Loons goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair uses dark arts during penalty kicks in MLS Cup Playoffs

Dayne St. Clair did not make a single save in six rounds of a penalty kick shootout on Tuesday, but Minnesota United’s goalkeeper pulled out some slight tricks to try to distract Real Salt Lake players going to the spot in the MLS Cup Playoffs.

The MLS All-Star is unafraid to dabble in the game’s infamous dark arts — and it might have helped the Loons win Game 1 in penalties.

With PKs tied 2-2 through two rounds, MNUFC captain Michael Boxall’s less-than-ideal attempt was routinely saved by RSL goalie Zac MacMath. Justen Glad follows and he looked at St. Clair as the RSL defender approached the 12-yard mark. St. Clair smiled. Glad gave a brief smirk back, but his shot went soaring at least 10 rows into the stands at America First Field.

St. Clair said he and Glad have a relationship through the MLS Players Association and he tried to play off that.

“Unfortunate when you see one of your friends do poorly,” St. Clair said of Glad. “But once I cross the white lines, I don’t have many friends unless they are wearing the same colors as me.”

The Loons took a 5-4 lead with defender Jefferson Diaz converting from the spot in the sixth round, and the pressure was on RSL’s Braian Ojeda to score and extend PKs. Everyone in Sandy, Utah knew it all came down to that massive moment, but St. Clair decided to ask referee Pierre-Luc Lauziere a question:“ ‘If they miss, is it going to be over?’ ”

“Just making them kind of think about that process,” St. Clair said of his intent.

Ojeda’s PK reverberated off the crossbar. And United took a 1-0 lead in the best-of-three series.

St. Clair, a member of the Canadian men’s national team, is the loudest player on the Loons roster, and with his ultra competitiveness, he isn’t shy to take even a sliver of credit. From an opponents’ perspective, it’s easy to see how he could considered obnoxious. But there was St. Clair trying to ask the same rhetorical question to Lauziere before the fifth-round shot by Emeka Eneli. On that occasion, Lauziere sent St. Clair back to his goal line, and the RSL defender blasted a shot into the netting.

“It wasn’t so effective, obviously the guy put the ball in the top corner,” St. Clair said. “It’s just building it up, maybe making or creating doubt in their minds. I kind of obviously knew what I was doing, so he just told me to get back on my line like I normally do. But ‘keepers, unfortunately with the rules, are so unfavored in these moments, so any one percent or anything you can do to try and give yourself an advantage is something that you have to try to take, whether the risk is not always obviously there. No matter what, they’re still expected to score from that distance.”

The 6-foot-3 goalie primarily tries to bring a big presence before PKs, often extending his wingspan to look bigger in the goal frame. When it comes to actual performance, he also has had success on PKs with a 44% saves on 11 attempts in MLS regular seasons games since 2020, according to fbref.com. The rule of thumb is PKs have an expected success rate of 80%, so St. Clair said he doesn’t feel any pressure.

“A save or a miss go down as the same thing for me,” St. Clair said. “As long as the ball doesn’t cross the line, I’ve done my job. I think a lot of the work that I try to do sometimes is before.”

Best PKs?

Loons head coach Eric Ramsay was asked postgame which of his successful penalty takers stood out to him. Striker Kelvin Yeboah went first and he continued on the 3-for-3 success he had from the spot during the regular season.

Then Wil Trapp, Sang Bin Jeong, Tani Oluwaseyi and Diaz converted, in that order.

“It’s difficult to single out any individual,” Ramsay said. “I think Kelvin got us off to a really good start, hence why we put him first. We really trust him in those situations. He’s proved over the course of his time here already that he’s got the personality to handle that situation. He would have probably chosen to go last; he’s a man for a big moment. But we felt like we wanted to really get ahead, put the pressure on the opposition.”

While Yeboah continued to employ a hesitation in his run-up to the ball, Oluwaseyi had a no-nonsense strike.

So many players will pace off steps behind the ball, pause for a second or two, finalize their plans for the shot and take a deep breath before the run-up. Instead, Oluwaseyi wasted no time assessing himself or the situation and pounded it into the bottom right corner.

“You got to like that approach,” said Apple TV play-by-play announcer Max Bretos. “Everyone was waiting for the drama to stretch out and Tani was, ‘Nuh-uh, I got places to go!’ ”

Mute the noise

After the scoreless 90-minute match, Ramsay tasked assistant coach Cameron Knowles with organizing the penalty-kick takers. That was the plan all along.

“We didn’t want there to be loads of noise around the players,” Ramsay explained. “You see typically in those situations that every staff member wants their say and the players get a lot of information and we decided ahead of the practice we’ve done this week that Cam would just deal with it, the players, and we would try to eliminate any distraction that could possibly creep in.

“Whether that added affect or not, I don’t know, but it was certainly cleaner from my perspective. There was nothing that I could add, nothing that me or (assistant coach Dennis Lawrence) had talked about adding in that situation. I feel like probably that level of calmness and trust in the process stood us in a good stead.”

With their success in PKs on Tuesday, the Loons can advance to the Western Conference semifinals with a win in Game 2 on Saturday at Allianz Field.