Men's hockey splits weekend games

Sometimes it takes an entire team effort to earn a win.

Other times it just takes an outstanding individual effort.

Sophomore goaltender Nate Nomeland stopped 40 Dartmouth shots to earn the first shutout for men's hockey since March 6, 1999, as the Tigers cruised past the Big Green 6-0. Nomeland's effort salvaged a split for Princeton (2-1-3 overall, 1-1-2 Eastern College Athletic Confer-ence) as the Tigers lost 3-2 on Friday against Vermont.

"We didn't play either game at the level which we played at last weekend," senior forward Shane Campbell said. "But, of the 20 guys that stepped out onto the ice against Dartmouth, Nate was the one who was ready to play."

While Nomeland was outstanding against the Big Green (1-5-0, 1-3-0), Dartmouth's goaltending tandem of Darren Gastrock and Nick Boucher were less impressive. Gastrock let up three goals on only six first-period shots before Boucher took over for the second and third, allowing another three goals on 14 shots.

Freshman defenseman Steve Slaton started the scoring explosion with a wraparound goal 16 minutes, 50 seconds into the first period. Junior forward Brad Parsons and senior forward Chris Corrinet added to the rally at the end of the first period, tallying goals in the final three minutes of the frame. Junior defenseman Dave Bennett and senior center Kirk Lamb assisted on all three goals.

The final three goals came on a second period wrist shot by senior forward Ethan Doyle and third-period scores by junior forward David Del Monte and Corrinet.

Mistakes kill

It was a different story against the Catamounts.

Vermont (4-2-0, 4-0-0) capitalized on the Tigers penalty problems, scoring two power-play goals including the game winner as the Catamounts' Graham Mink scored his second goal of the game with 2:45 remaining to lift Vermont to victory.

Princeton actually held the lead after the first period, as Corrinet scored the first of his three goals on the weekend, knocking a shot in from the doorstep on a pass from Lamb.

Mink would tie the score late in the second when he skated into the offensive zone, and ripped a slapshot from the blue line past junior goalie Dave Stathos. Stathos had a solid outing, notching 31 saves in the defeat.

"If you're tied going into the third you need to outplay the opposition if you're going to have a chance to win," Campbell said. "We just didn't do that."

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In that third period, Vermont's Andreas Moberg took over, snapping a wrist shot over Stathos' shoulder early in the period on the power play, before assisting Mink on the game winner.

"Every weekend you need to pick up points to stay in contention at the end of the season," Campbell said. "We can consider ourselves lucky that we picked up two the last couple days."