Upset-minded Ferris State knocks SCSU from NCAA West Regional in OT

St. Paul — Everything had been building up until the point when Joey Benik scored his goal late in the third period Saturday.

St. Cloud State’s momentum seemed to grow as the final 20 minutes ticked away, and its fan contingent grew louder with every big save Charlie Lindgren made to keep the Huskies in game.

SCSU trailed Ferris State by two goals after two periods, and when the Huskies scored twice to draw even at four goals apiece, the atmosphere at the Xcel Energy Center was as electric as a half-empty 18,000-seat arena could be.

“Our crowd was awesome today,” SCSU coach Bob Motzko said. “We were expecting a smaller number and they came through.

“Momentum was in the building. It was lurking around. We had to make a play to get momentum back our side. We’re not used to being down, but our guys picked it up.”

Benik assisted on a Mikey Eyssimont goal early in the third and scored his own goal to tie the game. The SCSU crowd, which populated most of each side of the rink, was in frenzy as Benik jumped up and down with arms up in celebration.

The situation seemed to make sense again, with the No. 2 overall seed in command of the momentum in a first-round NCAA West Regional game against a team that team that was 30^th in the PairWise.

All of that fell apart in 18 seconds, thanks to a rink-length rush, two SCSU defensemen getting crossed up, and a rebound off a Charlie Lindgren pad save.

Jared VanWormer swooped in untouched behind SCSU defensemen Ethan Prow and Jimmy Schuldt and swatted the puck into an open net to complete the 5-4 upset for fourth-seeded Ferris State at the 18-second mark of overtime.

“We had a number of chances where we could’ve taken the thing,” Motzko said. “We got our crowd in it and we got momentum back and then we make a mistake in overtime there.

“In the NCAAs, it’s a one-shot deal. It rips your heart out.”

Ferris State will face the Denver/Boston University winner at 4 p.m. Sunday at the Xcel Energy Center in the Bulldogs’ first regional final appearance since it fell to North Dakota in double OT in 2014.

SCSU would’ve set a program record for wins in a season with a victory Saturday (the Huskies finished 31-9-1) and would’ve advanced to its fifth straight regional final in as many NCAA tournament appearances.

Instead, SCSU ended its season in the building it had been eliminated in four times since 2010 (once in the WCHA Final Five and three times in the NCAAs).

Overtime was another trend that continued Saturday, as the Huskies played in their fourth first-round game that went to overtime since 2010.

Ferris State got on the scoreboard first three minutes into the game, but Jacob Benson evened the score 17 seconds later.

The teams appeared headed to the locker rooms for intermission tied at one, but coincidentally, it was Prow and Schuldt who VanWormer snuck past before he received the puck and put it past Lindgren to give the Bulldogs a 2-1 lead.

Eyssimont scored his first goal five minutes into the second period, but Ferris State scored twice to take a 4-2 lead into the third.

“We knew we had to create some offense and we got that tying goal,” SCSU forward Patrick Russell said. “We kept going for that the rest of the third period.

Added defenseman Nathan Widman: “If we were going to lose, we were going to go down swinging. We were going to open up our game, take some chances and play hockey. I think guys were gripping their sticks a little bit tight and we weren’t sharp in the first and second play.”

The SCSU-dominated crowd hadn’t been able to sustain a high level of excitement throughout much of the game, but with the Huskies’ top-notch offense, there was still enough time to give their fans something to get loud about.

Just less than five minutes into the third period, the Huskies’ second-ranked power play worked the puck to Joey Benik, whose shot went wide of the goal and ricocheted to Eyssimont waiting on the other side for an easy goal.

Benik said after the game, that his missed shot wasn’t intentional and he meant to put it on net.

Playing in what turned out to be his final college game, Benik’s moment came just past the midway point of the third.

“Schuldt had the puck at the point with good poise and he threw it down to (Jimmy) Murray,” Benik said. “It slipped through a defender to me and I had an open net because the goalie went out to Murray.”

SCSU had chances to take the lead after Benik’s game-tying goal, including a Judd Peterson backhand shot that beat Smith and clanked off the crossbar with 2:30 left in regulation.

Eyssimont had a golden opportunity to complete the hat trick and put the Huskies ahead when he missed an open net late in the game.

Smith finished with 29 saves and Lindgren stopped 26 shots.

The post Husky Heartbreak appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Minneapolis — All Mikey Eyssimont does is win tournament MVP trophies.

The St. Cloud State freshman forward took home the MVP hardware at the North Star College Cup in January with a five-point weekend. Eyssimont followed that up with two game winners among his three goals in this weekend to lead the Huskies to their first NCHC Frozen Faceoff title.

The Littleton, Colo. native’s highlight reel goal in the closing seconds of the second period broke a 1-1 tie with Minnesota-Duluth and SCSU goaltender made it hold up with 33 hard-earned saves for his 30th win of season as the Huskies beat the Bulldogs 3-1 Saturday night at Target Center.

Eyssimont’s torrid second half continued on Friday when his no look behind-the-back backhanded shot from along the goal line slipped past UMD netminder Kasimir Kaskisuo at the 19:24 mark of the second period to put the Huskies ahead for good.

“I saw Jimmy Schuldt, he shot for a stick, I think (Patrick) Russel’s,” Eyssimont said. “And it missed wide and popped out in kind of a perfect spot for me and as I got hit I just, it came past the goal line and I just tapped it in.”

The goal was Eyssimont’s 26th point in 22 games since New Year’s Day.

While he’s proud of his players’ accomplishment, St. Cloud State Coach Bob Motzko said he’s already in emotion-control mode with his team.

“We talked about it yesterday, we won the first round of the playoffs, we’ve got another round to go,” he said. “We’re excited but we want to park it quickly and try to stay off an emotional roller coaster.”

Motzko said that was the key to the win over UMD after the Huskies got off to a slow start which led to a 1-0 deficit after one period on Bulldogs defenseman Carson Soucy’s third goal of the season.

“I thought we had a great first period,” Minnesota-Duluth coach Scott Sandelin said. “Not a lot happened but we got the lead. We were playing real well.”

“They got up 1-0 and that was a scary situation because that’s what happened to us before,” Motzko said. “We needed to hunker down and it took us awhile.”

Motzko was referring to Minnesota-Duluth’s late February sweep at St. Cloud which ignited UMD’s seven game winning streak which the Huskies extinguished on Saturday.

“They have great speed which makes it difficult because with great speed you can play great defense,” Motzko said. “And that’s what was limiting our chances early; we weren’t moving our feet.”

Minnesota-Duluth outshot SCSU 11-5 in the period but its momentum was slowed by Neal Pionk’s roughing penalty at the 20 minute mark of the first and Andy Welinski’s slash five minutes into the second.

The Bulldogs held the Huskie’s vaunted power play off the board but it came at a cost as St. Cloud State began to assert its control over the contest. That led to Eyssimont tying the game near the midway point of the second period off a cross-ice pass from Prow which he one-timed past UMD goalie Kasimir Kaskisuo from below the right circle.

“I don’t think our last 30-plus minutes was the way we’ve been playing,” Sandelin said. “They were very opportunistic and that’s what they do. They’ve scored a lot of goals this year.”

“I thought we got very consistent, very business-like, limited chances and played a very solid, strong game from that point on,”Motzko said. “So I liked the fact we didn’t start great but we found a way to be very business-like and get it done.”

Russel gave St. Cloud State some breathing room with his 2oth of the season early in the third and Lindgren kept the Bulldogs off the board.

The win boosted the Huskies past North Dakota and into the No. 2 overall spot in the all-important Pairwise Rankings which uses a formula mirroring that of the NCAA tournament selection committee. The general consensus late Saturday night, among those who speculate on such matters, had St. Cloud State as the No. 1 seed in the March 26-27 West Regional in St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center.

The Bulldogs, meanwhile, dropped to the 14th spot in the Pairwise which will likely send them to Worcester, Mass. as the No. 4 seed in the Northeast Region March 25-26.

The post Huskies Win Frozen Faceoff appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Minneapolis — Some players, for whatever reason, step up their games against certain opponents. For St. Cloud State’s Mikey Eyssimont, it’s an entire state.

The Littleton, Colo. native ‘s goal at 1:41 of the third period gave the Huskies a 3-1 lead and turned out to be the difference in the Huskies’ 4-2 National Collegiate Hockey Conference Frozen Faceoff semifinal win over Denver on Friday night at Target Center.

With SCSU up 2-1 early in the third period, Eyssimont did a nice job of protecting the puck down low and his centering pass to Patrick Russell deflected off traffic in front and behind bewildered Pioneers goaltender Tanner Jalliet. No. 3 seed Denver’s Evan Janssen answered for the Pioneers just 32 seconds later but the Huskies held DU at bay until defenseman Jimmy Schuldt’s empty-net goal sealed it.

“So far, so good against the Colorado teams,” Eyssimont said after the Huskies snapped Denver’s 11-game winning streak. “It feels good but I can’t think about it too much right now.”

Of the freshman’s no 29 career points (10-19–29) seven of them (2-5–7), or nearly a quarter, have come against against either Denver or Colorado College. In fact, St. Cloud State coach Bob Motzko believes Eyssimont’s rookie season turned a corner when St. Cloud State visited Denver to close out the season’s first half.

Eyssimont had bounced up and down the line chart and in and out of the SCSU lineup leading up to that Dec. 11-12 series sweep at Denver. He came into the weekend with just four points but played well and his beautiful assist to complete Kalle Kossila’s hat trick helped cap off the weekend’s scoring.

“How many time do you see these young guys come back after Christmas and the sky is blue and they start playing?” Motzko asked rhetorically. “And Mikey started to play and we all saw it and he’s been very, very good.”

Good indeed. In 21 games since Jan. 1,the 2014 graduate of Chatfield Senior High School has racked up 24 points on nine goals and 15 assists.

The post Inside Job appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Mikey Eyssimont trades Rocky Mountains for the Granite City

DENVER — If it wasn’t exactly the homecoming he necessarily expected, St. Cloud State’s road sweep of Denver University Dec. 11-12 was certainly the triumphant return Huskies freshman forward Mikey Eyssimont had hoped for. The Littleton, Colo. resident played his first two games in his home state in three years since his midget hockey days with the U16 Colorado Thunderbirds and skated off a winner each time.

A 2014 graduate of Chatfield Senior High School,Eyssimont had at least 16 to 18 family members in attendance at Magness Arena each night for SCSU’s 5-2 and 6-2 wins. They were treated to Eyssimont helping to cap off the weekend’s scoring on Saturday by setting up Kalle Kossila’s third goal of the game on a pretty backhanded cross-crease pass with 6:23 to go.

“I haven’t played in front of my mom and dad (George and Nancy) and sister at the same time in over two years,” Eyssimont said. “Just having them all there, and a couple other family members and friends is really special.”

Eyssimont’s sister, Anastasia, is also Mikey’s twin and an elite athlete in her own right. Once a promising gymnast with aspirations to compete for Denver University or the Air Force Academy, Anastasia’s career was cut short by broken elbow and she is now a student a the University of Colorado in Boulder.

An avid outdoorsman, Eyssimont said he loved every second of growing up and playing hockey in Colorado.

“It’s where I met my best friends growing up,” Eyssimont said. “We’re still really close today and a lot of us have played against each other or with each other here in this arena.”

While Eyssimont has already tested out his fishing skills in the Upper Midwest, he has yet try his hand at landing a fish through the ice. It’s something he expects his teammates to rectify at some point this winter.

“There’s a lot of guys that are actually really into it so I’m hoping I can do that,” Eyssimont said. “I’ve done some Walleye fishing in Detroit Lakes, I’ve been up to Minot, N.D. too, so I’ve done a lot of fishing up there.”

The origin of Eyssimont’s journey from the Rocky Mountains to the Granite City cannot be traced to the Denver suburbs but the hockey hotbed known as the Arizona desert, in a tournament Eyssimont played with the Thunderbirds.

St. Cloud State coach Bob Motzko remembers it well.

Mikey Eyssimont positions himself in front of Denver goaltender Tanner Jaillet in the Huskies 5-2 win over the Pioneers on Dec. 12 at Magness Arena in Denver. (Photo by Shannon Valerio /Hockey VIPs Magazine)

“The first time I saw him was in a midget game in Scottsdale and he had five points and I go, ‘That kid can play,'” Motzko said. “He’s the kind of guy we like to get in our program. The sky’s the limit for him.”

Eyssimont appreciated the interest Motzko showed in him and once he visited the St. Cloud State campus, he was sold.

“When I met the coaching staff and toured the school, it just seemed like a really good fit,”Eyssimont said. “What ultimately made me choose St. Cloud was the coaching staff and how they play.”

The next two-plus seasons were spent in the USHL, first with the Fargo Force and then, following a late-season trade last spring, the Sioux Falls Stampede where he played under former North Dakota player and assistant, Cary Eades.

After notching 13 points in 14 games to close out the regular season, Eyssimont was the league’s second leading scorer with 16 points (9-7—16) in 12 playoff games and helped lead the Stampede to the 2015 Clark Cup title.

During his 108 game career in Fargo, Eyssimont developed a close friendship with teammate Mason Morelli, whose Nebraska Omaha team visited St. Cloud the week prior to the Denver series. The two spent time together in the offseason in Morelli’s hometown of Minot, N.D.

Eyssimont said he and Morelli, both currently business majors, were always very competitive in practice as teammates and, to a degree, that competitiveness was evident in a game setting as opponents earlier this month at the National Hockey Center.

“I remember I was lining up next to him on a draw and he kind of slashed me in the shin pads,” Eyssimont said. “I gave him one on the top of the skate and he said, ‘Hey Mike that actually hurt.’ I was trying to be as competitive as I could but I actually apologized to him.”

Eyssimont’s assist on Saturday was the 6-foot, 192-pound rookie’s fourth of the season to go with the goal he scored in a 3-1 Halloween win over Miami. While it’s a far cry from the 43 goals and 86 points in 134 games overall in the USHL, Motzko knows what he’s got in the Colorado kid.

“He’s going to be an outstanding college player for us,” Motzko said. “He’s got good, strong size down in the corners, he’s got great vision, a great shot and offense is going to come.”

The post The Colorado kid appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.