Lucas Punkari
As St. Cloud State prepares for tomorrow’s “Frozen Four” semi-final in Pittsburgh against the Quinnipiac Bobcats, sophomore goalie and Fort Frances native Ryan Faragher already is sensing the buzz amongst Huskie fans as the team looks to win its first-ever national title.
“There is a lot of excitement throughout the campus and I think the guys are ready to go,” the 22-year-old said before he and his teammates departed for Pittsburgh yesterday.
“We’ve been getting a lot of tweets from the fans and we are having a pep rally here before we go, and I think it will be building gradually before the game,” he noted.
“It’s been pretty fun.”
The Huskies, who had never been to the “Frozen Four” since they moved into the NCAA Division I men’s hockey ranks in 1987, punched their ticket to the semi-finals with a 4-1 win over the Miami (Ohio) Redhawks in the Midwest Regional final March 31 in Toledo.
“It’s something that we’ve been working towards all year, and it’s important not just for us but for the program itself,” Faragher explained.
“They’ve had some good teams here over the last 10 years and they haven’t been able to get there to the ‘Frozen Four,’ though they’ve been so close a few times,” he noted.
“The alumni were so excited that we were able to do that, and I haven’t seen my coach [Bob Motzko] smile as much as he did after won over Miami,” Faragher added.
The road to the “Frozen Four” was an eventful one for the Huskies, who endured many twists and turns on their way to becoming one of the four teams still vying for the national title.
After a slow start to the second half of the WCHA season, the Huskies were red-hot in conference play during the final month of the regular season, finishing in a tie for first place in the conference standings and sharing the MacNaughton Cup trophy with the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
“We came out of the Christmas break a little bit rusty against the non-conference teams, and we didn’t play at all like we wanted to,” Faragher admitted.
“We knew that we had to regroup as a team and we had a team meeting with the players where we said, ‘If we want to make a run for things this year and if we want this to be a special year, we need to figure out what we are doing wrong,’” he recalled.
“It came down to the guys getting back to basics, and we were able to sweep Denver at home and we then took three out of four points in North Dakota.
“And from them on, we played our best hockey going into the playoffs,” he added.
Faragher, who is studying for his history education major at St. Cloud State, also played a key role in his team’s success, wrapping up his second WCHA regular season with a 20-12-1 record and a 2.34 GAA.
“I think my focus for the second half was up another level from the beginning of the year,” he noted.
“It just came down to how I prepared during the week in practices, and I was also taking time throughout the week to focus on the team that we were playing by watching videos and things like that.
“During the games, I just focused on myself and I didn’t worry about if the guys were having a bad game because I could change that by making a key save that would help to get the guys going,” Faragher reasoned.
Having entered the WCHA playoffs as the top seed, the Huskies used home-ice advantage to the fullest against the Alaska Anchorage Seawolves, sweeping them aside in two-straight games.
“They [Seawolves] had some injuries and they were a bit younger than most teams, but you couldn’t take them lightly as they would sneak up on you and put you away,” Faragher stressed.
“On [the] Friday night, we put quite a few goals on the board and the guys were able to relax a little bit,” he recalled.
“But Saturday was a totally different game.
“They played a heck of a game and it was tight right until the third period, when we were able to get a goal that took the wind of their sails.”
That triumph earned the Huskies a spot in the WCHA “Final Five” tournament in St. Paul, where the squad was hoping to earn its second Broadmoor Trophy before they moved into the newly-formed NCHC conference next season.
However, that dream quickly was extinguished in the semi-final March 22, when St. Cloud State fell 4-1 to the Wisconsin Badgers, who went on to the win the tournament.
“It was just one of those games,” Faragher remarked.
“The first goal we gave up was kind of a soft goal on my part, as it was just a weird bounce that I didn’t get a good shift into and it ended up skipping over my pad,” he recalled.
“From then on, it was a defensive game as Wisconsin is a real defensive team,” Faragher added.
“And I think our guys kind of got frustrated as they were not able to get the shots or the looks that they wanted to.”
As a result of their early exit, the Huskies had to wait to find out if they would make the NCAA tournament as they were on the bubble to earn one of the 16 berths.
“I think once UMass-Lowell won over Boston in the Hockey East finals that Saturday night, we knew that we were in the tournament,” Faragher said.
“Everyone was really nervous before that as we were kind of just sitting around watching the other games take place,” he noted.
“But the right teams won, and we were all excited to know that we would get a second chance.”
Seeded as the fourth team in the Midwest Region, the Huskies found themselves up against the top-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the regional semi-finals in Toledo on March 30, where they scored three second-period goals en route to a 5-1 triumph.
“Our third line really blew it open for us,” Faragher recalled. “[Joey] Benik, [Cory] Thorson, and [Brooks] Bertsch all played outstanding, and they all worked hard by throwing pucks to the net.
“I think the guys just finally realized that by throwing pucks to the net and crashing the net, good things will happen, and almost every goal in that game came off a rebound,” he added.
Benik, in his freshman season with the Huskies, played a key role in their regional final victory over the Redhawks a day later, netting a pair of goals in their 4-1 triumph.
“Joey actually broke his leg in the first 10 minutes of our first practice of the year, and he didn’t play his first game until after Christmas,” Faragher noted.
“He’s just been trying to find his game, and I assume that it would be really tough coming in after missing half of the season, especially since he hadn’t played college hockey before,” he added.
“But he had a huge breakout for us last weekend.”
While his teammates were firing pucks into the opposition’s net during the regional playoffs, Faragher was strong between the pipes, making 37 saves on 39 shots over the weekend.
“I felt comfortable out there,” Faragher said. “The guys played great in front of me, so that made my job a lot easier.
“And I was getting into the right position on any tough looks I faced.”
With their win over Miami, the Huskies earned a date with Quinnipiac tomorrow at 7 p.m. (CDT), where they’ll be going up against the number-one overall seed in this year’s tournament.
“I think we just have to play our own game as we know that we are capable of beating the top teams if we are playing well,” stressed Faragher, who will have family and friends attending tomorrow’s game at the Consol Energy Center.
“They have a good defensive game and their goalie [Eric Hartzell] has some of the best numbers in the country, and he’s up for the Hobey Baker Trophy this year for a reason,” Faragher added.
“We just have to keep the puck deep and wear them out, and I think it will be a good game of up and down hockey.”
The winner of that game will go up against either the Yale Bulldogs or the UMass-Lowell River Hawks in the championship game Saturday, which will see a guaranteed first-time national championship winner.
“It’s a really unique style of playoffs for college hockey, and to have four teams all looking for the first title is something special,” Faragher remarked.
“To win a national championship is so hard as you play all season long against great teams, and if you have one little screw-up in the playoffs you are done.
“You just have to look at Yale,” he said. “They knocked off Minnesota and North Dakota to get to the semis, and those are two of the top teams in the country in my eyes.”
In addition to capturing its first national title this weekend, St. Cloud State also has a chance to win its first Hobey Baker Trophy.
Senior forward Drew LeBlanc is one of three finalists vying for the title as the best player in U.S. college hockey.
“He’s very deserving of his nomination as he works hard on the ice and he’s a great person off the ice, as he’s teaching high school right now and coming to practice afterwards,” Faragher said of LeBlanc, who is joined as a finalist by Quinnipiac’s Hartzell and Boston College forward Johnny Gaudreau.
“He was injured last year and sat out the whole season,” Faragher noted. “But he decided to come back even though he could have left school early to go pro, and that shows how much he cares about the program.
“I honestly think he has a great shot at winning it.”
