BLAINE, Minn. — The Bethel University men’s hockey team found itself in an unfamiliar spot Friday night: finishing a game in regulation, with three of their seven conference wins coming in either overtime or shootout this season. The Royals used a five-goal second period to win 6-3 at Bethel University Arena and improve to 7-3-1 in MIAC play this season.
But it didn’t start that way. A scoreless first period gave way to a 2-0 Cardinals lead early in the second period.
The first goal came after a Tyler-Braccini tripping minor opened the door for a Saint Mary’s power-play goal at the 2:13 mark of the first period. Five minutes later, freshman winger Joona Juntunen grabbed a rebound out front of the net and fired it past Bethel goaltender Marco Duronio.
Senior center Braeden Bartoo got the Royals on the board two minutes later, taking advantage of a second chance rebound on the doorstep of the Saint Mary’s net. An offensive explosion ensued; One minute later Bartoo found the net again, scooping up another rebound and depositing a wrist shot past Cardinal goaltender A.J. Ruskowski.
The Royals scored five goals in seven minutes and 51 seconds of game time to open up a commanding 5-2 lead heading into the second intermission.
“We’ve shown that several times this year,” Royals head coach Chris McKelvie said. “Goals kind of come in bunches for us; we get a lot of life on goals.”
While Bartoo tallied the Royals’ first two goals, Braccini added the go-ahead goal, senior forward Jake Heter added the fourth and junior forward Tyler Kostelecky capped the period with a goal at the 16:52 mark. Kostelecky was the Royals’ leading scorer last season, putting up 26 points in 26 games and earning MIAC Offensive Player of the Year honors.
This season, Kostelecky got off to a slower start scoring-wise with just nine points in 19 games. But as Friday night’s performance showed, the captain can still help ignite the Royals’ offense down the stretch.
“When you’ve got a guy like [Kostelecky] skating the way he skates, everyone kind of feeds off it,” McKelvie said.
A goal from Cardinals’ senior forward Laudon Poellinger brought the score back to within two. Royals’ leading scorer Braccini put the finishing touches on the Royals’ 6-3 win with his 13th goal of the season at the 15:39 second mark.
It’s just the second time the Royals have won by as many as three goals in conference play this season, with their 5-2 win over Hamline University on Nov. 22 the most recent example. The only other such occurrence was a 6-3 victory in an out-of-conference road matchup with the University of Wisconsin-River Falls on Jan. 10.
“We’ve had a lot of opportunities to win games in regulation,” McKelvie said. “We’ve just struggled to do that lately… the guys showed a lot of resiliency when we got the lead to just go.”
Now the Royals head down to Winona, Minn., to wrap up the season series with Saint Mary’s Saturday night, looking for a sweep and six-point weekend to further solidify themselves into one of the five MIAC playoff spots.
“It’s a tough place to play, it’s tough to travel down there,” McKelvie said. “But I think the guys are hungry to go out there and do it.”
