Men's hockey: Miami's special teams beat SCSU, 4-1

OXFORD, Ohio — There are certain things that can keep a car from moving properly. Cold weather, a bad engine or a dirty gas filter can cause problems.

The St. Cloud State men's hockey team seemed to be dealing with a different issue Saturday.

"I just told the team that I was looking down at a lot of good things and I can see a good hockey team in there," Huskies coach Bob Motzko said of his team. "But it was like we were playing on three tires. We seemed to have one flat tire all night long in whatever we were doing.

"We had a flat tire on the power play or one guy on a line wouldn't be good. It was a game we needed to score early and we didn't."

Miami never trailed, picked up a short-handed goal, a power-play goal and was 6-for-6 on the penalty kill en route to a 4-1 NCHC win over St. Cloud State at Steve Cady Arena. The win gave the RedHawks (3-4-3-1 NCHC, 7-8-5 overall) a series sweep of the 20th-ranked Huskies (4-7-1-0, 9-10-1).

"We need to bear down on our penalty kill," St. Cloud State sophomore defenseman Jimmy Schuldt said. "We had a good penalty kill percentage going into this weekend, but we gave up three power-play goals and had a lapse this weekend. That can win or lose games."

Miami took a 1-0 lead into the third period after Kiefer Sherwood scored an unassisted, short-handed goal at 10:09 of the first period. Sherwood intercepted a pass at the Miami blue line and went in and scored on a breakaway.

Gordie Green scored on a rush 1:02 into the second period to give Miami a 2-0 lead.

The Huskies, who outshot the RedHawks 29-22, got back within 2-1 on a goal by Jake Wahlin on a rush off a pass and a screen by Schuldt at 13:58 of the third period.

"Jimmy did a nice job of stepping up on that play and giving me a drop pass," said Wahlin, who scored his first goal since Oct. 28. "Fortunately, the goalie was screened a little bit. Jimmy made the whole play."

But St. Cloud State freshman center Ryan Poehling took a tripping penalty 48 seconds after Wahlin scored. That led to a power-play goal by Miami center Josh Melnick at 15:10 for a 3-1 lead and Grant Hutton added an empty-net goal to finish the scoring.

"That deflated our tires a little bit after we'd just scored a goal and had some good shifts in that period," Wahlin said.

The Huskies did not score on three power-play opportunities in the first period, two in the second and one in the third period.

"We actually moved it around and had some looks," Motzko said of the Huskies' power play. "We had some movement and some looks, but not much traffic in front of the net."

Miami goalie Ryan Larkin made 28 saves to pick up the win and stopped 57 of 60 shots in the series.

Jeff Smith, who made his fifth straight start in goal, had 18 saves for the Huskies.