The University of St. Thomas men’s hockey team beat Augustana 2-1 Saturday. The Tommies will advance to the Mason Cup Finals next Friday. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
Tommie Senior forward Lucas Wahlin assisted the final goal of the night. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
The first goal of the game by Augustana was swiftly overturned. (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
All scoring came in the third period. (Hamlet Sargsyan/The Crest) 
Coach Rico Blasi is taking the Tommies to back-to-back Mason Cup Finals. (Hamlet Sargsyan/The Crest) 
Neither team capitalized on their power plays (Evan Neubauer/The Crest) 
UST is looking to clinch an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. (Hamlet Sargsyan/The Crest) 
The Tommies were able to sneak two goals past the CCHA Player of the Year. (Hamlet Sargsyan/The Crest) 
2338 fans trekked to Anderson Arena amid a blizzard warning. (Hamlet Sargysan/The Crest)
St. Thomas graduate forward Alex Gaffney buried a puck past the right shoulder of Augustana junior goaltender Josh Kotai to send the Tommies to their second straight Mason Cup Final Saturday.
Senior forward Lucas Wahlin won a faceoff just under 11 minutes into the period, flipping it to Gaffney to give No. 2 UST the 2-1 victory over the No. 3 Vikings after a defensive battle played out in the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena.
“In those situations, you’re just looking for kind of space between the defender’s legs. You try to get it through the first wave,” Gaffney said.
St. Thomas will play the winner between No. 1 Minnesota State and No. 4 Michigan Tech. If MSU wins, the Tommies have to travel to Mankato on Friday. If the Huskies win, the Tommies will host the championship game on campus.
A win in the Mason Cup final would give UST a guaranteed bid to the NCAA tournament. They currently sit at No. 16 in the NCAA Percentage Index rankings, which puts them on the bubble of an at-large bid as there are at least ten teams ahead of them that will not win their conference tournament.
“We worked the whole season: practices, early mornings, games. I mean the whole regular season just to work for this,” Wahlin said. “We work this hard just to win one game and that’s what it comes down to.”
The Tommies’ offensive attack was the closest thing to an unstoppable force in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association this season. The team led the CCHA with 3.56 goals per game.
For the first two periods, it looked like they had met their immovable object.
Kotai, the CCHA Player of the Year, led the nation with a .938 save percentage. He kept the net clean, tallying 16 saves in the first two periods.
Neither team had scored, and there were only ten total shots on goal in the second period, giving the 2,338 fans in attendance little to celebrate.
“Both teams were playing similar in a sense where they’re playing hard and the execution wasn’t there from both sides. It was fairly sloppy for at least through half the game,” Vikings coach Garrett Raboin said.
It seemed AU sophomore defenseman Samo Meritähti had scored late in the first period, but a savvy challenge by St. Thomas coach Rico Blasi led to an offside call and the play being fruitless for the Vikings.
Augustana could not capitalize on an early second-period power play, and UST didn’t get a single shot on goal during its lone power play early in the third.
Finally, first-year forward Lucas Van Vliet, the CCHA Rookie of the Year, went one-on-three and sent the puck careening off of AU sophomore forward Joey DelGreco’s skate, off the right side of the goal, and in.
In less than a minute of game time after, Viking junior defenseman Owen Baumgartner smacked a shot past a jumble of Tommies in front of the net to tie the game 1-1. That was the team’s only scoring play on sophomore goaltender Carson Musser through 28 shots on goal.
“Throughout these playoffs and the regular season, he’s made huge saves for us and bailed us out many times,” Gaffney said.
Wahlin and Gaffney’s faceoff-turned-goal brought the lead back to UST and the small, rowdy student section to its feet with chants of “Alex Gaffney!”
Wahlin, a finalist for CCHA Forward of the Year, had been in a statistical slump to end the regular season. He scored just one goal and tallied five assists in the final eight games.
Across the three playoff games, he already has two goals and two assists.
“He certainly turned it on the last couple of weeks again, back to his normal self,” Blasi said.
The Vikings pulled Kotai with just over two minutes left to play, but couldn’t capitalize on the offensive advantage.
After the final buzzer, the officials put one second back on the clock, meaning that UST got to celebrate a win twice.
“This was a great hockey game. This is what playoff hockey’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be tight, and, you know, we got the bounce at the end,” Blasi said.
Adam Mueller can be reached at muel7541@stthomas.edu.
