St. Cloud State’s Miettinen brothers dealt Miami a lethal one-two punch in the teams’ conference opener.
Older brother Veeti scored late in the second period, and freshman Verner notched his first career goal to seal it as the Huskies held off the RedHawks, 3-2 at the Herb Brooks Center on Friday.
Miami (4-2-1) extended its winless streak in this building to 14 games (0-12-2), although the RedHawks’ two ties came in their last visit Feb. 3-4.
RECAP: St. Cloud State (3-4) took the lead 3:16 into the game when Kyler Kupka grabbed the puck behind the Miami net and flicked a pass to a streaking Mason Salquist, who went backhand-to-forehand at the side of net and jammed it past RedHawks goalie Logan Neaton.
MU’s William Hallen tied it with 5:07 left in the second period, redirecting a hard blue-line from Axel Kumlin past goalie Dominic Basse from the slot.
Seconds later, it appeared the Huskies had regained the lead on a tipped shot from the left wing, but the initial call was that it was deflected in with a high stick, and despite a SCSU challenge, that initial call was upheld.
But SCSU did ultimately pull ahead with 1:35 left in that frame, as Veeti Miettinen scooped up a loose puck along the half wall, carried it about 10 feet above the top of the right faceoff circle and pinpointed a shot into near corner of the net.
The Huskies made it 3-1 in the closing seconds of a power play, as Vernon Miettinen roofed a bad-angle wrister from the left side of the cage that snuck through Neaton with 2:11 remaining.
Miami’s P.J. Fletcher cut the final deficit to one with a round-about change-up wrister from the slot that eluded Basse with nine seconds to play.
STATS: It was the third goal of the season for Fletcher and No. 2 for Hallen.
Fletcher extended his points streak to five games, equaling Matthew Barbolini and John Waldron for the longest this season.
Hallen, a sophomore, already has six points this season after finishing with four in his rookie campaign.
— Kumlin led the team with two points — both assists — giving him four points in his last three games. The sophomore’s only other career-point game came Dec. 10, 2022, also against St. Cloud State.
— Sophomore D-man Michael Feenstra notched an assist for the third straight game after being held off the scoresheet his entire freshman season.
— Barbolini’s team-best eighth helper was his 11th point, also tops on the RedHawks.
— Miami finished 20-42 (.323) on faceoffs and allowed 35 shots, the second-highest total the team has surrendered this season.
— The RedHawks’ last win in this building was March 10, 2018 in a best-of-3 NCHC opening-round series. Miami hasn’t won a regular-season game in this building since Nov. 8, 2013.
ANALYSIS: This was a weird game, featuring several unusual goals and a few more would-be markers that were not.
After a sluggish start to the game, MU was the better team in the second period.
But St. Cloud State’s defense exceled in shut-down mode the final 20 minutes, limiting the RedHawks to five third-period shots.
Miami played a solid game but wasn’t better than the Huskies. Thus the final score. Welcome to conference play.
But this doesn’t seem like a kidney punch-type loss, like, say a 10-goal loss or 8-0 shutout like two years ago. So not a confidence killer.
— Talk about unusual goals.
Good ones first: The replay angles weren’t great, but Hallen appeared to add mustard to a slap-pass from Kumlin in the slot to beat Basse. It looked cool from the limited.
Fletcher cut the deficit to one on a shot that Basse didn’t react to at all.
The bad guys had two as well.
The elder Miettinen snuck a shot through near side from outside the faceoff circles, and the rook went short side from a bad angle and slipped one through Neaton.
— On a related note, Neaton probably should’ve stopped that third shot, but he made multiple stops on Grade-A chances and finished 32 of 35 (.914). His rebound control was a little shaky at times but he was on his game overall.
— Ryan Sullivan has been excellent this season, but he left the game with an LBI in the first period and did not return.
LINEUP CHANGES: Raimonds Vitolins was a late scratch due to illness. The hope prior to gametime was that he would be available for the series finale.
Forward Frankie Carogioiello missed his third straight game after suffering an injury in practice.
Coach Chris Bergeron went with the eight-defensemen lineup again.
FINAL THOUGHTS: This wasn’t a game in which Miami was badly outplayed and ended up lucky to lose by one, but it also wasn’t one that instilled confidence this is a RedHawks corps than can take a major step forward in this league this season.
Keep in mind that the other six NCHC teams were either ranked or received a lot more USCHO top-20 votes than Miami or SCSU, and for 60 minutes the only team that got fewer votes than MU in that league poll was the better team overall in this game.
The RedHawks have played well the first month of the season, but this effort on NCHC opening night didn’t send a statement to the league that Miami Version 2023.24 is ready to compete for conference titles, much less national ones.
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