Standing ovations: Quinnipiac, Union
The Bobcats continued their eye-opening, season-opening tear, reeling off consecutive wins no. seven and eight this weekend. The Q-Cats downed Colgate and Cornell on the road by a 10-2 aggregate, scoring five goals in the third period alone in Hamilton Friday night. (Funny enough, it hasn’t been so long since QU posted a five-spot in a period: The Bobcats pinned five on Cornell in the ECAC quarterfinals last year.) Freshman forward Sam Anas leads the stunningly successful team with seven goals and 13 points in his first nine collegiate games; he’s also tied for the national lead in game-winning goals (three) and is alone atop the rookie goal chart. Sophomore Michael Garteig holds an overall GAA of 1.56 and a .917 save rate, and the special teams are scoring nearly a quarter of the time on the power play and only allowing goals on 6.5 percent of penalty kills.
Union seems to have snapped out of its doldrums, if only for a weekend: The Dutchmen slammed Dartmouth 7-2 in Hanover, then handled Harvard, downing the Crimson 4-2 in Boston. Senior forward Kevin Sullivan leads the team with 11 points without a single goal; classmate and defenseman Mat Bodie has eight points, all on assists as well. Senior forwards Daniel Carr and Matt Hatch lead the team in goals with four apiece, but they share the podium with junior Daniel Ciampini and rookie Michael Pontarelli. Junior goaltender Colin Stevens is still finding his way, but he’s not getting a lot of help from his penalty kill, which is only muddling through with a .793 overall success rate.
Rotten tomatoes: Dartmouth, Princeton
The Big Green had a weekend to forget, surrendering seven goals in each game against Rensselaer and Union while only mustering three of their own. The team has only scored eight goals in four games (0-4), and none of coach Bob Gaudet’s three goalies have a save rate higher than .850. The power play is humming at 28 percent, but the PK is brutal, allowing nearly one goal for every two successful kills. This is a tremendous buzz-kill for a team picked high in the preseason polls, and the onus is now on the coaching staff and the captains to find the reset button in the Thompson locker room.
Princeton has also scored just eight times in four games (1-3), falling at Cornell and Colgate this weekend. The fault doesn’t lie with the special teams or goaltending; Princeton’s biggest problem is its five-on-five offense, which is being out-scored to the tune of 11-4. Having sophomore forward Mike Ambrosia back in the lineup will help, and it should only be a matter of time before Princeton is back to – or above – .500 again.
Fun with stats
- Brown sophomore Mark Naclerio leads the nation with 2.25 points per game, scoring three goals and nine points in four games.
- RPI junior Ryan Haggerty maintains his rocket-boosted pace, burying 10 goals in eight games to lead the country in that category.
- Union’s Sullivan, Brown’s Naclerio, and Cornell junior Mark McCarron are 1-2-3 in D-I in assists per game (1.57, 1.5, 1.5 respectively).
- St. Lawrence’s Gavin Bayreuther (3-5–8) leads the country in scoring by freshmen defensemen.
- And finally, since I love goalies, Harvard senior Raphael Girard has posted 120 minutes of shutout hockey in 120 minutes played this year. That’s good enough to lead the nation in GAA, as you may imagine. (QU’s Garteig and RPI’s Scott Diebold are fourth and fifth in that category, for your information.)
