St. Cloud St. Beats North Dakota 3-1 At NCHC Frozen Faceoff

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — David Morley and Joey Binek scored 19 seconds apart in the first period to lead St. Cloud State to a 3-1 win over top-ranked North Dakota Friday in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference Frozen Faceoff semifinals.

The game-tying and winning goals came in the last 25 seconds of the period.

"We had to come out and have a good, strong 20 minutes to start the game," said Binek, who had the game-winning goal at 19:54 or 19 seconds after Morley tied it. "We gave up one but we responded late in the first period."

North Dakota had no response as it managed a season-low 20 shots on goal. St. Cloud State goalie Charlie Lindgren made 19 saves. The only goal he allowed was Keaton Thompson's slap shot through traffic from the left point at 15:02 of the first.

Thompson took a feed from Tucker Poolman behind the net and ripped a shot through traffic.

But the Huskies struck twice in the last 25 seconds of the period. Unchecked Morley turned a feed from Jonny Brodzinski into a goal at 19:35 to tie it. Nineteen seconds later, Benik scored on a short shot after a two-on-one rush and, suddenly, UND trailed.

"We had good pressure on them the whole first period and finally two got kicked in," Brodzinski said. "It was a great play by David getting open in the slot and it was a little unlucky by them, they threw it off a shin pad and (Benik) got a breakaway."

St. Cloud outshot UND 12-6 in the first period.

"We can't have that start at this time of year," North Dakota sophomore forward Luke Johnson said. "We have to change our mentality. We've got to get better."

Lindgren and UND goalie Zane McIntyre made back-to-back stops on breakaways late in the second period. Lindgren stopped Luke Johnson at 2:17, and McIntyre turned away Jimmy Murray with just over a minute left.

It stayed 2-1 until Joe Rehkamp tacked on the Huskies' final goal at 18:55 into an empty net as SCSU improved to 6-4-1 against North Dakota in their last 11 games.

SCSU (19-17-1) plays in Saturday's championship game at Target Center, while North Dakota plays for third place.

McIntyre made 21 saves for UND (27-8-3), which had a season-low 20 shots on goal.

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