Senior Erik Anderson scored a hat trick and added three assists, and senior left wing Mike Gellard had two goals and four assists as St. Lawrence snapped a three-game losing skid with an impressive 6-3 win over Harvard on Friday night.
The Saints improve to 3-5-2 overall and 2-1-1 in the ECAC, while Harvard falls to 4-3-1 overall and 3-2-1 in the ECAC.
While St. Lawrence dominated the first two periods, outshooting Harvard 32-12, the Crimson entered the third period tied 2-2 before the line of Gellard, Anderson and senior right wing Alan Fyfe exploded for four goals in the final 20 minutes.
“It was great to finally see us break out and score some goals,” said Saint coach Joe Marsh. “We’ve been playing well, but not finishing off — tonight Anderson, Gellard and Fyfe had a great night. I thought we did a very good job all the way around. All four lines contributed, although the scoring all came basically from one line, and the guys did a very good job defensively.”
St. Lawrence generated offensive pressure early, outshooting Harvard 8-1 in the first six minutes, and finally cashed in with the game’s first goal at the 7:53 mark. Anderson scored when he snapped a wrist shot over the shoulder of Crimson goalie Oliver Jonas after taking a feed out of the corner from Gellard for his fifth goal of the year.
Harvard came back to tie it at 15:15 when Peter Capouch was credited with his fourth goal of the season after a centering pass went into the net off the skate of a Saint defenseman.
The Saints took a 2-1 lead just 51 seconds into the second period when Gellard scored his sixth goal of the season from the short slot on a SLU power play, but while the Saints dominated play, they couldn’t add to their lead. St. Lawrence outshot Harvard 14-1 in the first 10:30 of the period, but the Crimson re-tied the score on their third shot of the period at 17:19 when freshman Rob Fried tapped home a rebound from Steve Moore.
Anderson scored his second of the night off Gellard’s centering pass just 47 seconds into the third period and netted the eventual game-winner on a rebound putback of a power-play shot by Russ Bartlett at 7:52. Harvard’s Chris Bala cut it to 4-3 on a power-play goal at 10:38, but the Saints put it away when Gellard scored his second of the night off a faceoff win by Anderson at 13:16 and Fyfe scored his fifth of the season from Gellard and Anderson just 22 seconds later.
Saint goaltender Jeremy Symington made 13 of his 23 saves in the third period, while Jonas finished the night with 44 saves, matching his career high.
“Jeremy had some big saves with the game on the line in the third period. He made a huge stop on Fried in the opening seconds of the third period and had a couple of big ones on Steve Moore to protect the lead,” said Marsh.
