ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The St. Catherine University hockey team returned to play on Friday evening hosting the Wildcats from Johnson & Wales University (Providence) at Drake Arena playing to a 5-5 tie. The non-conference match up included a shootout at the end of the sudden death overtime period with St. Kate's winning the best of three opportunity 2-0. The tie puts St. Kate's at 3-6-1 with the JWU Wildcats returning for game two of the series on Saturday.
The first period was scoreless until the 15th minute of play with Johnson & Wales striking first. They added their second of the game two minutes later going up 2-0 with under three to play in the period. Rookie
Ana Myers scored her first of the game with a short handed goal with help from junior
Lexie Hagen in the final minute of the first cutting the lead in half.
Coming out of the first intermission, JWU took the two goal lead again scoring with over 16 minutes to play in the second. Junior
Paige Loidolt scored her first goal of the game at 14:31 in the period with help from
Sarah Wangen and
Lilly Gillespie. Myers went on to score her second of the contest knotting the game at 3-3 off a pass from
Halle Dunleavy going with under twelve to play in the frame.
JWU took the lead again right away in the third period going up 4-3 before Myers recorded her second career hat trick assisted by
Samantha Bogen and Paige Fashcing on the power play tying it at 4-4. Johnson & Wales took the lead one more time with under five to play in the third but Loidolt was able to avoid the defeat by adding her second and St. Kate's fifth goal before time expired from Gillespie and
Ellie Skaja.
Neither team was able to find the back of the net in the 3 on 3 overtime period forcing the tie as the final result. In the best of three shootout, rookie Addison Oettinger made two saves while Gillespie and Myers were both successful in their attempts.
Myers leads the Minnesota Intercollegaite Athletic Conference (MIAC) this season with ten goals so far on the season which is three more than the next leader.
Game two of the non conference series is scheduled for 2 pm at Drake Arena on Saturday, January 4.
