Game Gab - Nightly Post-Game Analysis
Come here after the games for analysis and insights from CHN Staff members.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Brown 5, Colgate 1 - Saturday, March 2, 2013
Brown finishes seventh with the win and losses by Cornell and Clarkson, its highest finish since the 2004-05 season. Brown will face Clarkson in the first round. “I actually thought we played better against Cornell,” said Brown coach Brendan Whittet, referring to Friday's loss. “They were buzzing ... they had a lot of energy. I thought we were on our heels a little bit. But again, we did what we needed to do and it was nice to get some puck luck, which we created, but we had some seeing-eye shots, things were going in. ... We chip away, we do some really good things. It’s a tribute to the guys. To get that win; to have 11 wins on the season; I am more impressed that we only lost 12 games out of 29. We did a lot of good things. Guys really, really stuck together. They came together, they played with a lot of heart and they battled for each other. That’s all you can ask.”
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Rensselaer 3, Colgate 2 - Saturday, February 23, 2013
Colgate got an inspirational win over Union on Friday, as Spiro Goulakos scored the game winner in his first home game since returning to the lineup. Last month, Goulakos was diagnosed with cancer, and has started treatment, but has been able to return to the lineup. ... It was followed up, however, with a heartbreaking loss, as Matt Neal scored in the closing seconds of overtime. That helped RPI go back into second place, because St. Lawrence lost, and made up partially for Friday's loss at Cornell.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Quinnipiac 3, Colgate 2 - Saturday, February 9, 2013
Big setback for Colgate this weekend, losing to QU and Princeton. Despite hovering around .500 in the ECAC, Colgate was within striking distance of the NCAAs coming into the weekend. But the Raiders dropped quite a bit back in the pack now, and are 10th in the ECAC. Losing defenseman Spiro Goulakos to cancer surgery was obviously a huge setback, both for the team and emotionally.
Meanwhile, ho-hum, Quinnipiac rolls right along, with 21 straight unbeaten now and four home games coming up. The Bobcats dismantled Cornell on Friday, and got two goals from Kellen Jones in this one to handle Colgate. Quinnipiac remains No. 1 in all the metrics that matter. Are the Bobcats "for real?" What does that even mean? Leave it up to the chat rooms to debate it. We'll find out on the ice in March.
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Colgate 3, St. Lawrence 3 - Saturday, February 2, 2013
Greg Carey scored his nation's-best 18th goal for St. Lawrence, but the Saints lost a 3-1 lead and settled for the tie in Hamilton. They get three points, after winning at Cornell on Friday.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Colgate 4, Yale 1 - Saturday, January 26, 2013
Yale got a stirring overtime win at Lynah Rink on Friday, moving all the way up to third in the Pairwise when Saturday began. But it couldn't finish out the weekend, as Colgate scored four unanswered goals to get a weekend sweep of its own. Freshman twins Tyson and Tylor Spink each scored in the win, the third time they have done that. Yale is still in plenty good shape. Look out for Colgate, though. It's playing pretty well, and if it can stay hot, it's within striking distance of the NCAAs. The Raiders have a bunch of good young scorers, with a lot of good complementary players, and a strong defense. “We showed great poise against a great team,” Colgate coach Don Vaughan said. “We thought they would come hard in transition and we handled it very well tonight. We had some individuals step up tonight and in a game like this, your great players need to make plays. We had a excellent effort up and down the lineup and I thought we played are most complete game of the year so far.”
Kevin Lough added his first career goal for Colgate. “Lough’s goal really ignited our bench and a couple of power plays helped out as well,” said Vaughan. “I thought our guys just kept coming at them and we were still rolling back our third guy to stop the odd-man rush. A lot of great individual all-around efforts tonight and I’m proud of our guys."
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Colgate 5, Massachusetts 2 - Saturday, December 8, 2012
Colgate got a pair of goals from freshman Tylor Spink in Friday's 6-4 win, while brother Tyson picked up the power-play game winner as part of a four-goal third period for the Raiders in Saturday's win. Kurtis Bartliff also scored twice, and Kyle Baun picked up goal No. 7, as the Raiders continue to get offense from all over the place. Goalie Spencer Finney shook off the bad start. “I knew after the rebound on the second goal he was mad at himself,” Colgate coach Don Vaughan. “He gathered his thoughts and from that moment on, he wanted to prove something and started to see the puck a lot better and was challenging more.” ... “Bartliff played a really strong game,” said Vaughan. “His goal in the third to tie it up really turned the momentum in our favor and after that we really controlled the puck offensively.”
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Colgate 1, Harvard 0 - Saturday, November 17, 2012
Friday, Robbie Bourdon's hat trick gave Colgate a stunning come-from-behind win over Dartmouth. Saturday, the scrappy Raiders proved they could play defense too. Spencer Finney got the start and made 25 saves for his first career shutout. “I’m happy for Spencer, coming in and getting a shutout against a really good team in his first season,” said Colgate head coach Don Vaughan. “He made a big save at the end with their goalie pulled and secured the win for us.”
Harvard came out with an emotional 4-1 win Friday at Lynah Rink in Ithaca, but couldn't sustain the momentum.
Friday, a line switch helped spark Colgate. Joe Wilson jumped onto the line with Kurtis Bartliff and Mike Borkowski, while Bourdon was paired with John Lidgett and Darcy Murphy. “It seemed to light a fire under Wilson,” said Vaughan. “When he is skating like it’s hard for team’s to contain him and he did a great job controlling the play in the offensive zone. ... Robbie is just a goal scorer, that's what he does. ... I got to give credit to our two senior captains in the lineup -- Jeremy Price and Thomas Larkin. Price was great (Friday) not only on the ice, but on the bench as well. He kept a lot of guys focused and both captains did an exceptional job stepping up."
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Princeton 4, Colgate 0 - Saturday, November 10, 2012
After starting the season with a couple of losses, Princeton opened league play Friday by doing a tremendous job against Cornell. Princeton came out relentless, taking a 2-0 lead, before Cornell rallied in the third for three straight goals as the Tigers began to wilt. But somehow Princeton got off the deck and rallied for the next two goals to win the game -- a big win for the team's hopes this season. So, the fact that Princeton followed it up as it did was a very good sign.
Meanwhile, Colgate managed just 22 shots, one night after getting only 10 against Quinnipiac. Colgate was finding offense from all sorts of places until this weekend, when it came up empty with an overtime loss and then getting shut out.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Colgate 2, Cornell 2 - Saturday, November 3, 2012
One night after being outplayed in a win, Cornell played better but had to rally with two third-period goals to tie Colgate, and remain unbeaten at 3-0-1. The "highlight" of the game, if you will, was a post-game fracas, after Colgate freshman Tyson Spink took a shot well after the final buzzer in overtime. The teams again traded shoves, perhaps punches, after the handshake line, with Colgate coach Don Vaughan even getting in a shouting match with Cornell assistant Ben Syer. It was an unfortunate conclusion to a hard-fought weekend between the two. ... Cornell was without forward John Esposito, who was hurt part of last season, too. The team has been expecting big things out of his return, but he had a setback in practice this past week.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Colgate 5, Quinnipiac 1 - Saturday, October 27, 2012
A solid win from Colgate against a Quinnipiac team that had been playing very well so far this season. Colgate wasn't sure where the offense would come from heading into the season, but it has managed to get it from all over so far.
St. Lawrence 4, Colgate 1 - Saturday, March 9, 2013
Ryan Flanagan was able to return to the lineup this weekend, just 10 days after emergency appendectomy surgery. His absence last weekend, contributed to St. Lawrence missing out on a first-round bye. But his return definitely contributed to the two-game sweep of Colgate. Saturday, Flanagan scored early, and later helped set up Greg Carey's 28th goal of the season, and the Saints never looked back.
Colgate, meanwhile, had a funny season. It opened the year with questions about how it would replace all the goal scoring it lost from last year's team, but scoring was never a problem. The Raiders had some good non-league wins, and were even in good Pairwise position coming down the stretch, but were never able to put it all together in the league. Continued goaltending inconsistency contributed to it. “It’s a funny game; you have to work for your breaks,” Colgate coach Don Vaughan said. “But if you look back at how we lost a couple of games, the hockey gods weren’t shining on us. We had some tough overtime losses, just a bounce of the puck. Even tonight, we hit two posts. They go the other way and you gain a little momentum from that. Sometimes they go in and sometimes they don’t.”
St. Lawrence's power play led the way, and Flanagan's assist on Carey's goal was the 100th of his career. “Their best players were their best players in this series,” Vaughan said. “Flanagan and Carey and (Jeremy) Wick, and (George) Hughes played phenomenal for them on the back end. It’s the ECAC and anybody can win it, but if that St. Lawrence plays the way they did this weekend then they’re going to be in the mix.”
Still, Colgate seems to have a bright future if it can settle the goaltending. “We’ve got a great group of young kids and they’re only going to get better,” Vaughan said. “This experience will help them.”
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