Box Score

ST. PETER, Minn. – Saint John's hockey scored three unanswered goals in the third period to earn a wild 7-5 win at Gustavus Adolphus in the regular-season finale on Saturday, Feb. 16, in St. Peter.

The win, coupled with Concordia-Moorhead's 5-4 overtime loss at Augsburg and St. Thomas' 2-1 home loss to Hamline, enabled SJU (11-9-5, 9-4-3 MIAC) to climb from the league's No. 4 seed to second place in the MIAC standings. SJU will host UST in the MIAC Playoffs semifinals at 2 p.m. next Saturday, Feb. 23, at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center in St. Cloud. The Tommies (14-6-5, 8-3-5 MIAC) earned the No. 3 seed due to the head-to-head tie-breaker (a 1-0-1 record) against the Cobbers.

SJU received goals from seven different Johnnies and 13 players recorded a point.

Junior captain Cole Souto (Yorba Linda, Calif.) tied the game at 5-5 thanks to a nice backdoor feed from junior forward Brady Heppner (Crookston, Minn.) with 6:16 left and sophomore forward Ryan Kero (Hermantown, Minn.) scored what proved to be the game-winning goal 49 seconds later.

Freshman forward Davis Kirkendall (Hamel, Minn.) sealed the win with an empty-netter at the 19:19 mark.

The two teams combined for five goals in the game's first 10 minutes; an atypical start considering SJU posted a 2-0 shutout of GAC Thursday night (Feb. 14) in St. Cloud.

Heppner took advantage of a Gustavus turnover at the blue line and scored on an unassisted breakaway, his team-leading 15th tally of the season, 43 seconds into the game. He has scored a goal in four consecutive games and five of his last six.

Evan Erickson tied the game, however, with a breakaway goal of his own 2:34 later and gave GAC (7-17-1, 4-11-1 MIAC) a 2-1 lead with a power-play goal at the 8:57 mark of the first period. The power-play tally ended a 1-for-27 streak for the Gusties on the man advantage.

Freshman forward Brady Dahl (Rochester, Minn.) tied the game at 2-2 with his second career goal, a sharp-angle wrister with 10:36 left, but Logan Norman gave the lead back to the Gusties with a shorthanded tally 23 seconds later.

Senior forward Evan Okeley (Carmel, Ind.) deflected a shot from senior forward Robb Stautz (Roseville, Minn.) to tie the game at 3-3 3:35 into the second period.

Like the first period, Norman gave the lead back to GAC 5:11 later. The goal chased junior goaltender Andrew Lindgren (Minneapolis, Minn.) from the game in favor of sophomore Mac Berglove (Elk River, Minn.). Berglove made 20 saves to earn the win and improve to 3-4-1 on the year.

Stautz tied the game at 4-4 with 8:29 left in the second period, but Erickson completed the hat trick 4:04 later during a 4-on-4.