Coming into tonight’s game at Union, Clarkson knew that they had a tough road ahead of them. Not only did the Dutchmen have a 13-game home unbeaten streak dating back to last season, but the Golden Knights had not won a regular season game in Schenectady since January 13, 2001, when they won 5-0.
Even though Clarkson were the winners of five straight ECAC contests, these trends continued, as the Dutchmen routed the Golden Knights, 8-1, in front of a crowd of 2,170.
“Our team wasn’t ready to play tonight,” said Clarkson coach George Roll. “When you come into this building, you have to match their intensity, and we didn’t do that.”
“Our guys play so hard against them because we respect them so much,” said Union coach Nate Leaman.
The opening frame was completely dominated by the Dutchmen, as they outshot their opponent 22-3, including 18-0 through the first 16 minutes of the game. Andrew Himelson took Clarkson’s first shot with 3:12 remaining in the period. Fortunately for the Golden Knights, they were able to head to the locker room with the game still scoreless, thanks to solid goaltending from Paul Karpowich.
However, Clarkson was unable to hold off the Dutchmen for long, as the flood gates opened early in the second period when Union scored three goals off of five shots within a 2:45 span.
The first goal began when Greg Coburn took a slap shot from the right point which was deflected in front of the Clarkson net. Josh Jooris then found the puck in the scrum and poked it to classmate Daniel Carr, who put the puck past Karpowich with a backhanded shot.
Just 1:01 following Carr’s goal, Kyle Bodie scored on a shot from slot, which was then followed by goal by his younger brother Mat less than two minutes later. John Simpson set up the younger Bodie when he passed the puck from the slot to Bodie at the left circle, who proceeded to rip a one-timer past Karpowich.
“Their goalie made a couple good saves [in the first period], but we just kept after it,” Carr said.
“Unfortunately things weren’t bouncing for us [in the first period], but we didn’t get frustrated,” the elder Bodie added. “It shows some maturity.”
Coach Roll tried to rally his men when he called a timeout following the third goal, but Kyle Bodie extended his team’s lead to four less than five minutes later.
The Golden Knights showed a sign of hope late in the period when Nick Tremblay tipped Louke Oakley’s shot from the right point over the shoulder of Keith Kinkaid to put his team on the scoreboard, but Union’s Jeremy Welsh responded 19 seconds later to make it a four-goal game once again.
“It was huge for the game and huge for the bench,” Bodie said.
Coach Leaman agreed. “They got up a little bit, and we all saw the Canada-Russia game. That was probably the biggest goal of the game.”
The Union onslaught continued in the third period as they tacked on three more goals.
There were two Union firsts in the period. On the seventh goal, Mike Ingoldsby picked up an assist for his first career point, while Kevin Sullivan scored his first career goal to cap the scoring.
Next weekend, the Dutchmen head to Colgate and Cornell.
