![\"St.](\"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/images\/headshots\/20042005\/stthomas_z_sikich.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFor the Tommies, the road hasn’t always been smooth, but Skrypek said he has been impressed with how his team has stuck together despite injuries — including losing star forward Dustan Lick — and changes between the pipes. Near midseason, Skrypek moved netminder Kevin Hennessey into a starting role, taking over for fellow senior Zach Sikich. In the following weeks, the move turned out to be a good one for St. Thomas.<\/p>\n
“Zach is just an outstanding goaltender. But a lot of times seniors have a lot on their mind and I think Zach lost his focus,” Skrypek said. “He had to sit back and watch and correct mistakes.”<\/p>\n
Though Hennessey helped guide St. Thomas through their MIAC semifinal win against Bethel, Skrypek felt Sikich was ready to return and started him in the past two games with St. John’s. Sikich has been outstanding since the change, allowing only two goals on 69 total shots.<\/p>\n
The overall depth of the Tommies at forward has helped, said Skrypek, but especially in the case of Matt Kaiser, who has pitched in with five points since the MIAC playoffs began.<\/p>\n
![\"St.](\"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/images\/colorscans\/20032004\/ncaa3_stnorb_deitch.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFor the Green Knights, there are no glaring weaknesses. From the solid goaltending of Kyle Jones to the offensive production of forwards Jason Deitsch, Connor Hughes and Spencer Carbery, St. Norbert is clearly a favorite to win it all. Coghlin, however, is not willing to take any chances.<\/p>\n
“They’re a program that knows how to win,” Coghlin said of the Tommies. “If you look at what they’ve done in past years in the playoffs, they’ve gotten some very big wins. We saw them play St. John’s in their regular season and they lost. [But] our assistant coach who saw the game thought [St. Thomas was] the more talented team.”<\/p>\n
When asked if his team had a hungrier mindset after their championship loss last year, Coghlin said things are still up in the air in that regard.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if we’ll know that until we get back to the Frozen Four,” said Coghlin.<\/p>\n
Skrypek said his team will try and take the same disciplined approach against St. Norbert. While the Tommies appear to be relishing the challenge of playing the nation’s top-ranked team, they know that another near-flawless game will be needed.<\/p>\n
“You can’t take penalties against good teams,” said Skrypek, who added that such an effort could only be accomplished collectively by St. Thomas. “We always say that we don’t have our names on the back, we play for the team name on the front. We’ll have to play a team game to win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As we head to the quarterfinals of the big show, a couple of surprise teams find themselves going head to head. That St. Norbert and St. Thomas are facing each other this weekend in the D-III NCAA tournament isn’t all that surprising. However, it’s safe to say that the way in which they’ve won their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n