Freshmen Alex Curran and Tom Bardis had a goal and an assist each and freshman goaltender Kain Tisi made 24 saves for his first collegiate shutout and victory as St. Lawrence skated to a 4-0 victory over Bowling Green at Appleton Arena in Canton Saturday night.
The victory improves the Saints to 7-4-0 overall and they have now won six of their last seven games. Bowling Green, which lost at Clarkson 5-0 on Friday night, did not score a goal on its Eastern trip and is now 3-10-1 overall.
The Saints dominated the first period, outshooting Bowling Green 13-4, but had just one goal to show for it. Freshman Alex Curran got the goal, his first as a collegian, as he banked the puck in off the post after taking a pass from classmate Tom Bardis breaking hard to the net at 13:26.
Curran and Bardis did not play in Friday night’s game against Miami, but made the Saint coaching staff look brilliant with a goal and an assist each as a line combination with Mark Wallmann for Saturday’s game.
“We’ve been agonizing over who to play and who to sit because we have a lot of talented guys who are working hard every day and deserve the chance to play. It is a nice problem to have, but it really is tough to come up with a lineup. It took us four hours to decide on Saturday, and the guys we put out there certainly made the most of it,” said Saint coach Joe Marsh.
St. Lawrence continued to have great chances into the second period and finally opened up some breathing room when Max Taylor scored his fourth of the year as he corralled the rebound of a hard shot by defenseman Zach Miskovic and tucked it past Falcon goalie Jimmy Spratt at 13:54 of the second. Rookie Casey Parenteau then made it a 3-0 game at 18:47 of the second when he took the rebound of a shot by freshman wing Mike McKenzie and flipped it back past Spratt.
The Saints concluded the scoring at 10:13 of the third period as Bardis scored his second goal of the season from Curran and Mark Wallmann on a rebound put back of Curran’s shot.
SLU killed all nine of Bowling Green’s power-play chances in the game and allowed the Falcons a total of five shots on the power play for the game. The Saints actually outshot Bowling Green on its power plays with nine shorthanded shots including Taylor’s goal to the five shots for the Falcons. They did not allow a shot on goal in 1:49 of five-on-three power play by Bowling Green in the third period.
“The guys did a great job on the kill,” said Marsh. “We’d obviously prefer to have less practice at it, but it certainly was outstanding tonight.”
Spratt finished with 40 saves for the Falcons, who were outshot 44-24 for the game.
