MANKATO — It wasn’t officially a loss, but the result was “unacceptable” to the Minnesota State men’s hockey team.
The No. 16 Mavericks, looking to climb to the top of the CCHA playing last-place and one-win Northern Michigan, finished in a 1-1 overtime tie and a shootout loss to the Wildcats, coughing up two points for the conference standings.
“We hold ourselves to a high standard, and we didn’t live up to that,” said senior Brian Carrabes, whose shootout try was saved by goalie Ryan Ouellette, ending the game. “Our feeling in the locker room is that we let our school down, we let our coaches down and we let our families down tonight.”
Before a Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center crowd of 4,557, Ouellette stole the show on Saturday, or at least made sure he shared the spotlight with Mavericks star goaltender Alex Tracy.
Ouellette finished with 26 saves, including four in the 3-on-3 overtime session, and he stopped all three MSU tries during the shootout.
Tracy stopped 21 shots in regulation and overtime and gave up one shootout goal to Jakub Altrichter.
Will Hillman scored the lone goal for Minnesota State (8-4-2, 3-1-2 in CCHA), and Will Diamond scored for Northern Michigan, tying the game midway through the third period. For the Wildcats (1-10-1, 0-5-1), the result ended an eight-game losing streak.
“They earned it; they didn’t back away,” MSU coach Luke Strand said of the Wildcats. “We didn’t do enough to make sure they wanted to back away. It was actually just a really sour-tasting performance.”
The game started almost exactly as the series opener did, with Hillman putting the Mavericks on the board in the first period. Skating down the slot, his wrist shot beat Ouellette at 7:21 of the first period — about a minute and a half earlier than he scored in Friday’s game, a 3-0 Minnesota State victory.
Strand gave a bit of a warning after that game about the dangers of flirting with a 1-0 lead for too long and letting an opponent hang around. He was pleased that the Mavericks were able to double their lead in the second period.
On Saturday, however, his team didn’t heed that warning. Instead, Ouellette put up a wall, making 10 second-period saves, including four during a pressure-packed MSU power play late in the frame.
“We had looks to do things,” Strand said. “Their guy in net played well, and I thought they did a great job in front of him. They worked extremely hard and were competitive in coverage. We missed some things that you’ve got to be hard at. We weren’t hard to play against. We were kind of a convenient person.”
That left things up to Tracy and his .947 save percentage. He looked, perhaps, to be on his way to a second straight shutout of the Wildcats when, midway through the third period, Diamond tied the game after beating the MSU defense to the rebound of a Brendan Poshak shot.
That goal ended a stretch of 159 minutes, 14 seconds of shutout hockey for Tracy and the Mavericks.
Tracy made two crucial saves during the overtime, but they didn’t measure up to the high-wire ones Ouellette made against on Evan Murr (twice), Adam Eisele and Campbell Cichosz to force the shootout.
“Obviously, I have a lot of respect for their team,” said Carrabes, who led the Mavericks with five shots on goal. “But the way we look at it is what we didn’t do. I think we just got to get around the net way more than we are.”
The Mavericks will go on the road to Houghton, Michigan, next weekend for a series at Michigan Tech.