#2 St. Cloud State falls to #12 Western Michigan, 7-5

Friday, January 12

St. Cloud, MInn.

7:37 p.m.

St. Cloud State

13-4-3, 7-3-1NCHC

Western Michigan University

12-8-1, 7-4-0NCHC

Western Michigan

St. Cloud State

Blake Lizotte

Photo by: Maddie MacFarlane

1/12/2018 11:09:00 PM | Men's Hockey

Box Score

The #2 ranked St. Cloud State University men's hockey team (13-4-3, 7-3-1 NCHC) lost on their home ice for the very first time in the 2017-18 season, falling to the #12 Western Michigan Broncos 7-5 (12-8-1, 7-4-0 NCHC) on Friday, Jan. 12 before a crowd of 3,862 at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud, Minn.

The loss dropped SCSU's home record to 10-1-1 in the 2017-18 campaign. The two teams will complete their weekend series in the always rugged NCHC with a 7:07 p.m. game tomorrow evening. Tickets are available at www.scsutickets.com or at the gate on game night.

After an early Western Michigan first period goal, the Huskies stormed back with three consecutive tallies to take a 3-1 lead into the locker room at the first intermission, two of them on the power play. On a delayed penalty call and an extra attacker, Judd Peterson poked the puck past Ben Blacker to tie the game at 1-1 at the 5:51 mark of the first.

At 12:26, Robby Jackson struck for his 8th goal of the season on the power play to push the Huskies' lead to 2-1. Then just over five minutes later, Blake Lizotte found the back of the net to make it 3-1 Huskies.

Western dominated the second period, scoring four goals and outshooting the Huskies 13-5 to retake the lead 5-3 after 40 minutes setting up a wild end to the third period. With the Huskies pulling goalie David Hrenak, the Broncos scored an empty netter at 18:39 of the 3rd to make it 6-3.

SCSU quickly replied at 19:33 with a goal by Blake Winiecki that included assists from Easton Brodzinski and Mika Ilvonen. Once again, the Huskies pulled their goalie only to have WMU score a second ENG at 19:45 of the third period. To cap a wild finish, Robby Jackson scored the game's final goal with :02 left on the clock to make the final 7-5. This was Jackson's team leading ninth goal of the year.

In the game, SCSU outshot the Broncos 31-28. Jeff Smith started the game for SCSU and posted 11 saves and allowed four goals in 28:34 minutes played. Hrenak completed the game with 10 saves in almost 30:00 of play. Ben Blacker was WMU's goalie of record with 26 saves in the game.

On the power play, SCSU was 2-10 and WMU was 2-6. In a penalty filled game, the Huskies had seven penalties for 17 minutes and WMU had 10 penalties for 20 minutes.