CANTON – Princeton head coach Bob Prier, who spent 10 seasons as an assistant under St. Lawrence head coach Joe Marsh, made his first trip back to Appleton Arena knowing what to expect on Saturday.
He knew the Saints had won three straight, scored 13 goals in that stretch and killed 13 consecutive penalties. He knew their power play was dangerous and that the Saints had climbed from out last place in the conference into seventh.
And still he couldn’t stop them as the Saints skated away with their fourth straight ECAC Hockey win with a 4-1 triumph over the Tigers in front of 1,350 fans.
Only Colgate, Union, Cornell and Yale have won four straight ECAC games this season.
“That’s the best team that we’ve faced this year,” Prier said. “We don’t have any excuses whatsoever. They outplayed us in every single facet of the game. That’s as bad as we’ve been dominated all year.”
For months St. Lawrence co-captains Jacob Drewiske and Kyle Flanagan as well as associate head coach Mike Hurlbut said this day would come. Drewiske especially predicted St. Lawrence (12-15-3 overall, 8-9-1 ECAC) would be a difficult team as the playoffs approached.
But the Saints could hardly score, much less be that pesky team. Two weeks ago, SLU had not won in eight conference games and just suffered back-to-back shutouts for the first time in eight seasons.
Now, they’re in position to push for a playoff bye, which was all but unimaginable to anyone outside St. Lawrence’s locker room.
“Since school started back up I don’t think anyone has felt this good,” SLU forward Greg Carey said. “Everyone’s excited.”
Carey started St. Lawrence’s scoring against Princeton (7-12-6, 5-10-3) with a power-play goal at 12 minutes, 46 seconds of the first, and the Saints took a 1-0 lead to the first-period intermission.
After Princeton’s Marc Hagel tied it, Carey fed Kyle Flanagan on another power play to put the Saints back up by one.
“That’s one of the most dominant power plays we’ve faced all year,” Prier said. “
In the third, which has been catastrophic for the Saints this season, they gave Princeton an opportunity to tie it. Justin Baker earned a five-minute major and game misconduct for head-butting that gave the Tigers and extended power play.
The Saints already killed four penalties against Princeton to that point. On Friday, the Saints killed all 10 it took against Quinnipiac.
“I think we got some momentum last night with the kills,” Hurlbut said. “Again, the penalty kill was really good for us.”
After killing off the first two minutes of the major, Princeton’s Marc Hagel took a tripping minor, and Kyle Essery scored just 31 seconds later to put the Saints up, 3-1.
“We needed something to push back against them,” Essery said. “I think that goal was huge.”
Patrick Doherty added St. Lawrence’s fourth goal at 17:29 of the third. St. Lawrence has scored 17 goals over its four-game win streak. The Saints scored only 12 goals during their eight-game conference winless stretch.
The Saints outshot the Tigers, 35-28, and have now killed 19 consecutive penalties. SLU’s penalty kill percentage improved from 77.5 percent before the weekend to 80 percent after Princeton.
Before the game, the Friends of St. Lawrence Hockey presented Prier with a plaque acknowledging his contributions to the program as a player and later a coach. Prier is a graduated from St. Lawrence in 1999 after a four-year career in which he accumulated 116 career points.
“It’s just an incredible group of great hockey people,” Prier said. “It was unexpected and I’m absolutely honored and humbled by that type of recognition.”
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The live blog is running. Feel free to ask questions now through the end of the game:
CANTON — The sophomore slump is not a myth if you ask St. Lawrence University forward Greg Carey.
It's taken Carey, who had 23 goals as a freshman, nearly his entire sophomore season to return to that machine-like goal scoring.
He scored twice, including the game-winner, as the Saints held off Quinnipiac, 4-3, for its third straight ECAC Hockey win on Friday at Appleton Arena. It moved St. Lawrence into a tie for seventh in the conference.
Carey had six points and four goals in St. Lawrence's last three wins. When Carey scores, St. Lawrence is 4-2-1 this season. The Saints are undefeated when he scores twice.
“I've just been working harder,” Carey said. “(Assistant coach Greg) Carvel is big on deserving success and I just try to work hard and be deserving of success.”
Carey netted his 10th goal of the season on a shot through traffic from the center point at 13 minutes and 59 seconds of the first period. He capped St. Lawrence's scoring with the team's fourth goal at 11:36 of the second for a 4-0 lead. Justin Baker and Peter Child added scores only 35 seconds apart in the first two minutes of the second period for St. Lawrence.
Meanwhile, the Saints were again mired in penalties. They took 13 in total, giving Quinnipiac an unimaginable 10 power-play opportunities.
“Hopefully they're all out of our system now,” associate head coach Mike Hurlbut said. “We certainly got our share and I know it's frustrating for these guys.”
The Bobcats came in averaging just shy of 20 percent on the power-play conversions. If they had merely met that mark, they would have won.
“We missed an opportunity tonight,” Quinnipiac coach Rand Pecknold said. “When you're 0-for-10, that's not a good sign. Our power play was not good tonight and St. Lawrence's penalty kill was really good. We just dug ourselves a hole.”
All the power plays allowed Quinnipiac to more than double St. Lawrence's shots on goal, 35-16. But the Bobcats couldn't beat Weninger through the first two periods.
Weninger stopped all 19 shots in the first 40 minutes and helped kill four more penalties in the second period. He finished with 32 saves.
“I thought we did a good job penalty killing,” Weninger said. “Give our team credit for hanging on and playing the way we did tonight.”
St. Lawrence broke its season-long trend by not blowing its third-period lead, although it did surrender three goals in the final 20 minutes on Friday. The Saints have been outscored 44-19 in the third period this season.
Jeremy Langlois, Spencer Heichman and Connor Jones each scored in the third period for Quinnipiac.
“We've blown too many games like that,” Weninger said. “We need to be more efficient and more effective with the lead.”
It was just three games ago that St. Lawrence would have taken a goal almost as much as a win. The Saints were shutout in back-to-back games by Rensselaer and Union during a stretch where SLU went 0-7-1 in conference.
Since, SLU has scored 13 times and moved out of last place in the conference to within range of a first-round bye. The Saints are just five points behind Harvard for fourth place with five games left.
“When you hit rock bottom you realize you can't go anywhere but up,” Carey said. “I think feeling that bad and what happened during that (RPI-Union) weekend, it gives you a little fire.”
■ NOTES: St. Lawrence Jordan Dewey suffered a broken forearm against Brown and will miss the remainder of the season. Dewey, a junior defenseman, had four goals and three assists this year.
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I will be live blogging and chatting throughout tonight's game between SLU and Quinnipiac starting at 6 p.m. The puck drops at 7 p.m.
A big weekend culminated with a spectacular come-from-behind win for the Saints against Brown. SLU trailed by three early and fought back to win, 5-3, to complete the weekend sweep of Yale and Brown.
It earned four points in the conference standings and moves SLU into a tie for ninth place, but only four points out of fifth.
Here are the links to the two recaps:
