie gave the Cobbers their third point of the season in MIAC play and ended the Tommies’ five-game winning streak.
“Definitely not the best we could (have played) the first couple periods. We did kind of pick up the pace a little bit in the third,” defender Mary Grace Flesher said. “We’re looking at it as we kind of came out lucky, in a sense, to get that point.”
The St. Thomas women play their next series against Wisconsin-Stevens Point at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday.
Jacob Sevening can be reached at seve8586@stthomas.edu.