St. Lawrence Stuns Minnesota 4-3 in Overtime

MINNEAPOLIS – Maybe giving a freshman goaltender his first collegiate start provided the shot in the arm St. Lawrence needed. Maybe they were determined not to be bullied by a nationally ranked team on the road.

Whatever the case, the Saints got it done on Friday night and added to the Gophers’ woes.

Michael Ederer scored late in overtime as St. Lawrence stunned #19 Minnesota 4-3 on Friday night at 3M Arena at Mariucci, giving the Saints just their second victory of the year in ten tries.

Emil Zetterquist made 37 saves in his first career start in net for St. Lawrence, holding off a good Minnesota offense just long enough to begin on a winning note.

Rem Pitlick scored and had two assists for the Gophers, and Brent Gates chipped in with three assists. But Minnesota did not play a strong, clean game, and Motzko was not pleased with the overall performance after a good week of practice.

“That was not a very good performance by a Gopher hockey team tonight,” he said. “What we saw tonight-we’ve already seen it this year numerous times.”

While coming into the weekend ranking nearly dead last in both shots on net and shots allowed, the Saints sent a message that they weren’t about to roll over by scoring 18 seconds into their first power play. Michael Ederer made a fantastic deke on Minnesota goaltender Mat Robson to throw him off balance in front of the net, and as the puck hung in the crease, Alex Gilmour tapped it in for his first goal of the season. Minnesota was quick to respond, however, tying it less than two minutes later as Gates made a great backdoor feed to Pitlick, who netted his 4th.

St. Lawrence went back on top with a strong second period as Carson Dimoff and David Jankowski each got their first collegiate goals by scoring within two and a half minutes of each other, and the Saints matched their shots-on-goal season average in the period alone by putting 20 on Robson and silencing the Gopher faithful.

Minnesota’s offense finally came to life in the third period. Tyler Nanne woke the crowd up with a shorthanded tip-in goal, then Jack Sadek later tied it up with a blast from the right point.

“Obviously you could tell [in] that third period we came out to play,” Sadek said. “But we just can’t play for 20 minutes; you gotta play the full 60. That’s what we gotta do tomorrow.”

As a collegiate head coach, you never really expect to go through these kinds of games. Motzko knows this kind of performance needs to be put in the rearview mirror in a hurry.

“We have to make changes. We gotta continue to do whatever we can,” he said. “I’m very disappointed in how this hockey team played tonight. They’re good kids, and they wanna get better. We gotta keep trying.”

The teams complete their nonconference weekend series on Saturday night at 8:07 CT.

Scoring summary:

First period:

SLU power-play goal at 15:31: Alex Gilmour (1). Assisted by Michael Ederer (1) and Michael Laidley (2).

MINN goal at 17:26: Rem Pitlick (4). Assisted by Brent Gates (2) and Sammy Walker (2).

Second period:

SLU goal at 13:22: Carson Dimoff (1). Assisted by Ted McGeen (3) and Laidley (3).

SLU power-play goal at 15:41: David Jankowski (1). Assisted by Laidley (4) and Gilmour (1).

Third period:

MINN shorthanded goal at 6:21: Tyler Nanne (1). Assisted by Gates (2) and Pitlick (3).

MINN goal at 15:22: Jack Sadek (1). Assisted by Gates (3) and Pitlick (4).

Overtime:

SLU goal at 3:19: Ederer (3). Assisted by Jankowski (2) and Carson Gicewicz (6).

Power plays: SLU 2-4, MINN 0-3.

Shots on goal: SLU 39, MINN 40.