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No. 4 St. Cloud takes out Wildcat icers, 4-1

By Journal Sports Staff

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Freshman forward Griffin Loughran scored his first collegiate goal but it wasn’t enough for the Northern Michigan University hockey team to avert a 4-1 loss at nationally ranked St. Cloud State on Friday night.

The No. 4-ranked Huskies of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference improved to 3-0 while the Wildcats fell to 1-2. NMU will go for its second straight series split at 7:07 p.m. EDT today at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center after Northern lost the opener and won Game 2 at Michigan State of the Big 10 last weekend.

Loughran scored with 11 seconds remaining in the second period on a power play. Assists went to senior defenseman Ryan Black, his second this season, and sophomore forward Mitchel Slattery. At the time, it cut St. Cloud’s lead to 3-1.

SCSU scored the only goal of the first period about 8 1/2 minutes in on a shot by Jake Wahlin before making it 2-0 with about 2 1/2 minutes gone in the second on an Easton Brodzinski shot. Less than six minutes later, the Huskies upped their advantage to 3-0 on a power play tally by Ryan Poehling.

St. Cloud closed out the scoring with the only goal of the third period with about nine minutes remaining by Sam Hentges.

The Huskies held the advantage in shots on the goal in each of the first two periods, mounting a 24-11 advantage entering the final period before Northern more than evened things up with a narrow 10-9 advantage in the third.

That meant that NMU goalie Atte Tolvanen was called on to make 29 saves, 14 in the second period, to give him 96 in three games, No. 3 in the NCAA. He also has a .906 saves percentage. St. Cloud’s David Hrenak stopped 20 of the 21 shots he faced.

NMU was 1 of 6 on the power play and SCSU 1 of 5.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.

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