For the first two weeks of the college hockey season St. Cloud State head coach Craig Dahl has been raving about the speed his team possesses. Friday at the National Hockey Center that speed was on display as his Huskies opened the WCHA season with a 7-2 thumping of Michigan Tech in front of a sold out crowd of 6,285 spectators.
Michigan Tech got on the board first when defensemen Tom Kaiman slid a backhander past St. Cloud State goaltender Dean Weasler just 1:37 into the game.
St. Cloud State answered just over a minute later however when NateDiCasimirro scored a powerplay goal slamming home a cross-ice pass from Ryan Malone.
Michigan Tech gave St. Cloud State six first period powerplays and Huskies would take advantage of three off them. Malone scored his second goal of the year on a 5-3 at the 9:29 mark and freshman Mike Doyle netted his fourth goal in three games with just 40 seconds remaining in the period.
“You can’t give a team like that so many opportunities or they will burn you,” said Michigan Tech sophomore Jon Pittis. “We were never really able to come back from that.”
Michigan Tech did a good job of keeping the game close for forty minutes. Greg Amadio ripped a shot from just inside the blueline that beat Weasler over his left shoulder to pull Tech within one at 3-2 after two but St. Cloud State would answer with four third period goals, one of which came on the power play as the Huskies finished the night 4-for-7 with the man advantage.
“We played pretty well tonight,” said Dahl. “I told the guys in between the second and third periods that this is the WCHA and there are going to be close games but they responded with a very strong third period.”
Lee Brooks, who hadn’t scored a goal since the Huskies loss to Boston University in the NCAA tournament two years ago, had two goals in the third. Doyle added his fifth of the year and Mark Hartigan netted his third as the floodgates opened.
“Once we got up on them buy a couple in the third we just kept getting more good chances,” said Doyle, who a week ago was named the MVP on the Icebreaker tournament in Maine last weekend. “”Everything just started to click, when we get moving we are a hard team to keep up with.”
Dean Weasler looked strong in net for St. Cloud State stopping 22 shots but it was his counterpart at the other end of the rink that looked spectacular even though he let in seven goals.
“I though (Brian) Rogers played extremely well,” Dahl said. “He kept the game close for a long time.”
Michigan Tech, who swept St. Lawrence last weekend in Houghton, promises that tonight’s loss rests on their shoulders.
“You will see a different team tomorrow night,” said Pittis. “We got off to a bad start tonight, if we avoid that, we should be fine.”
