UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Senior Connor McMenamin (Collegeville, Pa.) opened the scoring and closed the scoring with his overtime winner as No. 18 Penn State defeated St. Thomas, 3-2, in non-conference action on Friday night at Pegula Ice Arena.
HOW IT HAPPENED
- After a slow start to the opening period Penn State (6-0-0) quickly jumped ahead with a pair of goals in just 19 seconds as senior classmates Connor McMenamin (Collegeville, Pa.) and Ben Copeland (Edina, Minn.) notched their first goals of the season at 15:55 and 16:14, respectively, for the 2-0 edge.
- The Tommies responded cutting the deficit in half with a powerplay goal off the rush as Ryan O'Neill fired one past the glove of Nittany Lion freshman net-minder Noah Grannan (Germantown, Wis.) for the 2-1 score at the 18:03 mark.
- St. Thomas evened the score midway through the middle frame as Ethan Gauer unleashed a one-timer from the high-slot that found its way through traffic and into the back of the net for the 2-2 score at 9:13.
- The teams then went nearly 35 minutes without a goal which set the table for Mcmenamin's heroics after back-to-back crucial saves by Grannan at one end, McMenamin collected the puck in his own zone and skated coast-to-coast beating his defender and then Tommie goaltender Aaron Trotter through the five-hole with just 20.6 seconds remaining in overtime to secure the 3-2 win.
GOALTENDING
Grannan improves to 2-0-0 on the year after collecting 27 saves in the victory while Trotter falls to 1-4-0 on the campaign after stopping 30-of-33 shots in the defeat.
NOTES
- Penn State held the slim 33-29 edge in shots on goal while going 0-for-1 on the powerplay as the Nittany Lions have now failed to score a man-advantage tally in four-straight games after starting the season 50 percent over the first two games. St. Thomas went 1-for-3 on the powerplay.
- The victory for Penn State marks the 100th in Pegula Ice Arena history as the Nittany Lions are now 100-54-14 all-time on Pegula ice.
- The Nittany Lions are now 6-0-0 to start the season matching the best start in program history from the 2018-19 season.
- A few Nittany Lions saw their career-long point-streaks come to an end as senior Ture Linden (Great Falls, Va.) was kept off the stat sheet for the first time in his Penn State career and sophomore Ben Schoen (Maumee, Ohio) also failed to secure a point snapping an eight-game point streak.
- Junior Jimmy Dowd Jr. (Point Pleasant Beach N.J.) collected the primary assist on Copeland's goal and he now has points in five of the first six games of the season and has moved into eighth all-time in points by a defenseman at Penn State with 38 now for his career.
- Penn State is now 4-0-0 all-time against St. Thomas while improving to 45-14-4 all-time in the month of October.
POSTGAME QUOTABLES
Opening Statement:
After the first half of the first period, I have to be honest, I think St. Thomas took it to us in pretty much every single way. They deserved better because they certainly won more pucks than we did. They beat us to pucks. They played harder and you have to give them a ton of credit. I think we know it, so I hope we can learn from this. It sure is nice to hopefully learn a lesson with coming away from a win. You can't overlook it, a great save in overtime. What an incredible gutsy goal by a great leader that was awesome to see. We'll take it and hopefully learn and move on.
Q: Guy there was definitely a point like you said in the game where St. Thomas just absolutely took over. That was where you went on the power play from that interference call in the second period, and then just kind of flatlined there, how do you work on that for your next series when you have to play a Big Ten team and you can't really afford it?
A: While you're 100% correct, I think it turned a little before that. I think that once that happened, everybody thought, "Okay, well we're going to score and then we're going to be good." And when we didn't, we didn't have the appropriate response. Like I said, I think we can learn from this. It's sometimes hard to learn when you don't get burnt. When you touch the stove, you don't get burned, you may do it again, kind of hoping that we didn't get burned, but we should've. I think we know. It's going to be up to our staff to make sure that we learn the lessons that we need to learn. I believe in the leadership, and they knew it. You could feel it in the room. It wasn't jubilation, we knew we got away with one. I think the staff has work to do but I think regardless of that it's really going to take the leaders to really make sure that we do learn from those. That's what it's going to take.
Q: I thought Noah [Grannan] played a great game. Let in two goals but had a lot of great saves. What has your coaching staff done to work with him between his first start and tonight?
A: We are fortunate now, Coach Juliano Pagliero is a goaltending coach. He works with all the goaltenders. It's not just the work. I think this was one very valuable experience because he's going to go in again. It's going to be against teams in our league with a ton of firepower and I think this experience is going to serve him well for whenever that is. To answer your question, we have a goaltending coach that works with him, but I think the most important part of this is the experience that he had. I'm happy that he came away with a win because I agree with you, I think he deserved it.
Q: One of those leaders that's on this team is Connor McMenamin. He definitely stepped up in the series having, the game winning goal tonight. Can you kind of just give some insight into what he brings to the ice?
A: He's been like that every year. He's absolutely been a leader. He's been a captain every single year, everywhere he's gone. He does it in such a mature, leader way. To be honest, he's one of the quieter guys, but you can tell by the way he plays. He has so much respect and he plays the game right. He always has from day one. His habits are excellent. He plays for the team, every little thing that is hard to do consistently. Some guys will do it occasionally. Really good players will do it a lot. Big time leaders will do it consistently and he's one of those. I'm talking about short shifts, backchecking, blocking shots. He did get the Thor hammer tonight. Not for the goals, but for the shots that he blocked and that tells you a lot right there.
Q: Coach, obviously, St. Thomas played a phenomenal game, especially in the latter half. You said earlier you guys got burnt and maybe shouldn't have escaped with the win. What are the takeaways you take from this game? What do you bring with you as you get ready to head into Wisconsin next?
A: I want to start with the positive. One of the takeaways that we have from here is at the end of the day, they figured out a way to win and we had an unbelievable play by a great leader to win us a game that we maybe shouldn't have won. That's a nice feeling to have. That's a big positive. I think that's the biggest takeaway. There are obviously some lessons to be learned. I think some of it is, it's a mentality-based thing that's hard to bring every day and that would be the others. I'm not going to say you don't have one meeting and all of a sudden you have it; I think it takes experiences like this to help you.
NEXT UP
Penn State begins Big Ten play next weekend as they travel to Madison to battle the Wisconsin Badgers on Friday and Saturday evening. Puck drop is slated for 8 p.m. ET both nights with streaming available on B1G+.
For more information on the 2022-23 season presented by the Penn State Bookstore: Official Bookstore of Penn State Athletics, visit the men's hockey page at GoPSUsports.com or call 1-800-NITTANY Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.