Saturday night at the National Hockey Center, Minnesota State-Mankato found out first hand what it’s like to be hit dead on by a Mack truck at full speed.<\/p>\n
In their rematch with top ranked St. Cloud State, the Mavericks proved to be nothing but a speed bump to the truck as the Huskies put it in fifth gear and stayed there for an entire 60 minutes, thumping Mankato, 8-1, in front of the 6,057 fans that braved the pre-Christmas snow storm that hit Central Minnesota.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t have asked for a better effort from our players,” said St. Cloud State head coach Craig Dahl, whose team now sits with a 17-2-1 overall record. “We played pretty good in Maine to start the year, but this might have been our best performance of the year.”<\/p>\n
The Huskies wasted no time shifting through the gear box in the first as they stormed out to a 4-1 lead after 20 minutes. They led 5-1 after two and added three more in the third as they remained perfect against the Mavericks since Mankato made the jump to Division I.<\/p>\n
Ryan Malone recorded the first hat trick of his career. Mark Hartigan picked up two goals and an assist to give himself 40 points at the break. Peter Szabo had a goal and three assists and Derek Eastman had three helpers in the win.<\/p>\n
Malone opened the scoring just 3:37 into the game, tipping home Eastman’s shot from the point while they Huskies were on the power play – which they used to score six of their goals. <\/p>\n
Nate DiCasmirro made it 2-0 and after Tim Jackman got Mankato to within one, Szabo and Hartigan scored 1:20 apart to give the Huskies a 4-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Hartigan scored again in the second. Mike Walsh scored for the third consecutive game in the third and Malone added two more in the final period.<\/p>\n
“We were just trying to move the puck around, get a shot and have the guys crash the net and it worked tonight,” said Eastman of the Huskies success on the power play. <\/p>\n
A perfect example of that would come from all three of Malone’s goals. They all came on the power play and on every play, he would take his 6-foot-4 frame and park it in front of Maverick goaltender Jason Jenson to clean up the mess.<\/p>\n
“That’s how we do it,” said Eastman. <\/p>\n
Hartigan had a chance for a hat trick in the final minute, but Jenson stopped the nations leading scorer on a breakaway to prevent what would have been the Huskies forth hat trick in four games with Mankato.<\/p>\n
“I though I had him,” said Hartigan. “That would have been nice but he made a nice save.”<\/p>\n
The Mavericks will travel to Alabama-Huntsville after the New Year begins and the Huskies have next weekend off before facing UMass-Amherst in a non-conference game on Jan. 4 at the NHC. They are looking forward to the break, but after putting 46 shots on net and scoring eight goals, it might be hard to not want to play.<\/p>\n
“We had a real good first half,” said Eastman. “We only have two losses and I don’t think we could have asked to be in a better position than where we are right now.”<\/p>\n
Which is looking down at the rest of the country perched atop that Mack truck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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