Men’s hockey faces off against Colgate in Atlantic City and the News is here to live blog every moment.
The men’s hockey team survived St. Lawrence’s hardest hits, and now it can book its tickets to Atlantic City.
Yale (25–6–1, 17–4–1 ECAC) asserted its place as national title contender Sunday when it clinched a chance to play Colgate in the ECAC semifinals with a dominant 4–0 shutout of St. Lawrence (13–22–5, 6–15–1). The win capped a decisive Yale comeback after St. Lawrence upset the Elis on Friday. That loss in the opening game of the best-of-three series left Yale on the brink of its second early elimination from the ECAC tournament in two years. But the Bulldogs rallied and outscored the Saints 9–2 in the last two games of the series.
“We played with a sense of desperation,” Jimmy Martin ’11 said. “It’s what you have to do with your backs against the wall.”
Desperation was the word of the day in the ECAC, as all four quarterfinal series were decided in third games on Sunday. Yale was the only team that did not put its fans through agony. The conference’s other three contests were decided by a single goal, and two went to overtime.
One historic upset came out of those close games and will directly impact the Bulldogs’ quest for their second tournament championship in three years. In a contest between the ECAC’s first- and last-place teams, scrappy Colgate shook off three separate one-goal deficits to gut out an unprecedented victory over Union. No last-place team has ever advanced to the tournament semifinals before.
The streaking Raiders have recovered from a miserable start to the season, and have looked like a new team since February. They have tripled their win count since beating Clarkson on Feb. 5, with eight in their past 13 games. That stretch includes a 6–3–1 record against the four nationally ranked teams in the ECAC.
But Yale has also been hot lately.
“There isn’t any margin for error against a team like this,” St. Lawrence head coach Joe Marsh said. “It seemed to me that every time we broke down, the puck was in the back of the net.”
The Elis found the back of the net quickly Sunday. St. Lawrence got in penalty trouble early, and Chris Cahill ’11 made sure the visitors paid the price when he corralled a loose puck in the crease and tapped it past goaltender Matt Weninger just 2:41 into the game.
Penalties continued to haunt the Saints when a power play goal from Brian O’Neill ’12 made the score 2–0 just five minutes later. Nonetheless, the underdogs did not let up the physical play that hurt them early in the game. The two teams exchanged rough hits all game, and tempers started to boil in the third period as the Saints watched the game slip out of reach.
“Emotionally, with both teams hanging on for dear life, things got a little messy,” Marsh said.
After the mounting tension peaked late in the third period when a vicious hit by St. Lawrence’s Jacob Drewiske sparked a tussle on center ice, Marsh called a timeout which he said was an attempt to settle his team. The 24 penalty minutes — including a 10-minute misconduct to Charles Brockett ’12 — that resulted from the confrontation were more than had been issued in the entire first game. The 56 total penalty minutes issued Sunday were more than had been issued in the first two games combined.
“Guys don’t forget hits,” Denny Kearney ’11 said Saturday.
Kearney, along with linemates Broc Little ’11 and Kevin Limbert ’12, was instrumental throughout the series. The trio combined for 17 points over the weekend, including Yale’s last two goals and five points on Sunday.
The line had suffered through a scoring drought late in the season, but Allain said they were the team’s leading force against St. Lawrence.
“They were our best line all weekend,” Allain said. “That’s what’s special about this team. It seems like each and every weekend we get a new group of heroes.”
Kearney and Little were not the only seniors who anchored the team. Netminder Ryan Rondeau ’11 made 21 saves as he tied a Yale single-season record with his fourth shutout. The team also set a school record with its 25th victory of the season.
The Elis will get the chance to extend that record even further when they take on Colgate on Friday and — win or lose — play in NCAA regionals in Bridgeport the following week.
“It doesn’t get much better than this,” Allain said.
The News live blogs the decisive third game versus St. Lawrence.
Broc Little ’11 said urgency was the word of the night. His team made good on that Saturday, but urgency will remain the big word through Sunday.
Faced with elimination Saturday night, Denny Kearney ’11 had three points and the men’s hockey team beat back streaking St. Lawrence, 5–2, to force a deciding third game in the ECAC quarterfinals. Kearney’s assist on a second period goal by Kevin Limbert ’12 triggered a three-goal Yale scoring outburst from which the Saints could not recover.
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“They were desperate tonight, they were trying to stay alive,” Saints head coach Joe Marsh said of the Elis. “The toughest thing in sports is to end another team’s season.”
Marsh acknowledged that Yale’s season is far from over, as the Elis will continue at the NCAA championships no matter how they fare in the ECAC playoffs, but that sense of do-or-die desperation was nonetheless apparent all game. The two teams’ playoff mindset emerged quickly as tempers flared early and the game turned testy. The opponents combined for 32 penalty minutes — including a ten-minute misconduct Little received for a third-period hit — despite laissez-faire playoff officiating. The boards rattled early and often from the force of hard hits, and the Yale fans voiced their approval or lack thereof often and at a high volume.
The two teams did not escape the chippy game unscathed, as Brendan Mason ’11 — a mainstay on Yale’s checking line — and St. Lawrence defender Justin Baker both left the game with injuries in the second period and did not return.
“In the playoffs, there’s a desperation factor and guys are working hard,” Marsh said. “You just need to play with control and discipline too.”
Yale showed off all the control and discipline it needed to when it harnessed its desperation to stay in the ECAC tournament in a dominant second period.
St. Lawrence had seized the momentum at the end of a close first period when Kyle Flanagan scored 1.6 seconds before the end of the frame. But Kevin Limbert ’12, Clinton Bourbonais ’14, and Kevin Peel ’12 broke the game open with a trio of second period goals in a five-minute stretch that left the Saints stunned.
“I think the biggest thing from the whole team was just total focus from the beginning of the day,” Little said. “We knew that we had to come out.”
Red-hot St. Lawrence goaltender Matt Weninger had stonewalled both Princeton and Yale with 79 saves on 83 shots in his past two games, and looked poised to keep his impressive performance going at the outset of the Saints’ second tilt with Yale. On Saturday, however, Yale beat him top shelf, bottom corner, and behind his back.
Kearney had started the scoring late in an otherwise lackluster first stanza when he jumped on the rebound of a Kevin Peel ’12 shot and pushed it past Weninger to give Yale a 1–0 lead.
The Elis didn’t need to whack at rebounds in the second period. Their offensive outburst was vintage Yale: pretty passes and prettier shots. And once the attack started clicking, the Elis never looked back. Head coach Keith Allain ’80 said Friday’s game was lost when his team could not convert opportunities and turn a 3–1 lead into a 4–1 advantage. Yale did not make that mistake Saturday.
Limbert kicked off the fireworks with after a feed from Kearney set him up at point-blank range in front of Weninger. The goalie went low, Limbert went high, and Yale had a 2–1 lead.
Bourbonais and Peel each smoked wrist shots past Weninger before the period was done, and although the Saints responded with a goal late in the frame to cut their deficit to 4–2, the Bulldogs did not let their opponents come back this time.
“That loss last night was a wake up call,” Kearney said. “Everyone to a man took it upon himself to come out strong and not let up.”
St. Lawrence would not beat Yale netminder Ryan Rondeau ’11 again, and Little rounded out the scoring with a backhand past Weninger after he and Kearney executed a textbook give-and-go.
While the game boasted its share of smooth skating, the physical play caused some casualties. Brendan Mason ’11, left the game after taking a stick to the shoulder, and Allain said after the game that he was unsure about the extent of Mason’s injury.
The fate of St. Lawrence defender Justin Baker — who had to be helped off the ice after he was on the receiving end of a devastating Chad Zieger ’12 hit — is more certain. Marsh said the freshman would certainly miss Sunday’s game with a bad knee injury.
Saturday was undeniably physical, and Sunday is unlikely to be any different, Kearney said. Both teams will be playing for their lives in the do-or-die third game.
“I think that sometimes it takes you a little bit of time to get into playoff mode, and St. Lawrence had a three-game head start on us, but I liked the way we came out,” Allain said. “Tomorrow will be a heck of a hockey game.”
The decisive third game between the two conference foes kicks off at 7 p.m. Sunday.
The News live blogs men’s hockey versus St. Lawrence as Yale looks to stave off elimination.
You can outskate. You can outshoot. You can play 16 deadlocked minutes of overtime. But close doesn’t count in hockey.
Although Jimmy Martin ’11 scored two goals and Yale began the third period with a 3–1 lead, the Elis succumbed to a late comeback from upstart St. Lawrence (13–20–5, 6–15–1 ECAC). The Saints rode the hot goaltending of Matt Weninger and two goals — including the game-winner — from freshman standout Greg Carey to a 4–3 overtime victory. The defeat leaves the Bulldogs (23–6–1, 17–4–1) a single loss away from ECAC tournament elimination.
“To me, the game was lost in the second period,” head coach Keith Allain ’80 said. “We had a 3–1 lead and we had a number of opportunities to make it 4–1, and didn’t execute.”
The Elis took the ice at Ingalls Rink Friday night as the only team in the country undefeated at home. They were the No. 3 team in the country and No. 1 in the PairWise system. They were the top-scoring team in the nation. They had not lost in their past five games. Their last loss, a full month before, had come against a mediocre team stuck at the bottom of the ECAC standings. A mediocre team called St. Lawrence.
The Saints, who had already shocked the college hockey world with a surprise victory over Princeton in the first round of the ECAC tournament, kept the fairy tale alive Friday night. They took full advantage of a series of favorable bounces, especially on their opening goal less than a minute into the game. Pat Raley’s shot from just past center ice gave the Saints a 1–0 lead when it took a strange hop and skittered through the legs of Yale goaltender Ryan Rondeau ’11 and into the net.
“We got some breaks, there’s no doubt about it,” St. Lawrence head coach Joe Marsh said. “We’re playing loose. The guys just want to keep playing. We know we’re living on borrowed time.”
The Saints’ energy and excitement showed after Carey redirected a pass from linemate Kyle Flanagan across the goal line 16:28 into the overtime period. The Saints piled on top of the hero, while Rondeau and crestfallen defensemen Ken Trentowski ’11 and Nick Jaskowiak ’12 — who were on the ice for the final goal — watched the celebrating visitors in disbelief.
The loss leaves Yale with a one-game deficit it will have to overcome to advance to the ECAC semifinals in Atlantic City. It also awakened ghosts of Yale’s 2010 fiasco against another mediocre team, Brown, in the ECAC quarterfinals. The Bears, like the Saints this year, were the second-worst team in the conference. But they caught fire in the playoffs, and upset Yale 3–2 in the first game of the quarterfinal series, before eliminating the heavy favorites in three games.
The Bulldogs’ ability to outplay — but not outscore — St. Lawrence further conjured images of the loss to Brown. Allain insists that Yale dominated seven of nine periods of hockey against Brown last year. But only goals determine the outcome of tournaments. And although Yale gave a solid effort Friday night and outshot St. Lawrence 11–6 in the overtime period alone, both Brown and now the Saints have proved that the winner on the ice is not always the winner on the scoreboard.
“I don’t think we played a bad game,” Martin said. “There were times when we let our focus off a bit, but I don’ think that was an issue. St. Lawrence is an opportunistic team and they buried a few chances.”
Yale certainly seemed to take control after Raley opened the scoring with his fluke goal. The Elis converted on their first three power play opportunities and headed into the locker room at the end of the second period with a 3–1 lead.
“Our bright spot this year was the penalty kill, so when they scored on their first three, I said ‘Oh boy,’” Marsh said. “But after that, we settled down.”
Indeed, Yale could not muster any more offense. Although it continued to fire pucks on net, Saints goalie Matt Weninger kept his team within two goals. He denied both Brian O’Neill ’12 and Broc Little ’11 on breakaways and finished with 31 saves, including 17 in the third period and overtime.
“I just wanted to play well enough to give the guys an opportunity to win, and that’s mission accomplished tonight,” he said.
Weninger’s teammates made sure that his performance stood. Aaron Bogosian narrowed the deficit to 3–2 when he threw his own rebound at the net, and Carey notched the equalizer with a shot into the top corner that knocked Rondeau’s water bottle off the top of the net. Carey’s second goal off Flanagan’s pass in overtime finished off the comeback and cued the first game-ending celebration by a visiting team on the Ingalls Rink ice this season.
The Elis’ postgame body language screamed disappointment, but one loss to St. Lawrence does not spell the end of the Elis’ ECAC tournament ambitions. The quarterfinals are a best-of-three series, so Yale must lose to the Saints once more to be eliminated. It must beat them twice in a row to earn a ticket to Atlantic City.
The next tilt between the two teams will begin fewer than 24 hours after the first finished, and both Allain and Rondeau said the Bulldogs must put the loss behind them.
“The game’s over, and you just move on to the next one,” Rondeau said. “It’s the same approach as the regular season — you just don’t worry about it and move on.”
The men’s hockey team’s upcoming ECAC quarterfinal series bears an eerie resemblance to last season’s. But last year is the one thing that the Elis do not want to worry about as they begin their hunt for the conference postseason title.
Twelve months after a surprise quarterfinal elimination at the hands of Brown, which had finished the regular season with the ECAC’s second-worst record, Yale (23–5–1, 17–4–1) will once again follow a bye week with a series against a cellar-dwelling opponent. This time, the foes will be the St. Lawrence Saints (12–20–5, 6–15–1), who finished the regular season 11th out of 12 teams in the ECAC.
“We’ve learned that you can’t take anyone lightly, especially a team like St. Lawrence that just knocked off one of the top teams in the conference,” said right winger Broc Little ’11.
Indeed, the Saints faced long odds to get even this far in the tournament. In the first round, they faced a solid Princeton team that had beaten them twice in the regular season. Princeton won again in the first game of last week’s best-of-three series, by a lopsided 4–1 score.
But as elimination loomed last weekend, the Saints fought back. They narrowly won their next two games and earned the chance to travel to New Haven and play a Yale team they have already upset once this season.
“Any team in this league can beat any other team,” left winger Denny Kearney ’11 said.
St. Lawrence has won its share of big games, and the Elis praised their upcoming opponents’ skill. Captain Jimmy Martin ’11 called the Saints an generally solid team that skates particularly well.
But the Saints cannot match Yale’s scoring depth or consistent defense. Star freshman Greg Carey’s 37 points this season would put him second on the Elis. Goaltender Matt Weninger dazzled in his team’s last two games, with 76 saves on 79 shots. But St. Lawrence has few other forwards of Carey’s caliber, and Weninger has been inconsistent all season.
Yale, on the other hand, boasts a deep lineup on which thirteen skaters have scored points in the double digits this season. Only nine Saints have done the same. Eli Goaltender Ryan Rondeau ’11 has allowed four fewer goals than Weninger this season, despite playing 240 more minutes than his counterpart.
But, as the fiasco against Brown in last year’s quarterfinals attests, none of those statistics matter in the emotionally charged playoffs.
“We played nine periods of hockey against Brown,” Allain said. “I would defy anybody to tell me we didn’t dominate seven of them. But we had a little lack of intensity off the puck drop the first night.”
That lack of intensity, Allain said, may have stemmed from the off week the team had before playing Brown. But the team learned from its mistakes. It had another off week between its loss to Brown and the first game of the NCAA tournament, and trained well enough to storm into the national championships with a win over North Dakota.
The team has prepared for the St. Lawrence as it prepared for North Dakota, according to Kearney. Allain said he gave the team an extra day off, but has kept them on the ice longer in practice and scheduled extra weight lifting.
“We used this like a training camp week,” he said.
The Saints have skated through three games since Yale last played, and may be in superior game shape at the beginning of the series, but Kearney said that the extra rest has his team feeling rested, refreshed, and ready.
Yale will need that energy. Allain said that the team struggled in its last meeting with St. Lawrence because the Saints pulled a third man back on defense, neutralizing the Elis’ trademark rushes up ice. The team needs to work hard this weekend to move the puck better through the neutral zone, he added.
Martin does not think Yale is in any danger of not working hard enough.
“Having the week off has made us stay hungry,” he said. “We’re itching to go. Last year was last year. This year is this year.”
By the time most of Yale returns from break, the men’s hockey team could own a conference championship.
After finishing its regular season in second place, Yale has earned a bye through the first weekend of the ECAC tournament. As lower-ranked teams square off this weekend, Yale will have an extra week of rest and practice before it skates into its quarterfinal series on March 11 against a yet-to-be determined opponent.
“It’s nice to get a little rest,” said Andrew Miller ’13, the team’s leading scorer. “But since we have this week off, we won’t be in as good game shape as the team we play. We have to work hard this week and get a good sweat going every day.”
All 12 teams in the ECAC qualify for the conference playoffs, but the top four seeds receive byes directly to the quarterfinals. The bottom eight squads pair off, and play each other in best-of-three series. The winners of those initial series will have the chance to upset one of those four top teams in the quarterfinals.
Last year, Yale suffered one of those upsets. The Elis had won the ECAC regular season title, and faced off in the quarterfinals against a mediocre Brown team, which had finished second-to-last during the regular season. But Yale skated sluggishly after the week off, while the Bears rode the momentum of an upset win over RPI the weekend before and eliminated Yale in three games.
Elimination from the conference tournament did not end the Bulldogs’ quest for the national championship last year, and would not end it this year either. The computer that seeds the NCAA tournament currently ranks the Bulldogs first in the nation, and even an early exit from the ECAC playoffs would not drop them far from the top.
Last year, despite its loss to Brown, Yale stunned a vaunted and higher-ranked North Dakota program in the NCAA tournament with a 3–2 upset.
The Elis were heavy underdogs in that contest. The Fighting Sioux were playing in the NCAA Tournament for the eighth consecutive year; the Elis were making their fourth appearance in program history and had never won a game in the national tournament.
This year, however, Yale has grown from David to Goliath.
The team held the No. 1 ranking in the national polls for over two months, ending only in late January. It boasts the nation’s best scoring offense and second-best scoring defense. It is not shy about stating its aspirations — to go further than one win into the national tournament.
“We hope we have eight games left,” head coach Keith Allain ’80 said following the team’s last game of the regular season, a win over Cornell.
Eight games — eight wins — are the number necessary to win both the ECAC and NCAA titles. The first two of those wins will have to come on the weekend of March 11 at Ingalls Rink. If the Bulldogs advance past the quarterfinals, they will have no margin for error in the single-game elimination semifinals and finals. It’s go forward, or go home.
Last year, Yale’s ECAC tournament run ended far sooner than fans anticipated. The Bulldogs had won seven of their past eight games. They were facing off against a Brown team they had defeated twice in the regular season. But after two weeks off, Yale could not muster same the energy that had carried it through the end of the season.
The Elis have encountered similar difficulties regaining momentum after time off this year. Three of the Bulldogs’ five season losses came in the month following the winter break.
Heading into this year’s ECAC tournament, the Yale squad faces a situation much like last year’s: two weeks off before opening postseason play at home, and just one loss in its past six games. But this year, the Elis have two fewer obstacles to overcome.
Yale’s first game against Brown also marked its first without star forward Sean Backman ’10, who had broken his ankle the night of the team’s last regular season game. After Allain declared Backman “out indefinitely,” the Bulldogs had to adjust without the dangerous right winger.
Beyond the offensive setback, there was last year’s constant question of goaltending. Allain spent the 2009–’10 season cycling through netminders — never electing a chief starter. But this year’s Eli squad has climbed to unprecedented heights in the national rankings largely thanks to the steady performance of goaltender Ryan Rondeau ’11. The goalie, who played a mere six games last season, has emerged not only as a starter, but as a star.
Rondeau’s success is evident in statistical categories: he ranks third in the nation in both save percentage and goals against average. It is evident in individual games: he has shut out three teams this year, whereas last year’s carousel of goalies did not manage a single shutout. And it is evident in the words of his teammates.
“When we make mistakes, we know [Rondeau] has our back,” said Jimmy Martin ’11.
For most of the season, Yale has not needed that stellar goaltending — its top-ranked offense has scored at a clip quick enough to blow most opponents out of the water early on. The attack faltered in late January and early February, but finished with four goals or more in four of its last five regular season games.
“We just have to get out there and push the tempo,” said Miller. “We just have to play to our ability.”
Yale’s quarterfinal series will be held at Ingalls Rink on March 11, March 12 and, if necessary, March 13. All games will begin at 7 p.m. and be broadcast on WYBC. Free student tickets will be available at the rink before the game.
If Yale wins its quarterfinal series, it will play in the semifinals on March 18 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The finals will be held the next day. The tournament games will also be broadcast on WYBC.
Andrew Miller ’13 is not known for his shooting.
The smooth-passing center on the men’s hockey team tends to pass the puck before he takes a chance on goal himself. He admits that head coach Keith Allain ’80 often tells him to shoot more often.
But Miller explains that it’s difficult to change his play, though he tries to listen to his coach.
“I don’t consider myself a pass-first guy,” he said. “I just try to make the play and get the puck to the guy in the slot or by the net with the best scoring chance.”
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Miller has “made the play” enough this season that he leads Yale’s dangerous offense — which scores at the greatest clip in the country — with 38 points. Most of those have come from passes: only four other players in the nation average more assists per game than he does.
Last weekend, however, Miller took the shots, breaking up two scoreless ties in two nights with well-placed wristers. He added a third goal to seal Yale’s Saturday win over Cornell.
Against Colgate, he received a behind the back pass from linemate Brian O’Neill ’12 as he skated, open, toward the goalie. He hesitated for an instant before sending a shot through the visiting goalie’s legs. The crowd rose to its feet and Miller embraced his teammates on the ice.
But they were not Miller’s only friends at the game.
Miller quickly skated to the boards in front of the student section, where a pair of Eli fans were holding up a sign decorated like a large red Staples “easy button.” Miller punched the glass in front of the sign. The students roared.
Miller said that the celebration was spontaneous and arose from the excitement of the timely goal. But he added that he knew his suitemates were bringing a sign.
“We thought it’d be funny — and pretty fitting — to put [the sign] up after Yale’s goals considering how well these guys have played this year,” Steven Morales ’13, who lives with Miller, wrote in an e-mail.
Morales said he and a group of 10–15 other Branford students are regulars in the front row of the student section at home games, adding that they attend mostly because they are hockey and Yale athletics fans. Miller says his suitemates’ devotion to the team is a two-way street.
“They give me grief all the time,” he said. “They let me know when we didn’t do too well or when we should have won.”
Miller’s suitemates have had little to fault him for recently. The young forward has increased his scoring pace as the season has continued, and has 12 points — a balanced six goals and six assists — in his past seven games.
That production has accompanied Yale’s recovery from a three-game road losing streak, a correlation that Brian O’Neill ’12 — Yale’s second leading scorer and a linemate of Miller’s — said is no coincidence.
“When Miller is skating and creating chances, that’s when our line is at its best,” he said.
Miller has brought that production to Yale’s top lines since early freshman year. He arrived in New Haven with a pedigree from lower levels of the sport. He was Michigan’s high school Mr. Hockey in 2007, and USA Hockey’s national junior player of the year in 2009 after a standout campaign with the Chicago Steel of the United States Hockey League.
Months later, he scored a goal in his Bulldog debut. Soon, he was playing with O’Neill on one of Yale’s top lines and on his way to the school record for assists in a freshman season.
O’Neill and Miller had first skated on the same line in Chicago during their years in junior hockey, and the chemistry remains, according to Miller.
“We see the ice the same way,” he said.
O’Neill has turned into the goal-scorer of the duo, while Miller, despite his three-goal outburst last weekend, is the star setup man. Chris Cahill ’11 joins them on the right wing as another scoring threat. Though Allain encourages his sophomore star to shoot more, he also admires Miller’s vision on the ice.
“He has this ability to dictate the pace of the game,” the coach said. “He can skate as fast as anybody, but he can also cut back and take his time and look for second waves.”
The team takes advantage of that playmaking ability on the power play, when Allain often sends Miller out instead of a second defenseman. That switch allows more room for the Michigan native to set up the three other forwards on the ice with him.
Miller is the only sophomore to have played in all 63 games over the past two seasons.
They may not have a title yet, but they’re playoff bound.
While the men’s hockey team finished its regular season with a strong victory over Cornell (13–13–3, 11–9–2), its tie with Colgate (4–15–3, 7–24–3) the night before prevented Yale from overtaking Union to capture the ECAC regular season title. The Elis will enter the conference playoffs as a second seed even though they retain the No. 1 spot in the PairWise rankings, which determine the seeding of the NCAA tournament.
Yale entered the weekend a point behind Union in the ECAC standings. The Dutchmen retained that razor-thin margin by skating to a tie and a win of their own over the weekend. Although Yale’s two-year hold on the championship is now at an end, the win over Cornell on Senior Night gave the Bulldogs momentum heading into the two-week break before the start of the postseason, and capped an undefeated regular season at Ingalls Rink.
But the men’s hockey team, and particularly its seniors, are far from finished. Ideally, head coach Keith Allain ’80 said, they will close out their Yale careers with eight more games — the number of wins the team needs to capture both the ECAC and NCAA postseason tournaments.
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“I appreciate what these guys have done for us every day of the season for the past four years,” Allain said. “But if you ask them, they’re not done yet.”
Broc Little ’11 scored his first goal in three weeks on Saturday, but it was Andrew Miller ’13 who rallied the offense. Miller, who. according to Allain, leads the team in assists but can be hesitant to take shots of his own, took all the chances he needed to over the weekend. The center scored the team’s lone goal Friday night and two more the next.
“A guy like Andrew becomes much harder to defend when the threat of a shot is thrown into the mix,” Allain said. “I’d like to see him shoot more often.”
While Miller led Yale’s attack, goalie Ryan Rondeau ’11 carried the team on the defensive end. He allowed just one goal each game, and raised both his goals against average and save percentage to the third-best marks in the country.
But even Rondeau’s 31 stops on 32 chances Friday night were not enough to turn an anemic Yale offensive effort into a victory over Colgate, the worst team in the ECAC.
COLGATE BEATS YALE, 1–1
The Elis have played lethargic first periods throughout the season, but the team seemed to have kicked that habit two weeks ago when it burned Quinnipiac for two early goals and combined with Princeton for six scores in the first period the next night.
But then the Elis started slowly against Colgate, and stayed sluggish all game en route to a 1–1 tie against the last-place Raiders.
“I’d feel better about it if I thought we played really well,” Allain said after the game. “I thought we played OK.”
Indeed, although the scoreboard showed a tie, Colgate head coach Don Vaughan called the game one in which his team came out top.
“We bent,” Vaughan said. “But we didn’t break.”
Though Yale threatened the Raiders throughout the first period and the visitors managed their fair share of counterattacks, goalies Eric Mihalik of Colgate and Rondeau were the stars of the period, and the two teams headed for the locker rooms locked in a scoreless tie.
The Elis finally put a number on the scoreboard after killing off a boarding penalty called on Brian O’Neill ’12 early in the second stanza. The right winger streaked out of the box just in time, corralling the puck, threading it behind his back to Miller and spinning around to watch his teammate flip a shot over Mihalik’s shoulder.
Yale could not widen the lead, and the Raiders evened the score at one later in the period. Austin Mayer and Chris Wagner executed a textbook give-and-go that split the Yale defense and left Rondeau baffled.
But Rondeau would not be baffled again. Nor would his counterpart at the other end of the ice. Mihalik, a rookie whose play has been mediocre all season, caught fire Friday night and turned aside 39 of the 40 shots Yale fired at him through 60 minutes of play and overtime.
“He had a really good game,” Rondeau said of Mihalik. “Every time we had a chance, he seemed to turn it aside.”
Mihalik was good, but Yale’s offense did not threaten as it usually does. The team lost most battles for rebounds and failed to demonstrate the kind of passing prowess that characterizes its higher-scoring successes. Denny Kearney ’11 had one of the team’s best chances to win midway through the extra period. With Mihalik prone on the ice after stopping a shot from Little, Kearney had the puck at his feet but failed to connect cleanly, and his shot veered harmlessly wide of the unguarded net.
Union also skated to a Friday night tie, and so the Elis remained a single point back in the conference standings and retained an outside chance at the Cleary Cup as they prepared for their game against Cornell.
RED LIGHTS GREET BIG RED
The team Allain thought “played OK” against Colgate redeemed itself with a full 60-minute effort against Cornell the next night. The Bulldog offense shifted back into high gear and Rondeau once again held the fort in net as Yale rolled to a 4–1 win over the Big Red.
“I really liked the way we played tonight,” Allain said after the game. “We had lots of energy, played smart and had lots of offense. It was a good Yale hockey game.”
Despite its play, the team could not pass Union in the standings. The Dutchmen clinched the title when they shut out Princeton by a 5–0 margin.
“We obviously didn’t want to finish second,” captain Jimmy Martin ’11 said. “But ultimately we’re proud of a good win and some good hockey.”
Just as they had against Colgate, the Elis failed to score in the first period against Cornell. Although they outshot the Big Red by a wide 14–5 margin and made the crowd gasp when O’Neill clanged a shot off the crossbar early on, the Bulldogs found themselves stymied by visiting goalie Mike Garman.
Once again, however, Miller broke the scoreless tie with a goal early in the second period. This time, Yale kept the offense coming.
“We did a lot of little things better Saturday night,” said Martin. “We bore down more on some opportunities.”
Clinton Bourbonais ’14, who was playing his first game in more than a month, made Yale’s lead 2–0 when he found enough room in the slot to rifle a low shot just past Garman’s outstretched leg, off the inside of the post and across the goal line.
It took just over a minute for Little to tack on another goal. Kevin Limbert ’12 fed his linemate with a long pass, and Little buried his chance.
“They’ve been hard to come by lately,” Little said of his goal. “It was awesome to get one there.”
Although Cornell scored shorthanded later in the period on a Greg Miller breakaway to cut the Yale lead to 3–1, the Bulldogs sealed the game with a shorthanded goal of their own with less than three minutes to go.
The Big Red were on the power play and had pulled Garman so they could skate six-on-four when Miller picked off a pass and fired a shot the length of the ice into the empty net. The score would remain 4–1 until the final whistle, when the team gave fans an especially emphatic salute.
Though Allain insisted after the game that he feels like the team still has many games ahead, Martin admitted that Senior Night was “kind of sad for everybody.”
The Eli seniors found some time to get sentimental after the game, as they skated back onto the ice with their helmets off for pictures with their families. Chris Cahill ’11 fixed the helmet hair of Kearney before one snapshot, and Ken Trentowski ’11 carried two relatives at a time — while still in skates — for another.
Despite the pause for pictures, and although Allain said he would give his players some extra time off in the coming week, there are tournaments approaching and plenty of work left to do.
“The real fun begins now,” Little said.
The Bulldogs begin the ECAC playoffs with a three-game quarterfinal series at home against the second-lowest-ranked team to advance from next weekend’s first round.
The News live blogs men’s hockey versus Cornell.