Weekend Preview and Notes
Although early in the year, the games against Union and RPI this weekend will be critical for positioning in the league. A team has to win its home games, and St. Lawrence is pretty good in its own barn.
That said, Union and RPI are no pushover teams.
“(Union) just goes out and plays,” St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh said. “They're tough to play against. They're always tough to play against. It's pretty hard to catch them on a bad night.”
Marsh added that he couldn't recall the last easy win St. Lawrence had against Union.
The numbers show St. Lawrence has one five of the last six meetings. Its last loss came two years ago.
“I think they're one of the teams that, in a lot of ways, maybe are a lot like us,” Marsh said. “They don't spend a lot of time marketing themselves. They're very consistent.”
RPI, however, is on a tear early. The Engineers swept Yale and Brown at home. The win against Yale was a particular surprise considering Yale's top-15 ranking at the time. They will be at Clarkson first.
Two wins this weekend will give St. Lawrence some confidence heading back on the road for the next three weeks. The Saints won't return home until Dec. 4 when it plays a weekend home-and-home series with Clarkson. Then, it's back on the road again until Jan. 15.
SAINTLY WOES
Marsh harped on a few things this week in practice. Namely, St. Lawrence needs to have better scoring efforts on the power play. The Saints went an excruciating 1-for-19 on the man advantage last weekend.
“We've got to get pucks to the net and get second and third chances,” Marsh said. “I think we're trying to be a little too precise.”
The Saints are spending too much time setting up plays and finessing the puck than firing shots in. The one power-play goal they did score last weekend came via a rebound. That needs to happen more this weekend.
Also, the Saints have to stay out of the box. They're averaging nearly 13 penalty minutes per game, and are killing only 80 percent of power plays. Those numbers won't add up to a ton of wins as St. Lawrence travels deeper in to league play.
BROTHERLY LOVE
A story will appear in tomorrow's Watertown Daily Times in which I detail the history (in a fun and exciting way, of course) of St. Lawrence and its striking tendency to bring in brothers. Can you guess how many sets of brothers played together while at St. Lawrence? I mean brothers that played in the same year with each other, not brothers that were a generation of hockey players apart. Leave your guess in the comments!
