Saints Can’t Solve Richter
CANTON, N.Y. -- The final score does not indicate the way the game was played, but St. Lawrence University's men's hockey team will have to regroup and rebound after Harvard completed a visiting team sweep with a 6-1 win at Appleton Arena in the first full weekend of ECAC Hockey play.
Harvard sophomore goalie Kyle Richter made a career-high 42 saves and held his team in the game well into the third period and Harvard scored four times in the final ten minutes of the game to turn a 2-1 battle in which the Saints had dominated play into another frustrating night for the Saints.
The Crimson, 1-1 overall and in league play, were outshot 43-23, but the Saints couldn't solve Richter and the Crimson took advantage of their rare scoring chances to take a 2-0 lead through two periods before putting it away late.
The Saints outshot Harvard 32-14 through the first two periods, but continued a goal-drought as they fall to 3-5 overall and 0-3 in ECAC Hockey. The Saints face a tough road trip to Princeton and Quinnipiac in their next outings and will try to find answers to a scoring slump which has seen them score just one goal in three of their last four outings.
Harvard junior defenseman Jack Christian scored his first career goal to open the scoring for the Crimson, as he jumped up into the offense and rushed the net, taking a pass from Paul Dufault and tucking it inside the post on Saint goalie Alex Petizian at 4:49.
The Saints were all over Harvard in the second period, but Richter continued to make acrobatic stops in the Crimson crease and Doug Rogers made it a 2-0 game at 13:32 when he walked in on Petizian and tucked his own rebound past the Saint goalie.
SLU finally got one past Richter at the 2:46 mark of the third period as junior Brock McBride scored his first of the season on a power play shot from the middle of the right faceoff circle, but Dufault took the wind out of the Saint sails at 10:50 when he jammed the puck in at the side of the Saint net after forcing a turnover in the Saint end.
That brought the roof down on the Saints as Jon Pelle intercepted a Saint pass up the middle and gunned one just under the crossbar from the blue line at 16:44 to make it 4-1 and Christian scored his second of the night into an empty net with a shot from the faceoff circle in his own end with 1:58 to play. David MacDonald completed the scoring with a shot to the far corner of the cage with 12.3 seconds to play in regulation.
