The Teams
Saint Mary's Cardinals (6-3-1)
vs.
Lake Forest (5-4-2)
The Vitals
Saturday, Dec. 9 • SMU Ice Arena • 7:05 p.m.
Last Action
The Cardinals are coming off a 5-1 loss to St. Norbert Friday. Lake Forest, meanwhile, dropped a 5-3 decision to St. Thomas on Friday.
Last Meeting
SMU split its two-game series vs. Lake Forest a year ago, winning 5-3 and losing 4-1
Conference Standings
Through Friday, December 8
This and That
Ryan Stinson (Winona, Minn.) scored his team-leading eighth goal to account for SMU's only scoring vs. St. Norbert. Ryan Holland (Winona, Minn.) and Peter Benecke (St. Louis, Mo.) picked up the assists on Stinson's goal vs. the Green Knights. … Friday's game snapped two streaks — SMU's four-game winning streak and St. Norbert's two-game losing streak.
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CARDINAL PROFILEEric Richardson
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regroup after loss to Knights
WINONA, Minn. — The time just seemed right.
The Saint Mary’s University men’s hockey team entered Friday’s nonconference game against St. Norbert riding a season-high four-game winning streak, while St. Norbert was coming off its first two-game losing streak of the season.
The Cardinals had scored a whopping 28 goals during their winning streak, while the Green Knights had managed just two in dropping back-to-back games to Norwich and Middlebury.
Oh, and there’s that little score the Cardinals hoped to settle after St. Norbert pounded SMU 9-1 a year ago.
Everything seemed to point towards a Cardinals’ victory.
Everything, that is, except the scoreboard clock.
When the final horn sounded Friday evening, the Green Knights had snapped two streaks — their losing one and SMU’s winning one — and extended one other with their second straight win over the Cardinals with a 5-1 victory at the SMU Ice Arena.
“They are a very good team, no question about that,” admitted SMU coach Don Olson, whose team surrendered four unanswered goals — including a short-handed and two power-play tallies in the third period — in falling to 6-3-1 overall. “You’ve got to give (St. Norbert) a lot of credit. They’re very strong, very physical and they just wore us down — both physically and mentally.”
The Green Knights put SMU on the defensive right away, scoring the game’s first goal less than seven minutes into the opening period. The Cardinals netted the equalizer at the 18:02 mark as Ryan Stinson (Winona, Minn.) scored his team-leading eighth goal of the season.
From that point on, however, St. Norbert grounded the Cardinals’ high-flying offense, holding SMU to two second-period shots and just eight in the third period.
“St. Norbert doesn’t give you a lot of room to breathe, and they certainly don’t give you too many good scoring opportunities,” commented Olson. “And when the opportunities were there, we weren’t able to convert.”
St. Norbert was.
After getting the eventual game-winner in the second period, the Green Knights pushed their advantage to 3-1 with a short-handed goal early in the third period, then converted twice on the power play to seal the win.
“Everything had been going our way of late — we’d won four in a row, our offense was scoring five, six, seven goals a game, we were playing great defense — but I’m not sure as a group we were convinced we were as good a team as St. Norbert,” admitted Olson. “And because of that, I don’t think we played as well as we are capable. We played a bit nervous, a bit tentative — we didn’t play with the poise and confidence we had been playing with.”
Olson is hoping those traits will return tonight, as the Cardinals play host to Lake Forest.
“We certainly can’t spend too much time feeling sorry for ourselves,” Olson said. “We’ve got to learn from our mistakes and move on. Lake Forest is certainly going to be another huge challenge for us.”