Game Gab - Nightly Post-Game Analysis
Come here after the games for analysis and insights from CHN Staff members.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Yale 6, St. Lawrence 1 - Friday, March 15, 2013
After allowing the first goal, Yale still wound up outshooting St. Lawrence, 48-13. Andrew Miller had two goals and two assists, while his linemates Jesse Root and Kenny Agostino added a goal and two assists. “Sometimes when you come out and play that way but they get the first goal, it can change the momentum,” Yale coach Keith Allain said. “What I’m most proud of was that it didn’t change the momentum at all, and that’s a testament to the character in that locker room. If you are going to be successful in our league, you have to handle adversity.”
“We haven’t had the best first periods or first games (in the playoffs during his four years),” said Miller. “We had an opportunity to jump on them early with a quick start, but we got down 1-0. When everything is going right and you are outplaying them, you hope to be on top. But that’s hockey. We just stuck to our system and made the plays.”
Saturday, March 9, 2013
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.”
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Rensselaer 4, St. Lawrence 1 - Saturday, March 2, 2013
RPI swept Clarkson and St. Lawrence to solidify its spot in second place, and take a nice leap in the Pairwise. The Engineers now get the bye for the ECACs, and can rest up. A quarterfinal series win should be enough to get them to the NCAAs for the second time in three years, which would be a huge accomplishment. Not many thought RPI was ready to rise back towards the top of the league again after last year's dropoff.
St. Lawrence is in the opposite boat. It was looking good after a nice streak, in position for a bye, in position for the NCAAs. Then it went out and got swept this weekend. It didn't help that star senior captain Kyle Flanagan was forced to miss the weekend after his emergency appendectomy on Tuesday. The double whammy is that now, without the bye, the Saints will probably be without Flanagan again next weekend when they face Colgate in Canton.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Dartmouth 3, St. Lawrence 2 - Saturday, February 23, 2013
A sorely-needed win for Dartmouth, which lost Friday to Clarkson. These teams effectively flip-flopped spots in the volatile Pairwise based on this game alone. St. Lawrence made a big leap up to No. 15 as of Saturday morning, riding a nice hot streak after defeating Harvard on Friday. Meanwhile, Dartmouth's loss knocked it right off the bubble. But this flipped things around -- with Dartmouth back on the right side of the bubble and SLU falling back down to the 20s. Not to mention this pulls Dartmouth back within one point of St. Lawrence in the tightly-compacted ECAC standings, with bunches of teams fighting for spots 2-3-4.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
St. Lawrence 3, Princeton 2 - Saturday, February 16, 2013
St. Lawrence has been playing well lately, and the culmination of that was Friday's win at Quinnipiac. It snapped the Bobcats' 21-game unbeaten streak. But Saturday's win is impressive too, because the team didn't have a letdown, jumping out to a 3-0 lead and then holding on, on the road. Greg Carey -- the nation's leading goal scorer -- had two on Friday and another on Saturday, and now has 23 on the season.
Princeton was hurt by missing top goaltender Mike Condon for both games. Condon got sick Friday and was unable to play. It contributed to Friday's loss, when Clarkson scored a couple of soft ones en route to a comeback win.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
St. Lawrence 4, Union 2 - Saturday, February 9, 2013
Any time I've ever seen a coach pull goaltenders in and out multiple times in games, and/or in frequent numbers of games, it's a bad sign. This hasn't been a frequent occurrence for Union yet, but it's something to keep an eye on. Troy Grosenick was pulled from Friday's loss to Clarkson. And in this game, Grosenick, who was one of the many great success stories in Union's Frozen Four run last year, was pulled for just over three and a half minutes, and then re-inserted. Union tried to rally after that, but it fell short. “(We) thought we’d change it back up," Union coach Rick Bennett said to the Schenectady Gazette. "(Grosenick's) proven he deserves a fair shake. But now it’s back to an open ballgame at practice."
Union was victimized by St. Lawrence's strong power play. “We were all over them on the first shift,” Bennett said. “Then we decide that we had it in their zone too long, so we wanted to turn it over. And we spent two more minutes in our zone, and just created a big scene. That led to an avalanche.”
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
St. Lawrence 4, Harvard 3 - Saturday, January 26, 2013
George Hughes' goal at 3:37 of overtime gave St. Lawrence the win, a sweep on the road of the weekend at Dartmouth and Harvard, and a four-game unbeaten streak. Greg Carey scored in each game, and now has 16. Friday's game was more impressive, scoring three unanswered goals in the third to pull out a 4-2 win against the Big Green. Harvard is a team that is struggling mightily, getting trounced by Clarkson on Friday. A bright spot was Jimmy Vesey, who scored twice for the Crimson.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
St. Lawrence 3, Clarkson 3 - Saturday, January 19, 2013
These two teams may not be battling for anything more than North Country pride this season, but it's still as heated, and exciting a rivalry as there is in college hockey. An overflow crowd packed into Cheel Arena, saw the home team fall behind 3-0, only to storm back to tie in the third period, in perhaps its best outing of the season. "I thought we had a lot of scoring chances in the course of the game," Clarkson coach Casey Jones said. "Down 3-0, the team stayed the course real well. We were pushing for the win, so it stings a little bit not to get it, but coming back from a 3-0 deficit, we'll buy that. ... We're going to use it as a stepping stone -- we wanted to use the environment here to propel us. ... We stuck to our game plan for large portions of the third period, where in the past, when we fell behind, we didn't. So that was huge to our growth as a team."
Saturday, January 5, 2013
St. Lawrence 4, RIT 3 - Saturday, January 5, 2013
St. Lawrence won the 1,000th game in the program's history, getting a split of the two-game weekend set with RIT.
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Clarkson 3, St. Lawrence 1 - Saturday, December 8, 2012
After a good start, St. Lawrence has fallen on hard times a bit, with three straight losses and a 2-6-2 mark in the last 10. Both losses this week were to rival Clarkson, this one coming in what was a non-league game played at Lake Placid. A crowd of 5,000, many making their way through the Adirondacks from the North Country, attended the game. It was a bunch of freshmen who stood out for Clarkson. Simon Bessette had a goal and an assist, while classmate Jeff DiNallo scored the game winner. And freshman goaltender Greg Lewis was sharp again, making 25 stops.
"Both teams laid it out there. It was a great rivalry game," Clarkson coach Casey Jones said. "(Lewis) initially was trying to get settled into the position. ... He's been in a groove, he's confident, and it's impressive as a freshman. He's nice and composed back there."
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Quinnipiac 6, St. Lawrence 2 - Saturday, November 17, 2012
Quinnipiac remained unbeaten in ECAC play (4-0) as it completely dominated St. Lawrence on its own rink. Jeremy Langlois scored twice, and it was 6-0 before the Saints got late goals from Greg Carey and Ryan Flanagan. More good news for Quinnipiac, as Connor Jones got his first goal of the season. It follows a 5-2 thrashing of Clarkson on Friday. Keep playing like this, and we're all just going to make believe those gruesome losses a few weeks ago to American International and Robert Morris just never happened.
Meanwhile, St. Lawrence, which tied Princeton on Friday, has yet to win in ECAC play (0-2-2) after a strong non-league start. It's still a team finding its way, and you knew it wasn't going to be as easy as it looked early on.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Yale 4, St. Lawrence 2 - Saturday, November 10, 2012
Yale figured out how to keep Kyle Flanagan and Greg Carey off the score sheet, the first team this year to do that to St. Lawrence, and that was the difference. Andrew Miller scored twice for the Bulldogs. St. Lawrence came away with just one point on the weekend -- we'll see if it's just a temporary setback or not to what's been a strong start.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
St. Lawrence 3, Alabama-Huntsville 1 - Saturday, November 3, 2012
A rather easy couple of wins for St. Lawrence this weekend against UAH. The bigger news was Joe Marsh Night, the long-time head coach who retired last spring, and was honored over the weekend. See our recent Q&A with Marsh.
Yale 3, St. Lawrence 0 - Saturday, March 16, 2013
It's not that stunning that Yale won this series, but the way it completed dominated St. Lawrence, a team that has been playing well, was not expected. Yale got goals from three different players and limited the opposition to 17 shots, and was 6-for-6 on the penalty kill. St. Lawrence scored just one goal on the series despite coming in with two of the nation's top scorers. "Very pleased with the way our guys played all six periods. Tonight they had us under the gun, more than last night,” Yale coach Keith Allain said. “Their power play is the absolute strength of their hockey team. For us to keep them off the board on that was a real momentum swing for us.” ... Yale had to kill off a five-minute major penalty to Clinton Bourbonais. “That was a huge momentum swing. Everybody was really up on it, and we didn’t get down on ourselves. We pulled through and were very successful,” said Tommy Fallen. Allain was impressed with senior goalie Jeff Malcolm's performance. “The shot totals were low tonight, but they had some really good chances. They have some guys who can really shoot the puck." ... “We really went out and executed everything our coaches talked about,” said Fallen.
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