ECACHL Season Title Still Up For Grabs
The Crown will go to either St. Lawrence or Clarkson
ALBANY, N.Y. -- It's becoming the norm in the ECAC Hockey League, that the men's regular-season standings don't shake out at all until the last weekend of play. This year's race is also coming down to the wire, as not one of the 12 places in the standings has been determined yet. After this past weekend of play, we do know that the regular-season title will go to either St. Lawrence or Clarkson, and both have claimed a first-round bye for the playoffs. After that, we only know that Quinnipiac, Cornell and Dartmouth will have home ice in either the first round or quarterfinals, while Union will be on the road.
St. Lawrence helped its bid for the season title with a two-game weekend sweep, while Cornell and Dartmouth also helped their causes with their own four-point weekends. Clarkson won once and tied for three points, while three others won one game each.
Senior Kyle Rank helped the Saints sweep visiting Rensselaer and Union by posting three goals and an assist over the two games. The senior was named Player of the Week following his personal four-point weekend. His one goal against Union was his second winner of the year, and was also a short-handed marker. Freshman netminder Alex Petizian also continues to shine for SLU, as the rookie made 38 saves in earning his 14th and 15th wins of the year.
Cornell earned its sweep with wins over Quinnipiac and Princeton. Colin Greening earned Rookie of the Week honors after scoring in both wins. Sophomore Troy Davenport was named Goaltender of the Week after blanking Quinnipiac and making 64 stops over the two games. Friday's 2-0 win marked the first time this season that the Bobcats were shutout.
Dartmouth captured one-goal victories over both Brown and Yale to add some security to its place in the standings. Goalie Mike Devine was stellar between the pipes, making a total of 83 stops over the two games, including a career-high 51 vs. Yale. Against Brown, Dartmouth's top line of Tanner Glass, David Jones and Nick Johnson had seven points, with Jones leading on a goal and two assists.
Three of a possible four points went Clarkson's way over the weekend with a win against Union and a 3-all tie with Rensselaer. David Cayer, Matt Beca and Chris D'Alvise were the offensive leaders for the Golden Knights and posted 10 points on five goals and five assists between them. D'Alvise had two goals vs. Union, while Beca had two against RPI. Kirk MacDonald scored once for the Engineers.
Princeton, Yale and Quinnipiac all split their weekend games, with the Tigers downing Colgate, the Bulldogs beating Harvard and the Bobcats claiming victory over the Raiders. Cam MacIntyre scored both Princeton goals in the win over Colgate, while Chris Cahill had two goals and an assist in Yale's victory and Wong assisted on each Quinnipiac goal. Harvard and Brown claimed one point each after tying one another 6-6 on Saturday. Harvard and Quinnipiac also faced non-league competition earlier in the week. The Crimson fell to Northeastern in the Beanpot consolation game, while the Bobcats downed American International.
ECACHL Player of the Week
KYLE RANK -- St. Lawrence
Sr., Center * Elmira, Ont.
Rank scored three goals and assisted on a fourth as the Saints
swept RPI and Union to move within two points of clinching the
ECACHL regular season title. He scored his second winner of the
year, a SHG, vs. Union
ECACHL Goalie of the Week
TROY DAVENPORT -- Cornell
So., Goalie * Inver Grove Hgts., Minn.
Davenport helped the Big Red to its second weekend sweep of the
season by blanking Quinnipiac and stopping a total of 64 shots.
ECACHL Rookie of the Week
COLIN GREENING -- Cornell
Fr., Forward * St. John's Nfld.
Greening continued his hot play of late, scoring a goal in both of
the two games over the weekend. He also had an assist on Saturday
POSSIBLE FINISHES
Note that these are possible SEEDS, not necessarily places
* The top 5 teams are now established (with the order to be determined).
* Quinnipiac, Cornell, and Dartmouth all control their own destinies for byes, with Quinnipiac needing 3 of 4 points to guarantee one, Cornell also needing 3 of 4 (or a win over Dartmouth Friday), and Dartmouth needing all 4 points.
* In the race for first-round home ice Harvard, Princeton, and Colgate control their own destinies. Harvard and Princeton each need 2 points to clinch it, Colgate needs 3.
St. Lawrence 1-2 Clarkson 1-4 Quinnipiac 2-5 Cornell 2-5 Dartmouth 3-5 Princeton 6-10 Harvard 6-10 Colgate 6-11 Yale 6-12 Rensselaer 6-12 Brown 8-12 Union 9-12
TEAM NOTES
Brown: After hovering around 10-11 percent for the majority of the season, Brown's power-play is up to 14 percent after scoring seven PPGs over the weekend, including a season-high four vs. Harvard ... Sean McMonagle, who had played in just five of Brown's first 21 games, has played in the past six straight with 2-3-5 numbers in the previous five, posting one point in each game with 1-1-2 numbers this weekend ... Brian McNary also has a five-game point streak with 1-6-7 numbers in the past five games ... Jeff Prough had five points over the weekend (3g, 2a) to bring his career totals to 41-37-78. This is the most career points for a junior since two players did it in 1994-1995 ... With 59 saves over the weekend, Dan Rosen broke Adam D'Alba's record for saves in a season by a freshman goalie, surpassing D'Alba's mark of 718 saves by 13 saves.
Clarkson: At 20-7-5 overall, the Clarkson reached 20 wins for the first time since the 2000-01 campaign and have clinched a first-round bye for the first time ... The Golden Knights take a five-game unbeaten streak (4-0-1) into the final weekend of the regular season ... Four Knights are scoring over 30 points led by captain Nick Dodge with 35 points (16-19) ... David Cayer (1-7), Dodge (2-4), Shawn Weller (4-1) and Chris D'Alvise (3-2) are all working on four-game point-scoring streaks ... Clarkson is 16-0-2 when leading after the second.
Colgate: Tyler Burton scored two goals on the weekend, one in each game, to give him 111 points in 110 career games ... Marc Fulton celebrated Senior Day on Saturday with his 15th goal of the season vs. Quinnipiac. The goal was his 10th PPG of the season, which ranks second in the league ... Mark Dekanich recorded his 888th save of the season this weekend. He ranks seventh on Colgate's single-season saves list. Dekanich has averaged 27.75 saves per game this season, and could possibly become the first goaltender in school history to make 1,000 saves in a season.
Cornell: Cornell appears to be peaking at the right time, going 5-1-1 in its last seven games. Over that span, the Big Red penalty killing unit has been a big reason why, killing off 86.5 percent of penalties against ... Saturday's eight-goal output against Princeton was the biggest goal total for the Big Red since Cornell scored eight against Vermont in a shutout win during the 2002-03 season ... The win over Quinnipiac marked the first time this season that the Bobcats were shut out ... The line of Colin Greening, Byron Bitz and Raymond Sawada combined for 10 points on five goals and five assists vs. Princeton.
Dartmouth: Dartmouth earned two victories picking up valuable league points last weekend ... Rob Pritchard and Dan Shribman turned into unlikely heroes vs. Yale. Shribman potted Dartmouth's first goal of the game on the first short-handed goal of his career. Pritchard scored the second goal of the game three minutes later and then added the winner with six minutes left in the contest ... Against Brown, Dartmouth's top line of Tanner Glass, David Jones and Nick Johnson had seven points as Jones led with a goal and two assists ... Mike Devine had a career-high 51 saves against Yale.
Harvard: The Crimson set season highs for goals (six) and power-play goals (four) in Saturday's tie at Brown ... Six Harvard players registered multiple points, including Alex Meintel (2-1) Doug Rogers (0-3) with three points each ... Harvard was 4 for 7 on the power play against the Bears to improve its league-best efficiency in ECACHL games to 23.7 percent (31 for 131) ... Alex Meintel has scored 11 goals in the last 13 games.
Princeton: Princeton defeated Colgate 2-1 on Friday to win its first game in Hamilton since the 1999-00 season ... Princeton's win over Colgate was the Tigers' 11th win of the season, surpassing last season's win total of 10 games ... Lee Jubinville has a six-game scoring streak, having tallied eight points in the span and three over the weekend ... Darroll Powe has seven points over his last six games ... Cam MacIntyre had two points in each game over the weekend, he scored both goals at Colgate and set up two at Cornell ... Grant Goeckner-Zoeller had an assist in both games over the weekend. His assist at Cornell was the 100th point of his career.
Quinnipiac: With the win over Colgate on Saturday, Quinnipiac clinched its 11th straight winning season. The only other schools to match such a feat are Michigan, Michigan State, Maine and New Hampshire ... Ben Nelson and Brandon Wong each tallied hat tricks in an 8-1 win over AIC on Tuesday. It marked the first time that two Quinnipiac players recorded hat tricks in the same game since Nov. 1, 1997, when Matt Goodrich and Justin Nolan did so in a 9-0 win over Iona ... Reid Cashman became the program's all-time assist leader with a helper in the win over AIC on Tuesday.
Rensselaer: Kirk MacDonald is one point shy of 100 in his career. He had three points last weekend and now has 45 goals and 54 assists in 133 games. Oren Eizenman is four points shy of 100 in his career. He has 36 goals, including three last weekend, and 60 assists in 125 career games ... The Engineers close out the regular season with a road record of 4-7-3, including a 3-5-3 league mark ... Rensselaer is 8-7-8 when scoring more than one goal in a game and 0-8-0 when failing to do so. The Engineers are 6-0-1 when holding teams to two goals or fewer and 3-14-7 when they do not.
St. Lawrence: The Saints 5-2 win over Union on Saturday night gave them season series sweeps with five league opponents, the best since the 1999-2000 Frozen Four team which swept six season series ... The Saints gave up a PPG in both the RPI and Union games, but also scored a short-hander in both ... In three of the last four games the Saints have allowed a power play goal, they have also scored shorthanded ... Since the start of the new year, the Saints have killed 73-of-77 opponent power plays and are even on the penalty kill with four short-handers offsetting the four power-play goals allowed.
Union: Union has five players with 10+ goals for the first time since the 1996-97 season ... Olivier Bouchard moved into 7th place on Union's DI scoring leaders list with 85 career points on 42 goals and 43 assists ... Chris Potts snapped a 17-game scoring drought with his fourth goal of the season at St. Lawrence ... Jeff Christiansen recorded his second multiple-point game of the season with a goal and an assist at St. Lawrence and has picked up seven points in just 14 games ... Union will play on the road in the first round of the playoffs; Union had hosted a first-round series in each of the last four seasons.
Yale: The Bulldogs had a season-high 53 shots on goal and a season-low one penalty against Dartmouth on Sunday in a game that was televised by ESPNU ... Sean Backman notched his team-best 17th goal of the year against the Green and is now two shy of the Yale rookie record... The Elis put 85 shots on goal for the weekend and scored seven goals after managing just a pair of scores last week on the road.
