University of St. Thomas Athletics
Saturday, March 4
Houghton, Mich.
5:07 p.m. Central
11-23-2
4
at
5
Michigan Tech
24-9-4
1
2
3
F
St. Thomas (MN)
1
1
2
4
Michigan Tech
3
1
1
5
Team Stats
UST
MTU
Shots
34
34
PPG
2
0
SHG
0
1
Penalties
4
5
Penalty Mins
11
13
Faceoffs Won
23
35
Game Leaders
Skaters
+/-
-2
Goals
2
Sh
4
A
0
+/-
1
Goals
1
Sh
2
A
1
+/-
-2
Goals
0
Sh
5
A
2
+/-
-2
Goals
1
Sh
3
A
0
Players Mentioned
F
/ Men's HockeyF
/ Men's Hockey
F
/ Men's HockeyF
/ Men's Hockey
G
/ Men's Hockey
Men's Hockey takes No. 11 MTU to the wire again in another tight loss
3/4/2023 8:20:00 PM | Men's Hockey
Houghton, Mich. – No. 11-ranked Michigan Tech showed its postseason experience here this weekend as it recorded a pair of one-goal wins and eliminated St. Thomas in the quarterfinal round of the CCHA men's hockey playoffs.
The second-seeded Huskies followed up Friday night's 1-0 victory with Saturday night's 5-4 triumph on home ice. They moved to 24 wins on the season and advance to next weekend's playoff semifinal round.
Coach Rico Blasi's Tommies (11-23-2) led briefly in period one on Mack Byers' goal. But the Huskies scored three times over the next 10:09 to set the tone.
MTU later built leads of 4-1 and 5-2 before a late Purple comeback fell short.
St. Thomas' Luc Laylin scored late in period two, to make it 4-2, and Matthew Jennings and Byers scored third-period goals to get within 5-4, the latter on an extra-attacker goal with 69 seconds left.
Jake Braccini recorded two assists and Aaron Trotter made 29 saves for St. Thomas. Byers' two goals let him finish with a team-best 18 on the season, including six two-goal performances.
Quoting coach Rico Blasi (on post-game SkorNorth radio interview):
"It's tough to (end your season). You're in the battle… we've made such progress this year… The second half (of the season) has been so good. I'm proud of them, I told them that I loved them, and they have nothing to hold their heads about. I thought we played hard tonight, we battled back. The shots were even. A couple of controversial calls, but we stayed with it. That's what I love about this team, we just kept playing all year long.
"Knowing what we know, in terms of where we are in our program and how we are building it, I'm pretty proud of the way we played this year. We made a lot of progress. I'm happy about that… It has a lot to do with all the guys in the locker room. Those guys did everything, every night we played, every practice, we got our program to the level we wanted to be this year, now it's up to the rest of us to get back in the weight room – we have to get bigger, we have to get faster, we have to get stronger…
"I'm excited about out where we are headed. I know our seniors feel extremely proud, obviously right now they feel a little bit devastated, but they helped us get to this level. I told them in a couple of years when we're playing in the championship game here they are going to feel a real sense of pride because they're the ones that helped us get to this level. It's not a good feeling (losing here), but I think once everybody (looks back) they'll see that everything we did here this year was pretty special and a good step forward."
Did You Know?
The second-seeded Huskies followed up Friday night's 1-0 victory with Saturday night's 5-4 triumph on home ice. They moved to 24 wins on the season and advance to next weekend's playoff semifinal round.
Coach Rico Blasi's Tommies (11-23-2) led briefly in period one on Mack Byers' goal. But the Huskies scored three times over the next 10:09 to set the tone.
MTU later built leads of 4-1 and 5-2 before a late Purple comeback fell short.
St. Thomas' Luc Laylin scored late in period two, to make it 4-2, and Matthew Jennings and Byers scored third-period goals to get within 5-4, the latter on an extra-attacker goal with 69 seconds left.
Jake Braccini recorded two assists and Aaron Trotter made 29 saves for St. Thomas. Byers' two goals let him finish with a team-best 18 on the season, including six two-goal performances.
Quoting coach Rico Blasi (on post-game SkorNorth radio interview):
"It's tough to (end your season). You're in the battle… we've made such progress this year… The second half (of the season) has been so good. I'm proud of them, I told them that I loved them, and they have nothing to hold their heads about. I thought we played hard tonight, we battled back. The shots were even. A couple of controversial calls, but we stayed with it. That's what I love about this team, we just kept playing all year long.
"Knowing what we know, in terms of where we are in our program and how we are building it, I'm pretty proud of the way we played this year. We made a lot of progress. I'm happy about that… It has a lot to do with all the guys in the locker room. Those guys did everything, every night we played, every practice, we got our program to the level we wanted to be this year, now it's up to the rest of us to get back in the weight room – we have to get bigger, we have to get faster, we have to get stronger…
"I'm excited about out where we are headed. I know our seniors feel extremely proud, obviously right now they feel a little bit devastated, but they helped us get to this level. I told them in a couple of years when we're playing in the championship game here they are going to feel a real sense of pride because they're the ones that helped us get to this level. It's not a good feeling (losing here), but I think once everybody (looks back) they'll see that everything we did here this year was pretty special and a good step forward."
Did You Know?
- MTU improved to 9-0 in games when it scores four or more goals.
- The 2022-23 Toms lost 11 games by one goal and five others by two-goal margins. They also went 2-12 vs. nationally ranked teams, although seven of those defeats came by margins of one or two goals.
- Blasi's team still improved by eight victories over last season's 3-32-1 record. The Purple led all Division I men's teams in winning percentage improvement over last season..
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Rico Blasi Pre-Season Press Conference, September 26th, 2022
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