The St. Thomas men’s hockey team (1-1-1) came up short against Concordia-Moorhead (3-1) in Saturday’s  home opener in Mendota Heights, losing 2-1.

The Tommies and the Cobbers played neck-in-neck from the start, showing a lot of energy in the scoreless first period.

Concordia-Moorhead freshman Brian Kang scored first 4:49 into the second period on a power play.

St. Thomas senior Nick Gorski was hit hard toward the end of the second period but answered back with a goal to tie the score at 1-1.

“I mean a hit’s a hit, it happens all the time in the game,” Gorski said. “We bounced back, we rebounded.”

Concordia-Moorhead’s winning goal, scored by Kang, came seven minutes into the third period and left the Tommies unable to answer.

St. Thomas coach Jeff Boeser was disappointed with the loss and the amount of penalties the team committed.

“A lot of them were stick penalties,” he said. “That is just laziness, and we need to correct that.”

Junior goalie Tyrone Simcoe had 21 saves for the Tommies compared to 27 saves by Chris Neamonitis.

Despite the loss, junior goalie Tyrone Simcoe was optimistic about the team’s performance.

“I’m not happy about letting up two goals and getting the loss,” he said. “We could have done better with controlling the rebounds, but the defense is one unit. We’re one team out there, so I think I picked up some boys at some point, and they helped me pick myself up so it’s a whole team effort.”

Boeser cites the lack of scoring as one of the main reasons for Saturday night’s loss.

“We have to score some goals to win so we have to have some guys start stepping it up,” Boeser said. “We’ll just go back to work on Monday and see if we can start creating a little more offensive momentum and start to score more.”

The Tommies face the Johnnies in Collegeville on Friday night and at home on Saturday.

Jessica Barton can be reached at bart2049@stthomas.edu.