All the Colorado College Tigers want is a chance, and they might have started to give themselves one tonight. Colorado College came in to St. Cloud looking for some points, and apparently they looked in the right places. They found two to put in the WCHA standings and 18 for the scorebook. Tyler Liebel and Brett Sterling each had four of them as the Tigers scored seven times in steamrolling St. Cloud State 7-1 before 6,282 fans at the National Hockey Center.
In doing so CC picked up a pair of huge road points to keep them alive for home-ice in the first round of the WCHA playoffs.
“That’s the most complete game we’ve played all year and the results showed,” said Sterling, who played a large role in handing the Huskies their worst home loss since a 9-1 pounding handed out by the same Tigers back in February of 1996. “After blowing those games against Duluth last weekend we wanted to come out and show we are still a good team and we did that tonight.”
It didn’t quite start out like that, but after the Huskies cracked the scoreboard first on a power-play goal by Nate Raduns 2:16 into the game. CC took some time, then took over. The Huskies held the 1-0 lead for ten minutes, but the walls started to cave midway through as the Tigers scored three times in a two-minute, ten-second span.
Tyler Liebel got the first, burying Brett Sterling’s rebound into an open net at the 12:15 mark. Joey Crabb scored next, taking a pass from Brandon Polich, who was on his stomach behind the St. Cloud State net, and banging it in off Tim Boron’s mask. Twenty-six seconds later Sterling got his first, beating Boron over his left shoulder on a bad-angle shot.
“Our goal is to have our best shifts after we get scored on,” said Sterling. “We came out and had some good shifts and got some momentum and ended up getting the first goal. After that we just started to roll.”
Craig Dahl yanked Boron after the period and inserted Adam Coole, who hadn’t played since the first period of a 4-1 win at Michigan Tech back on Feb 6th. Coole didn’t fair any better. He let in the first shot he faced when Sterling got his second 8:20 in on a 2-on-1 break to make it 4-1.
“That was important,” said Sterling. “That was our problem last week, we couldn’t hold a lead.”
They didn’t lose this one, in fact they added to it shortly after. Scott Thauwald walked around Colin Peters seven minutes later before sliding a puck past Coole, Liebel added another early in the third and Frischmon scored late to put a stamp on it.
“It was an awful game by us,” said Dahl. “We weren’t good in any are of the game.”
CC didn’t give them much of a chance, as the Tigers pounded St. Cloud State for the second straight time. The Tigers won 6-1 back in early December when the two teams last met out in Colorado Springs. Which doesn’t fair well for the Huskies considering this is a team they could face in the opening round of the playoffs.
“We aren’t looking that far ahead,” said Liebel, who picked up his first multiple-point game since the second game of the year. “We’re concentrating on right now and trying to get some wins under our belts. We’ll look at the future when we get there.”
Which right now is tomorrow, when CC and a likely different St. Cloud State team face-off at 7:05 CST.
“That remains to be seen,” said Dahl. “Because the right one didn’t show up tonight.”
