MIAC MEN'S HOCKEY PLAYOFF PAGE
The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference has set the start times for the conference's men's hockey playoffs, with Augsburg's playoff run set to begin this Friday afternoon at Gustavus.
The Auggies will travel to the Don Roberts Ice Rink in St. Peter, Minn., to take on Gustavus in the conference's first-round "play-in" game on Friday (2/25) at 4 p.m. Also on Friday in St. Peter, the Auggie women's hockey team will face Gustavus in the first game of their weekend series at 7 p.m.
The winner of Friday's game will face top-seed Hamline in the semifinals on Saturday (2/26) at 2 p.m. at the Warner Coliseum on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul. Saturday's other semifinal will pit No. 3-seed Concordia-Moorhead at No. 2-seed St. Thomas at the St. Thomas Arena in Mendota Heights, Minn., at 7 p.m.
The semifinal winners will meet on Wednesday, March 2 in the championship game at the site of the highest remaining seed, with the winner earning the MIAC's automatic bid to the NCAA Division III national playoffs.
All Augsburg games in the men's hockey playoffs will be
webcast live on Augsburg's athletic website, through the GameCentral portal, with Tom Witschen on the call.
This is the third straight year, and fourth time in the last five years, that Augsburg has reached the MIAC men's hockey playoffs. Augsburg finished the regular season 14-8-3 overall, 8-6-2 in MIAC play. The Auggies will enter the playoffs on a seven-game unbeaten streak (6-0-1), including six straight victories. The seven-game unbeaten streak is the fifth-longest active unbeaten streak in all of NCAA Division III men's hockey, according to the
Collegehockeystats.net website.
Last season,
Augsburg and Gustavus met in the playoff semifinals in a game that ended up being the longest in NCAA Division III history -- and what is now the third-longest in all divisions in NCAA men's hockey history. Gustavus ended up winning 6-5 in four overtimes (138:38 of game action), and Augsburg goalie
Justin Lochner set an NCAA all-divisions record with 98 saves.
Augsburg played two multi-overtime games in last season's MIAC playoffs, with a
two-overtime 3-2 win over St. Olaf in the playoff opener -- the fourth-longest game in Division III men's hockey history. In a span of 28-and-a-half hours, Augsburg played the equivalent of nearly four complete 60-minute regulation games.
