Bulldogs take out Golden Knights
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Things started off well for the Clarkson University hockey team, but Yale wound up avenging a loss earlier in the season by defeating the Golden Knights 5-1 before 3,500 fans at Ingalls Rink in an ECAC Hockey contest on Saturday night.
Clarkson (13-12-5 overall, 7-6-3 conference) scored the first goal of the game on a shot from Allan McPherson just two minutes into the game.
It was the third straight road game in which the Golden Knights scored a goal in the first three minutes. In Friday’s game at Brown, Alex Boak scored 2 minutes, 19 seconds into the game and Boak scored 2:38 into a game last Saturday at Rensselaer.
“You try to talk about that to take the crowd out of it,” Clarkson coach Casey Jones said of the early goals. “I thought for a large part of the game tonight we played pretty well. But it was not a whole 60 minutes where we were really sharp.”
Yale (10-11-2, 7-8-1), which lost 5-4 in overtime to Clarkson at Cheel Arena on Jan. 15, tied the game with a rebound goal from Andrew Miller at 6:23 of the first period.
As time expired in the first period, Clarkson’s Patrick Marsh was called for interference and the Bulldogs took advantage with a power-play goal from Brian O’Neill just 63 seconds into the second period. O’Neill scored again at the 18-minute mark to give the Bulldogs a 3-1 lead heading into the final period.
“They got a situation on that second goal where we made a mistake on the penalty kill in the neutral zone and, all of a sudden, it’s 2-1,” Jones said.
Clarkson had some scoring chances early in the third, but couldn’t get anything past Yale goalie Jeff Malcolm.
The Bulldogs put the game out of reach by scoring two goals just 18 seconds apart midway through the third period.
Kenny Agostino scored the first goal at 11:57 and Clinton Bourbonais added another goal at 12:15. Bourbonais goal was reviewed because a linesman had ruled it went in off a high stick. But the goal stood after the review.
Clarkson went 2-2 on the four-game road trip and is in fifth place in the conference standings just two points behind Harvard. Clarkson has played one less game than the Crimson and will play four of its last six games at Cheel Arena, including next weekend’s matchups against Princeton and Quinnipiac.
“We’re looking forward to coming home,” Jones said. “If we split the whole year on the road we’ll be in pretty good shape. We could have had a better fate tonight. We couldn’t get that second goal in the third period that would have got us within reach.”
