CANTON, N.Y. — The St. Lawrence Saints opened their 2015-16 season with a 5-2 win over the Niagara Purple Eagles on Friday.
While the score line may not indicate a close game, the first 40 minutes were anything but wide open. Niagara opened the scoring just past the 10-minute mark of the first period, when Ryan Kuhn beat Kyle Hayton high glove side with a wrist shot from the left faceoff circle.
Saints captain Brian Ward knotted the game at 1-1 with a wrist shot of his own from a bad angle that snuck past Niagara netminder Guillaume Therien at the 16:38 mark. It did not take long for Niagara to open a lead again, this time off a Nick Farmer wrist shot that beat Hayton high blocker from the right faceoff circle.
A late penalty by St. Lawrence appeared to give Niagara a chance to open a two-goal lead entering the second. However, Saints freshman Michael Laidley recorded his first collegiate goal short-handed to even the game at 2.
“[Sean] McGovern made a nice play, it was really all him,” said Laidley. “All I had to do was put the shot on net.”
The second period saw no scoring until late, when sophomore Ryan Lough gave St. Lawrence a 3-2 lead with less than four minutes remaining. After a defensive zone faceoff with five seconds remaining on a penalty kill, Lough beat Therien with a wrist shot from the high slot.
“It was a short-handed situation,” Lough said. “Ben [Masella] moved it to [Joe] Sullivan and I cut across the middle. Sully hit me and I knew I had some time and I cut to the middle and used the defenseman as a screen.”
For Niagara coach David Burkholder, that late goal changed the whole tone of the game. “The difference in the game was that goal at the end of the second,” he said.
With a lead entering the third, St. Lawrence recorded two more goals, including a power-play tally by Tommy Thompson, to finish with the 5-3 win.
“Eric walked the blue line really well and found me going hard to the back post,” said Thompson. “It was an easy tip-in.”
Therien kept his team in the game, finishing with 41 saves.
“For his first ever taste of college hockey, I though he played excellent and kept us in it,” said Burkholder.
“Overall, I thought we stood up for probably forty minutes of the game and in the third period I had to tip my hat to SLU, they looked like a nationally ranked team,” said Burkholder.
Saints coach Greg Carvel was pleased with the overall effort of his team.
“We played with a lot of speed and had a lot of scoring chances,” he said. “Defensively, I thought we were a little sloppy, but it’s early in the season.”
Carvel especially liked his team’s depth. “I like that we create a lot of offense and it comes from anyone on our roster,” he said. “It’s really easy to coach this team.”
Four Saints players finished with two points and five different players scored for St. Lawrence, which takes on Rochester Institute of Technology on Saturday. Niagara will face Clarkson, which defeated RIT 6-0 on Friday.
