It took St. Lawrence University’s men’s hockey team the better part of a period to shake off the rust from a long layoff on Friday night, and by the time it did, Northeastern had control en route a 3-0 upset of the 13th-ranked Saints at Appleton Arena.
The Northeastern line of juniors Sam Kurker and Brendan Collier and freshman Lincoln Griffin collaborated for two goals in a span of just under seven minutes of the first period and freshman goalie Ryan Ruck made them stand up as the Saints were shut out on Friday night for the second Friday outing in a row.
The Huskies won just their fourth of the season and are 4-12-4 overall, but improved their record to 3-1-2 in their last six with four of the games coming against ranked teams including three against top three teams. St. Lawrence, coming off a 26-day layoff, drops to 10-6-2 overall heading into a Saturday night rematch.
“The first ten minutes showed that it is tough to find your gear again when you have been off as long as we have, so it was not totally unexpected and we picked it up for the next 30 minutes,” said Saint coach Greg Carvel. “The third period was disappointing…we didn’t have enough desperation. They played well defensively and their goaltender made a couple of saves, but we didn’t make him work as hard as we should have.”
Griffin scored his second goal of the season just 3:08 into the game as he picked up his own rebound and snapped a wrist shot inside the far post from Collier and Kurker to give Northeastern the early lead and Kurker made it a 2-0 game just two seconds after a NU power play had expired as he scored his third of the year with Griffin and Collier assisting.
St. Lawrence, which was outshot 8-3 in the first 16 minutes of the game, showed signs of shaking the rust with four shots in the last four minutes of the first and pressured Northeastern in the second, but couldn’t get anything past Ruck despite some good opportunities.
“I didn’t think we gave up too much,” said Carvel. “Their first two goals came before we were able to get our feet under us and then they packed it in defensively. We had a handful of scoring chances and we needed that one goal to kind of break the gate open, but we just couldn’t get it. Hopefully tomorrow night we can get this game out of us and find our game again. We have a lot of games coming up quickly and we want to get back on track.”
Northeastern settled things in the third period and kept the Saints at bay while putting 15 shots on Saint goalie Kyle Hayton, who finished with 28 stops for the night. The Huskies added an empty net goal with 1:35 to play as Mike McMurtry scored his third of the year.
Ruck finished with 24 saves for his first collegiate shutout.
