After a 12-2 loss in St. Cloud Saturday, the St. Thomas men’s hockey team had improved defense but could not find the back of St. Cloud’s net at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul Sunday, losing 2-0 before a crowd of 4,261.
Graduate student goaltender Peter Thome saved 34 of 36 shots from the Huskies (2-0-0) while St. Cloud graduate student goaltender David Hrenak saved all 12 shots from the Tommies (0-2-0).
“Obviously tonight went a little better,” Thome said. “It’s great to get some shots early and kind of get into a rhythm.”
St. Cloud’s first goal came 13 minutes into the game on a power play from junior forward Zach Okabe, his second of the season, assisted by junior forward Jami Krannila and senior defender Spencer Meier. Its second goal came from senior forward Micah Miller, assisted by graduate student forward Kevin Fitzgerald.
Junior forward Luke Manning, who had one shot on net tonight, noted “a different game” in the Division I level, compared to his one year of playing Division III for St. Thomas.
“Guys make harder plays and they finish their checks in the Division I level, but that’s something that me and the rest of the guys are comfortable playing that way,” Manning said.
Coach Rico Blasi, in his first season coaching the Tommies, saw improvement tonight against the nationally No. 2 ranked Huskies.
“No doubt about it, I thought we played hard tonight,” Blasi said. “I liked our effort, I liked how we stood up for each other.”
The Tommies took only four penalties – compared to last night’s ten – while St. Cloud took three penalties.
“Anytime you give a good team a lot of power plays, they’re going to make you pay, and I thought we did a good job of adjusting tonight,” Blasi said.
The Tommies have players originating from over 13 different teams across the country while the Huskies roster consists of mostly upperclassmen who have played together for three years, which Blasi credits to their comfort as a team.
“Those guys have played together for a long time, and they have played in pressure situations,” Blasi said. “We’ve played together for three weeks … but at the same time we got better.”
The team has been gelling together well, according to Manning.
“We’ve done a lot of stuff together in this first month together,” Manning said. “We haven’t been together for three years like St. Cloud probably has, so that speaks a lot to how it performed this last weekend.”
The Tommies will play Northern Michigan next weekend in a Friday-Saturday series in Marquette, Michigan.
Justin Amaker can be reached at justin.amaker@stthomas.edu.
Olivia Paradise can be reached at para4336@stthomas.edu.
Kylie LaValle can be reached at lava3486@stthomas.edu.