MINNEAPOLIS — For 35 minutes Saturday night, Blake Coleman’s hat trick earned him the NCHC all-tournament MVP selection and staked Miami to a one-goal lead in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff finals.
The rest of the RedHawks spent the last 25 minutes ensuring his contact-to-the-head game misconduct wouldn’t spoil that.
[scg_html_nchc2015]No. 5 Miami won a feisty 3-2 victory over No. 18 St. Cloud State at Target Center, securing the NCHC autobid and a top seed in the NCAA tournament in the process.
Coleman’s second-period hit on Joe Rehkamp cut short a remarkable championship performance from the senior forward, but the RedHawks (25-13-1) stuck with their physical game plan and it paid off with a conference championship.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the entire team,” Blasi said. “We talked about being a team all week and it was going to take a team effort to win the championship. I think we left it all on the ice.”
Joey Benik and Jonny Brodzinski scored for the Huskies (19-18-1), who had many opportunities to get the equalizer but couldn’t get a third one past Jay Williams (18 saves) and the Miami defense, which stepped up with 17 shot blocks.
“They had a big player step up in a big-time moment for their team and that carried them tonight,” Huskies forward Brooks Bertsch said. “We battled back there and gave ourselves a shot.”
The Huskies didn’t fall victim to Miami’s speed as Denver did on Friday, however. They were able to solve that and even took 1-0 and 2-1 leads to start the game on the strength of Benik’s goal at 12:00 of the first and Brodzinski’s power-play one timer at 6:03 of the second.
Coleman had responded to each of those goals with his own at 16:15 of the first and 7:37 of the second, then gave Miami the lead at 9:20 from between the dots to complete the hat trick.
But the Huskies kept grinding away in search of a tying goal.
“First and foremost, I loved how we competed,” Huskies coach Bob Motzko said. “We had a big adjustment early in the game to their speed. I thought we hunkered down and we left it all out there.”
The Coleman major — at 14:12 of the second — set a new tone for the game, but the Huskies couldn’t take advantage.
“I think Miami plays a really physical style,” Motzko said. “They were really trying to hit us to stop us in the offensive zone. It was effective but I think it also slowed and we started to get more chances late in the second period.”
The Huskies couldn’t capitalize on the Coleman major, nor did they have anything to show for three key power-play opportunities in the third. The Huskies mustered just one shot on goal in those three power plays.
“I think if you go back and rewind it, the five minutes in the second and three power plays in the third, that takes the flow out of it,” Motzko said. “The flow went away not because of the physicality, but I think more because of the special teams.”
[photoshelter-gallery g_id=”G00002oiPaPuRf5Q” g_name=”20150321-NCHC-St-Cloud-State-University-Miami-of-Ohio-Bradley-K-Olson” f_show_caption=”t” f_show_slidenum=”t” img_title=”casc” pho_credit=”iptc” f_link=”t” f_bbar=”t” fsvis=”f” width=”500″ height=”375″ bgcolor=”#AAAAAA” bgtrans=”t” btype=”old” bcolor=”#CCCCCC” crop=”f” trans=”xfade” tbs=”4000″ f_ap=”t” linkdest=”c” f_fullscreen=”f” f_constrain=”f” twoup=”f” f_topbar=”f” f_bbarbig=”” f_htmllinks=”f” f_enable_embed_btn=”f” f_show_watermark=”f” f_send_to_friend_btn=”f” f_smooth=”f” f_mtrx=”f” f_up=”f” target=”_self” wmds=”llQ6QNgpeC.p1Ucz7U.f22Fbq1nIYKgSCI7NYOEOMAjGa1OGb9NBmb49uqVnr4imBedVog–” ]St. Cloud State pulled netminder Charlie Lindgren (18 saves) for the final 1:13 but despite some late flurries, the trophy wasn’t going to be wrestled out of Miami’s hands.
By far, it was the most physical game of the weekend in Minneapolis, and it resulted in unknown injuries to Miami’s Riley Barber and St. Cloud State’s Tim Daly — as well as resulting in Coleman’s disqualification for the first game of the NCAA tournament next weekend on a misconduct-accumulation penalty. But while other teams may have used this weekend to rest starters and minimize risks, that didn’t fit into the RedHawks’ plans.
“To say that you want to play a game where you don’t give it everything you have and don’t be physical and worry about injuries or things like that, that wouldn’t be the way to play the game,” Blasi said. “That would be cheating the game. It’s cheating life. These guys signed up to play for the brotherhood of Miami. They signed up to be champions in every aspect of their life.”
The RedHawks were able to lift themselves into the No. 4 overall seed for the NCAA tournament, which certainly provides no guarantees but is a well-earned advantage for a team that missed the tournament a year ago.
“It’s a really exciting moment for us, first time being a No. 1 seed in our four years,” Miami’s Austin Czarnik said. “We have a tough task ahead of us next week and we’ve just got to get ahead of it.”
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