BLAINE, Minn. – The Bethel University men's hockey team came up just short in a high-scoring shootout with Concordia University-Wisconsin by a 6-5 score. Bethel's
Travis Payne, who transferred to Bethel from Concordia-Wisconsin last season, had a hat trick in the loss. The Falcons scored the last two goals of the game to take the back-and-forth affair. The two teams combined for 74 shots.
The game started off with plenty of back-and-forth action but little scoring as the Royals took a 1-0 lead into the first intermission. Payne scored for Bethel with
Mitch Hughes and
Brock Raffaele assisting.
The Falcons quickly erased Bethel's lead in the second period, however as they scored twice within the first four-and-a-half minutes. The Payne, Hughes and Raffaele connection tallied again two minutes later to tie it up at 2-2. The second period scoring was far from over there. CUW took the 3-2 lead at 11:23. Bethel answered back at 15:46 with the same trio teaming up, this time with Hughes scoring and Payne and Raffaele assisting on the power play. The Falcons scored their fourth goal of the period at 17:05 to take a 4-3 lead into the second intermission.
Payne registered his hat-trick early in the third period, scoring his third goal of the night at 1:29 in the third period. Once again Hughes and Raffaele assisted. The Royals then took a 4-3 lead at 7:57 when
Taylor Brown scored from
Michael Chuinard and
Tony Larson. The lead was short lived though, as Concordia scored at 9:42 to tie the game up and the under a minute later scored again to take the lead back for good. The last 9:21 of the game went scoreless and the Falcons took the victory, 6-5.
For Bethel
Will Griswold got his first start in the net and made 33 saves while his counterpart, Dylan Frank, made 30 saves for Concordia. The Falcons had just one power play on the night while Bethel had three, capitalizing on one.
Concordia's victory in the first game of the second annual Thanksgiving Cup series improves them to 2-7 on the season while the loss drops Bethel to 2-7. The two teams will return to the ice Saturday afternoon at 3 p.m.
