With just under a minute left, Dartmouth lined up for an offensive zone faceoff on the power play, down just one goal. The Elis were able to shut down the Big Green, however, and captain and forward Andrew Miller ’13 closed out the 4–2 game with an empty-net goal.
In its second conference game in two nights, the Yale men’s hockey team took down the Dartmouth Big Green in front of a packed Ingalls Rink.
Frequent back-and-forth play in the neutral zone, relentless goaltending and special teams were keys to tonight’s game.
The Bulldogs opened up the scoring early in the first period and maintained the lead for the remainder of the game. A brief four and a half minutes after the opening faceoff, forward Clinton Bourbonais ’14 drove wide past the Dartmouth defense and slowed down to buy himself time. He looked back and saw defenseman Tommy Fallen ’15 slip through a hole in the Big Green defensive zone coverage and hit him with a pass as he flew through the high slot and ripped a one-timer past Dartmouth goaltender Cab Morris.
After a penaltyless first period, the referees called Dartmouth’s Rick Pinkston for hooking less than nine minutes into the second, and the Bulldogs capitalized quickly.
Forward Antoine Laganiere ’13 slowly drifted in past the Dartmouth penalty-killing unit and caught a pass from defenseman Gus Young ’14 on the bottom-right faceoff dot. Laganiere then settled the puck and cranked a slap shot over Morris’ pad to put the Bulldogs up by two.
Dartmouth’s penalty kill is ranked second in the nation, stopping 60 of 64 man-advantage opportunities for a 93.8 success rate. Of those four allowed goals, Yale put away two in a single night.
The Big Green played with intensity for the remainder of the second period, and in the final minute was able to shorten Yale’s lead back to one. Forward Brad Schierhorn drove wide down the right side and ripped a shot off Jeff Malcolm’s ’13 pad. The rebound went to Rick Pinkston, who had an open net for a goal at 19:02 and brought the Big Green into the third period down just 2–1.
Just two minutes into the third period, Jesse Root ’14 got Yale’s second power-play goal of the night with a backhand shot off an assist from Kenny Agostino ’14, giving the Bulldogs a two-point advantage. Ten minutes later, Dartmouth’s Eric Neiley fired an unassisted shot from the high slot and managed to get past Malcolm.
The last half of the third period was hotly contested as the Big Green looked to close its one-point deficit, but when the team pulled Morris in the last minute of play, Miller got possession of the puck and managed to fire it into the empty net, securing Yale’s 4–2 victory with just over 30 seconds of regulation time left.
Next weekend, the Bulldogs will head to Cornell and Colgate in hopes of two more conference wins.