Things to think about after the first weekend of ECAC Hockey play:<\/p>\n
After splitting a two-game series with Mercyhurst last weekend, Colgate continued its slide Saturday against Northeastern — a 2-1 loss that puts it at 1-2 early this season.<\/p>\n
Junior goaltender Charlie Finn stopped 41 shots in the loss, only the second time in his career that he’s been called for such a heavy workload. But offense has been Colgate’s bread and butter, and the weird thing is that it seems to be working — Tyson Spink leads the ECAC with six goals and five assists this season. But somehow that isn’t translating into wins.<\/p>\n
Colgate was 0-for-5 on the power play, while Northeastern held a 43-17 shot advantage. For an unranked team against Colgate’s highly touted offensive prowess, Saturday’s contest looked like a mismatch. Then again, maybe not.<\/p>\n
A traditionally defense-first, grind-it-out type of team, Clarkson seems to be finding its offensive groove early and often this season, with two wins against RIT and Niagara to start the year 2-0.<\/p>\n
But what’s more impressive is the way the Golden Knights are winning games. Through two games, they have accumulated a 10-1 goal differential, including four power-play goals to lead the ECAC early this season. A.J. Fossen leads Clarkson with two goals and one assist, while Brett Gervais has one goal and three assists.<\/p>\n
After a 6-0 victory (vs. RIT) and a 4-1 victory on Saturday (vs. Niagara), Clarkson looks like it has found some offense that can, perhaps, carry it to the next level.<\/p>\n
St. Lawrence has similarly found its offense, scoring 10 goals this weekend from nine different players in two victories vs. Niagara (5-2 on Friday) and RIT (5-1 on Saturday).<\/p>\n
After playing to a 1-1 tie against Sacred Heart on Friday, Union mustered its offense and followed goaltender Alex Sakellaropoulos to a 5-3 victory over No. 3 ranked Boston University — scoring three times in the third period to secure the win.<\/p>\n
It was Union coach Rick Bennett’s 100th career victory, which was even more impressive in that it came against such a highly ranked opponent. The Dutchmen handed BU a loss on its season opener, powered by Nick DeSimone, Sebastian Vidmar and Eli Lichtenwald, who put Union ahead just three minutes into the third period. If the win Saturday was a sign of things to come, this Union team may be one to watch down the road.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Things to think about after the first weekend of ECAC Hockey play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":140328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1425],"tags":[1221,1486],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n