Dec. 12: The St. Lawrence University first line of sophomore Mike Marnell and seniors Brian Ward and Tommy Thompson combined for all four Saint goals and sophomore goaltender Kyle Hayton made 20 of his 41 saves in the third period as the 13th-ranked Saints turned back the University of Vermont 4-1 in a NCAA Division I hockey game at Appleton Arena Saturday night.
Thompson moved up to join Marnell and Ward and scored his first goal since the season opener and had a two-point night and Marnell had his second two-goal game of the season. Two of the four Saint goals came on the power play, which had been struggling, while the Saints killed three of four Vermont man-up chances.
The win gave the Saints a split of the home and home series with the Catamounts and snapped a seven-game losing streak and two-game shutout streak at the hands of UVM. SLU improves to 10-5-2 at the mid-point of its season, the best record for the Saints at the December break since 2005-06 while Vermont, which shut the Saints out 4-0 in Burlington on Friday, is now 5-11-2.
“We bounced back from last night and played very well for 60 minutes,” said Saint coach Greg Carvel. “Outside of Kyle having to make some big saves in the third period, I think five on five we didn’t give up much.
“We weren’t happy with the way we played last night and I thought we would come out and play well tonight and that is just what happened,” Carvel added.
Marnell scored his fifth and sixth goals of the season to stake the Saints to a 2-0 lead in the first period. The first came on a Saint power play off a good goal-mouth feed from Ward at 7:31 and the second came as he collected a rebound of a Thompson shot and tucked it behind Vermont rookie goalie Packy Munson at 13:20.
Thompson made it a 3-0 game as he put back a rebound of his own shot after Munson stopped Sean McGovern in close at 13:45 of the second, but the Cats stayed in it when Jarrid Privitera scored his eighth of the year from the top of the blue on a power play with 52 seconds to go in the second period.
Ward gave the Saints their 4-1 lead on a power play 2:48 into the third and Hayton took it from there, turning back everything Vermont threw his way as the Catamounts peppered the Saint goal in an attempt to cut the margin.
Munson finished with 28 saves for the Catamounts as UVM outshot the Saints 42-32.
“While the shots were in Vermont’s favor, I think the scoring chances were in ours. The power play looked real good and I think we could have scored a couple more on it. A lot of good things happened tonight and its nice to go into the holidays on a win.”
