Weekend Preview: Points Ready to be Claimed

ALBANY, N.Y. --  With three weekends of regular-season play remaining Yale holds a slim one point lead over Union and five point lead over Rensselaer.  All 12 league teams are in action this weekend engaged in two league battles each over the course of the next two days, except for Harvard and Quinnipiac which will play in one contest each.

No. 2/2 Yale/Brown at St. Lawrence/Clarkson:  The No. 2 Yale men's hockey team, coming off a pair of conference wins that clinched home ice for the playoffs, is on the road this weekend for the North Country set against and Clarkson, a pair of 7 p.m. starts at Appleton and Cheel Arenas. The Bulldogs are certainly spreading it out; eight different players have scored Yale's last eight goals. Yale and St. Lawrence split last year and the Blue has a 3-2-1 advantage over the last six meetings. The Saints have a 53-26-8 overall lead. The Elis have played Clarkson 103 times since 1929-30 and the Knights own a 68-31-4 lead. Yale has taken the last three meetings. St. Lawrence beat Colgate and lost to Cornell last week and is 1-4-1 over its last six. Three of the Saints' biggest wins this year came against New Hampshire, Vermont and Cornell. With five consecutive games in the North Country, including four at Cheel Arena, the Clarkson University Hockey team will look use the familiar surroundings to its advantage to break out of a lengthy losing skid and make a move up in the ECAC Hockey standings. Clarkson leads Brown in their all-time series, which began in 1953, by a commanding 56-15-6 margin. The Knights, who have won eight of the last 10 meetings, snapped a two-game losing skid in the series with a 3-1 victory over the Bears in Providence on January 22. All-time, Brown is 14-7-0 in games played on February 11th, and 9-11-0 in games played on February 12th. Brown and St. Lawrence have met 72 times, with the Saints leading the all-time series, 38-25-9. St. Lawrence won the very first meeting, 6-3, on 12/19/52. Freshman Matt Weninger has seen the majority of time in net this year for the Saints and has posted a 2.52 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage in 20 games (4-12-3).

Colgate/Cornell at No. 8/8 Rensselaer/No. 9/9 Union:  With just six games remaining in the ECAC Hockey regular-season, Cornell and Colgate travel to the Capital District to take on top-10 foes Rensselaer and Union. Cornell extended its winning streak to three games with a sweep over the North Country foes at Lynah Rink last weekend. Last weekend’s four-points helped to lift the Big Red into a tie for fourth in the ECAC Hockey standings, just six points behind league-leading Yale. No. 9 Union enters the weekend on a hot streak, winners of five games in a row and nine of their last ten. Union became the first team in the nation to reach the 20-win plateau after a 3-2 overtime win Saturday night at Quinnipiac. Nineteen times this season the Dutchmen, who are seventh in the nation in scoring, have registered three or more goals, resulting in an 16-1-2 record. The Raiders will be facing their seventh and eighth ranked teams this weekend and Colgate has not fared well in the previous six games against top teams. Four of the six games have been decided by one-goal, including the first two meetings between Rensselaer and Union, when both were 2-1 games. The Engineers are currently on a seven-game unbeaten streak and coming off a 3-3 tie at Quinnipiac and a 5-2 win at Princeton. Rensselaer enters the weekend as the nation's second-best team in scoring defense, allowing just 2.07 goals per game.

No. 20 Princeton/Quinnipiac at Harvard/No. 17 Dartmouth:  Princeton remains in the hunt for a top-four ECAC Hockey finish, but lost ground in the standings with two losses last weekend. The Tigers are currently sixth in the league standings with 19 points. The Crimson leads the all-time series with Princeton 147-54-10 overall and hold a 71-16-4 edge in games played in Cambridge. Princeton has gone 3-1-1 in its last five regular season meetings with Harvard. The Big Green leads the all-time series with Princeton 92-83-13 overall and 38-32-7 in games played in Hanover. Harvard is 20-3-0 in February home games under Ted Donato and 38-21-8 in all post-exam league games in Donato's six-plus seasons. Leading the Crimson Alex Killorn paces Harvard with seven goals. With 16 points, he shares the team lead with linemate Michael Biega, Harvard's assists leader with 10. The surging Quinnipiac Bobcats have won or tied 11 of their last 14 contests and sit in seventh place with a 6-7-4 ECAC record and is 13-11-5 overall. The Bobcats hold the lead in the series with a 9-5-1 record in 15 meetings all-time against Dartmouth, dating back to the first meeting on Oct. 30, 2004. Scott Fleming continues to lead the Big Green in scoring with 24 points and is just one away from recording 100 career points. James Mello has appeared in 19 games for Dartmouth and has a 11-4-3 record. With a 2.11 goals-against average and a .933 save percentage, Mello is tops in the league.

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