Yale Edged by Quinnipiac in League Action

Final	1	2	3	Final
Quinnipiac (12-7-4, 4-4-3 ECAC)	1	1	0	2
Yale (7-6-1, 4-3-0 ECAC)	0	0	1	1

Scoring Summary
1st - 18:29	Bui, Kevin (Quinnipiac)
2nd - 01:05	PP - Barron, Loren (Quinnipiac)
3rd - 08:11	PP - O'Neill, Brian (Yale)

Quinnipiac	Yale
G: 2 Players (#4, #9 - 1) A: Zack Currie - 2 Sh: Kellen Jones - 4 Sv: Eric Hartzell - 24	G: Brian O'Neill - 1 A: 2 Players (#18, #22 - 1) Sh: 4 Players (#9, #15, #17, #59 - 3) Sv: Jeff Malcolm - 23

TEAM STATISTICS	Quinnipiac	Yale
Power Plays	1 for 3	1 for 3
Shorthanded Goals	0	0
Penalties (min)	3 (6)	3 (6)
Shots on Goal	25	25
Face Offs Won	31	31

full stats

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Eric Hartzell stopped 24 of 25 shots to lead his Quinnipiac squad to a 2-1 win over the Yale men’s hockey team in the battle of New Haven County’s two Division I teams before a sold out Ingalls Rink.

The Bobcats’ goalie, who had 10 saves in the third period, did not allow a puck to get past him until over eight minutes into the third period. Hartzell then held off a rally by a Yale team (7-6-1, 4-3-0 ECAC) trying to win a third straight against its local rival.

Both teams put 25 shots on goal and both went 1-for-3 with the man advantage. Quinnipiac (12-7-4, 4-4-3) snapped a two-game winless streak.

“We allowed them to block 23 shots and missed the net on 19 other shots,” said Keith Allain ’80, Yale’s Malcolm G. Chace Head Coach. “It’s hard to score goals with shot execution like that. We have to execute better and gets shots through.”

The loss spoiled a solid performance by junior goalie Jeff Malcolm (Lethbridge, Ont.), who stopped 23 shots. After a goal late in the first and very early in the second, he kept the puck out of the net for the last 38:55.

One of the least penalized teams in the country had to kill off a pair of challenging advantages in the first period, including a power play just 30 seconds after opening faceoff.

Malcolm stood on his head for the first 18 minutes of the game and finished the period with 11 saves on 12 shots. Five of those stops came on a pair of penalty-kills and most of the shots were taken from close range.

After all the great Malcolm saves, the Bobcats managed to score with 1:31 left in the first on an innocent looking rush. After a faceoff in the Quinnipiac end, defenseman Zack Currie grabbed the puck and skated all the win into the opposite side circle before sending a back-handed saucer pass toward the low slot. Kevin Bui, looking for his second tally of the season, was skating toward the Yale net and stuck his stick out enough to deflect the pass past the Yale goalie.

The third straight penalty against the Blue, which came early in the middle frame, resulted in a 2-0 Bobcats lead 65 seconds in. Blueliner Loren Barron took a feed in the high slot and had an open look at the net. He snapped off a low shot that hit the back of the net for his fifth of the year.

“The three penalties in the early part of the game took some momentum away from us,” said Allain. “We played ok, but not well enough to get a victory.”

Yale had only six shots in the second, which was one more than the visitors, but three or four of them turned into great Hartzell saves. The junior goalie stole one from Andrew Miller (Bloomfield Hills, Mich) when he swiped a blast out of air headed for the upper corner on a power play. Miller had come close in the first period on a shot that bounced off the pipe.  Hartzell made two tough stops on Chad Ziegler (Spruce Grove, Alb.) from the low slot late in the period to preserve the two-goal lead.

The Elis finally got on the board midway through the third at the end of an advantage that never really got set up in the offensive end. Miller skated over the blueline and hit Brian O’Neill (Yardley, Pa.) in stride as the senior forward was cutting in from the right circle. O’Neill, who leads the team with 10 goals, held as Hartzell came out to get him and then tucked it under the sliding netminder at 8:11.

The Bulldogs continued to put pressure on the Quinnipiac net. Kenny Agostino (Flanders, NJ) hit pipe less than a minute after the Yale goal, and that would be as close as the home team could come to getting the equalizer.

Malcolm tried to get off the ice for an extra skater a few times with the clock dipping under two minutes but had to wait until there were 34 seconds left. The Bobcat fore-check kept the puck in the Yale end and could have prevented some quality opportunities with the best Bulldog skaters on the ice.

All Yale got out of the extra man was a Clinton Bourbonais (Dexter, Mich.) blast from point that went into Hartzell’s stomach.

BULLDOG BITES: The one change in the lineup from the Bentley game was up front with Josh Balch, who missed the last two games with an injury, in for Jesse Root… The Bulldogs host Princeton Saturday at 7 p.m. and tickets can be purchased at the Ingalls Rink Ticket Window prior to faceoff… The Tigers went to OT to beat Brown 3-2 tonight.