Augsburg 5, St. Thomas 4

Todd Cary scored three goals and Augsburg rallied from a 3-0 deficit to score a 5-4 victory over St. Thomas Friday night at the Bloomington Ice Garden in the opening game of the MIAC hockey playoff finals.

The teams play again Saturday at 4 p.m. Augsburg (18-6-4) needs a tie or a win or a mini-game win to claim the best-of-two series and the automatic berth to the NCAA playoffs. St. Thomas needs to win in order to force a 20 minute mini-game to keep its hopes alive.

The Tommies (20-6-2) led 1-0 after the first period on Ryan Hartung's goal. The Toms added two power-play goals by Eric Darwitz and Steve Aronson for a 3-0 lead midway through the second period. Augsburg answered with two power-play goals by Blumer and Cary to pull within 3-2 after two periods.

Auggie Martin Hlinka's goal tied the game three minutes into the final period. Cary put Augsburg ahead to stay with two goals minutes later for a 5-3 lead. UST's Justin Gese scored the final goal of the game with 10 minutes to play but the Toms never overcame Augsburg's lead.

Ryan McIntosh stopped 33 of 37 shots for the Auggies, who are 15-1-1 since early January. Chad Villagomez stopped 24 of 29 shots for UST, which had a 12 game unbeaten streak (10-0-2) halted.