Skip To Main Content

University of Wisconsin-Superior Athletics

schedule

Wisconsin-Superior
Yellowjackets
Brett Meyers
Scott Thomson

Men's Hockey

Third period does Yellowjackets in, St. Norbert sweeps

Brett Meyers
Box Score
St. Norbert 5, Yellowjackets 2

For the Yellowjacket men's hockey team, Saturday's game at St. Norbert was a game where the team was at a fork in the road.  Going one way, they win the game and stay in contention in the NCAA.  Go the other way, and the loss would throw the team further into the abyss, making remaining games that much bigger as everyone vies for home ice advantage in the playoffs.

Unfortunately for Yellowjacket fans, the latter was the result.  Tied after two periods, St. Norbert scored three times in the third, including getting a pair on the power play, and they rolled to a 5-2 win over the Yellowjackets at the Cornerstone Community Center.

The Yellowjackets have now dropped three straight games overall, five straight in conference play and five straight to St. Norbert.  They have won just once in their last 17 trips to Cornerstone.

After Friday's loss, the Yellowjacket coaching staff stated that they needed to get more pucks and more bodies to the net, making life a little more difficult for St. Norbert's defense and goaltending.  Mission accomplished, and the result was a pair of goals for a team that has been offensively challenged for much of the season.

The Yellowjackets broke through at the 14:00 minute mark of the first period, when Brett Meyers (Brooklyn Park, Minn./Champlin Park) scored an unassisted goal, his fourth of the year, to make it 1-0.  With traffic in front of Green Knight goaltender David Jacobson, Meyers wristed a shot from the right wing that beat Jacobson on the glove side.  St. Norbert would come back as they always seem to against the Yellowjackets scoring one very late in the period to draw even.  Following an icing call in the last ten seconds that brought the faceoff back into Yellowjacket territory, Kyle Stroh worked the puck free from a pile in the goal crease, tying the game with his sixth goal of the year with just six seconds to play in the period.

St. Norbert would grab their first lead of the game early in the second period.  A defensive breakdown led to Cullen Bradshaw being left unprotected to the right of the Yellowjacket goal.  Alain Joanette spotted Bradshaw and fed a perfect pass across the goalmouth and Bradshaw tapped his fifth of the year home at 2:43 to make it 2-1.  The Yellowjackets would immediately come back, however, tying the score again just over a minute later.  Tom Budziakowski (Toronto, Ontario/Bishop Allen Academy), playing for the first time after missing five games because of injury, carried out of the left corner and fired a shot from the left circle.  The shot was blocked but caromed right to #T.J. Ahvenniemi# who sent a low shot underneath Jacobson to tie it at 2-2.  It was the second goal of the year for Ahvenniemi.

In the third period, the wheels fell off the Yellowjacket wagon.  After starting the third period by killing off 1:18 of power play time that carried over from the second, the Yellowjackets almost immediately went shorthanded again, and St. Norbert made them pay.  At 3:49 Cody Keefer scored the eventual game-winning goal by pounding away at a loose puck that Drew Strandberg (Thunder Bay, Ontario/Westgate CV&I) just couldn't secure, making it 3-2.  A few minutes later, another power play for the Green Knights stretched the lead to 4-2.  This time, Seth Soley, the top goal scorer for St. Norbert, wired a wrist shot from the right circle that beat Strandberg high on the glove side, increasing the lead to 4-2.  St. Norbert closed out the scoring in the final minute when Joanette finished a beautiful 2-on-1 feed from Soley by blasting a one-timer from the right circle home to make the final score 5-2.

Strandberg was tagged with his third consecutive loss, making 27 saves, including nine in the final period when the Yellowjackets were outshot 12-4.  Jacobson made 19 saves to pick up the win for the Green Knights.

The Yellowjackets took seven penalties for 17 minutes, while St. Norbert took three penalties for nine minutes.  The Yellowjackets went 0-2 on the power play, extending their drought with the man advantage to 11 consecutive opportunities without a goal.  St. Norbert finished the game 2-6 on the power play.

The Yellowjackets are in desperate need of a victory, and they will try to get back in the win column on Friday, January 20 when they host UW-Eau Claire in the first game of a two-game series at Wessman Arena.  Game time is 7:05 p.m. and the game can be heard live locally on 91.3 FM KUWS, beginning with the pre-game show at 6:45 p.m.  You can access the free audio stream of the game at www.ifan.tv.  You can also watch the game live courtesy of UW-Superior's online video partner AmericaOne.  Jon Garver will have the call.

Print Friendly Version