There’s a new team atop of the ECAC standings after this weekend’s play as St. Lawrence defeated Rensselaer 2-1 on Friday and a wild 4-3 victory over Union on Saturday.
The second period on Saturday saw the team’s score five of the seven goals in the middle frame. The Saints mid-season addition of Alex Gilmour has been really paying off. He had three goals on the weekend including the tying and game winning goals on Saturday. Since joining the team from Pembroke Lumber Kings of the Central Canada Hockey League he has six goals and two assists in nine games.
St. Lawrence also got a boost Saturday as senior defenseman Gavin Bayreuther returned to the lineup and made an immediate impact as he had the Saints second goal Saturday as they scored three unanswered for the come from behind win.
Union meanwhile is one point ahead of Harvard for second in the standings as they defeated Clarkson on Friday evening 6-2. Mark Dufour led the Dutchmen with two goals in the victory.
Tough weekend for Cornell
With the Big Red climbing the standings since the second weekend of November as they only dropped one conference game since Nov. 18 coming into the weekend, this weekend was a good chance to slide into the top tier of the ECAC standings.
Well that didn’t happen with a 4-1 loss to Harvard, while it’s a disappointing loss, it isn’t a shocking loss as the Crimson have been the crème de la crème of the ECAC for most of the year. Saturday, however is a different story losing to Dartmouth. The game against the Big Green was the winnable game on their schedule this weekend. Give credit to Bob Gaudet and his players on playing an excellent game, but it’s a big two points lost for Cornell.
If they scored two points this weekend they could have been in striking distance for second and third being five and four points out. Now they sit six points out of third.
What they do have in they favor is they still have two games against Union and one against St. Lawrence. Those are must win games if they want to move from the middle pack to the top tier of the conference.
ECAC teams face the two newest DI programs
This weekend saw Arizona State come east to face Quinnipiac while Princeton hosted Penn State in Philadelphia.
The Bobcats split the weekend with the Sun Devils as they opened the weekend series with a 5-2 victory, but couldn’t complete the sweep Saturday as Arizona State won 4-2. After a good start it looked like this weekend could get the Bobcats back on track.
At this point of the year an at large bid is looking unlikely for Quinnipiac. They need use the next month to prepare for the ECAC tournament and get hot just in time for March.
Princeton once again showed they like to come to play against nationally ranked teams as the defeated Penn State 5-4. They are 5-3 on the season against ranked teams. They have two more games against teams currently in the USCHO poll in St. Lawrence on Feb. 10 and Union on Feb. 18. If they get by in the first round of the ECAC tournament they have more than a punchers chance to pull of an upset if the offense is clicking like it has against top competition.
