Jan. 16: Power plays made the difference on Saturday night as Dartmouth College scored its first two goals with the man advantage and Big Green goalie Charles Grant and his defense held the Saints scoreless on three tries en route a 4-2 win over St. Lawrence in a ECAC Hockey game at Thompson Arena.
The Saints, now 10-10-2 overall and 4-5-1 in league play lost their fifth straight in their five-games-in-nine days start to the new year while Dartmouth, 8-8-1, 5-5-0 completed a weekend sweep of the North Country and has five wins in its last six starts.
The Saints had the edge in play in the first period and had a 13-6 shot advantage, but Dartmouth scored the game’s first goal when Troy Crema netted his second of the year on the first Big Green power play chance of the game at 17:40.
“I thought we played really well in the first period until we took a penalty…that slowed us down and then we got it going again, but took another penalty,” said Saint coach Greg Carvel.
“I thought there were a lot of positives in the game…we outshot them 40-20, the power play looked good and there we a lot of scoring chances. There are just a lot of little things that are jumping up and biting us right now. Their third goal was a very flukish goal and then we get a lot of chances to tie it, but when you’re in a funk you have a hard time scoring. It is frustrating, but we have to keep working.”
Dartmouth made it a 2-0 game at 4:27 of the second as Brett Patterson scored his sixth of the season on a great move and a shot to the upper corner on a power play with an extra attacker on as a second penalty was being indicated against the Saints. SLU cut the lead to 2-1 when Brian Ward scored from point blank range from Matt Purmal and Drew Smolcynski at 10:55, but Dartmouth regained its 2-1 lead when Jack Barre scored on a hard shot from the center slot after a puck bounced off a Saint skate and right onto his stick at 18:15.
Alexander Dahl scored his first goal of the season when he tucked a rebound of a shot by R.J. Gicewicz behind Grant with Woody Hudson also assisting to make it a 3-2 game at 10:21 of the third, but Brad Schierhorn scored into an empty net with just over seven seconds to play to ice the win for Dartmouth.
Kyle Hayton finished with 18 saves for the Saints while Grant had 37 for Dartmouth, 16 in the third period as the Saints had a pair of good looking power plays come up empty.
