Mavericks 5, Huskies 2

Freddy's three thoughts of the game ...

1. Good in goal: Mike Hastings has been waiting for a goaltender to grab the No. 1 job and run with it. Saturday might have been a step in the right direction for Connor LaCouvee. He sure was good when he needed to be against the Huskies. He held the nation's top-scoring team to two goals, stopping 28 shots, for his 12th win of the season. "I thought he was solid," Hastings said. "You need goaltending. Late in the season when you play a team like St. Cloud, they’re going to make pushes and you’ve got to find a way to keep it out of your net. ... They had some good looks, and that’s when I thought Connor was real good." LaCouvee stopped all 13 shots he faced in the first period but also made a huge pad save on the first shift and another later in the period with a 1-0 lead. "It was awesome for the guys to get this win against a great opponent like St. Cloud," LaCouvee said. "I thought I was fighting the puck a little bit, but the guys played so well in front of me."

2. Second line shines: MSU's top line of C.J. Suess, Parker Tuomie and Marc Michaelis has been great of late, but the home Huskies did a good job of keeping them in check. They couldn't stop everybody, though, and the group of Jake Jaremko, Reggie Lutz and Zeb Knutson shined. Knutson scored two goals, Jaremko had a goal and Reggie Lutz assisted on two goals. The prettiest play of the night came when Lutz made a behind-the-back pass to Jaremko on a low 2-on-1, and Jaremko finished with a shot between goalie Jeff Smith's legs. "We’ve needed some secondary scoring to come around because C.J. and Michaelis and Tuomie had been carrying us for awhile," Hastings said. "To see Jake and Lutz and Knutson play the way they played tonight, I thought they were good offensively but I thought they were even better defensively. When you have the puck as much as they did tonight, they don’t have to play a lot of defense, but when they did I thought they were real solid."

3. Still solid on the road: Another impressive thing about the victory was the fact that MSU was coming off its long Alaska trip. The Mavericks went 3-1 there but recovering from those trips can be tough. They did have one extra day to prepare since they didn't play on Friday, but they had to go to the hostile National Hockey Center in front of a crowd of nearly 5,600 and play the No. 3 team in the country. "We knew it was going to be a sold-out barn, and they really draw from their crowd," Knutson said. "We knew it was important to try and get on it right away in the first five minutes and get the first one." Which they did, as freshman defenseman Connor Mackey scored 93 seconds into the game. The Mavericks improved their road record to 12-4-0, and they have just one road trip remaining in the regular season.

Read my game story here.

Around the WCHA: Bowling Green 3, Alaska Anchorage 2 ... Bemidji State 4, Ferris State 1 ... Michigan Tech 4, Alaska 3 ... Northern Michigan 3, Lake Superior State 2