Men's hockey pushes Clarkson to edge, falls hard to St. Lawrence

In the wake of a meeting to identify the team's goals for the season last week, the men's hockey team may have lost sight of another kind of goal — the kind that is scored on the ice to win games.

Princeton's offensive woes this season continued, as the team lost back-to-back road games for the second time this season, falling to Clarkson, 3-2, and St. Lawrence, 5-1.

So far this year, the Tigers have not scored more than two goals in any one game.

In the opening minutes of the Tigers' game Friday night against Clarkson (4-2-1 overall, 3-0-0 Eastern College Athletic Conference) at Cheel Arena in Potsdam, N.Y., Princeton (0-4-0 overall, 0-2-0 ECAC) seemed to be on its way to pulling itself out of an early-season scoring slump.

Freshman forward Mike Patton scored his first collegiate goal only one minute, 48 seconds into the first period, assisted by classmates forward James Fitzpatrick and defenseman Luc Paquin.

It looked as though the Tigers would have a real chance to knock off a team that holds a commanding 57-20-5 lead in the history of the teams' series — Princeton has not beaten the Golden Knights since November of 1998.

Clarkson answered quickly, however, as the teams traded power-play goals. Junior forward George Parros recorded the second — and final — Princeton score of the game on an extra-man chance at 13:02 in the first.

Parros is currently the team's leading scorer with one goal and two assists.

Ultimately, even on the strength of 31 saves by senior goalkeeper Dave Stathos, Clarkson got the better of the Tigers.

"We played real hard and I was very proud of our team," head coach Len Quesnelle '88 said.

The fact that Princeton was able to stay with the Golden Knights should certainly be a source of pride for the Tigers, given that the time was without some of its key personnel for the second game in a row.

After battling with the Golden Knights, Princeton traveled to St. Lawrence (2-5-0 overall, 1-2-0 ECAC) the following night to take on the Saints.

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The intensity and energy expended in the loss the night before had a heavy impact, as the Tigers lost their second match of the weekend.

"Friday night took its toll," Quesnelle said. "We were forced to play with a short bench and we just ran out of gas."

Senior forward David Del Monte scored the lone goal for Princeton, with assists from sophomore forward Sharam Fouladgar-Mercer and senior forward Josh Roberts. Unfortunately for the Tigers, the preseason No. 2 Saints already had a three-goal lead when Del Monte scored with a little more than six minutes left in the third.

St. Lawrence would tally two more scores in the final period to dash Princeton's hopes and put the game out of reach.

With no mid-week games, Princeton has the advantage of some recovery time before their home openers against ECAC opponents Vermont on Friday and Dartmouth Saturday.

With such lofty team objectives as winning the Ivy League and finishing in the top four in the ECAC, using this week to improve the team's anemic offense will be critical.

"We eliminated a lot of the mental mistakes in our last games," Quesnelle said. "We're going to break down a lot of film this week to see what cost us games."