Men's hockey returned home from a pair of road games once again with a mixed record, this time against ECAC rivals Brown and Harvard.
In its first game of the weekend on Friday, Princeton (2-3-1 overall, 2-2-0 ECAC) extended its winning streak to two with an impressive 5-1 victory over an overmatched Brown squad (1-3-1, 1-3-1). The following night, the Tigers suffered a disappointing 8-6 defeat at the hands of league rival Harvard (2-2-1, 2-2-1).
Junior forward Dustin Sproat and sophomore forward Grant Goeckner-Zoeller turned in strong performances for Princeton. Sproat scored two goals and two assists and Goeckner-Zoeller added four more assists to help the Tigers to their first back-to-back victories since the 2001-02 season.
The game started off slow for Princeton. Brown jumped out to an initial 10-1 lead in shots on goal with the help of four early power plays. Sophomore goalie Eric Leroux shut down the onslaught long enough for Princeton to put its first goal on the board with 10 minutes, 54 seconds remaining in the first period. Junior forward Patrick Neundorfer intercepted the puck, and his subsequent shot was eventually secured and driven home by Sproat on the rebound.
Neundorfer continued to contribute to the Princeton cause when he found the back of the net after a Goeckner-Zoeller pass. Neundorfer is the leading Tiger scorer with four on the year.
Meanwhile, Leroux did not skip a beat from last weekend. His 18 saves kept the Bears off the scoreboard through the end of the first, despite Brown leading in the shots on goal department, 18-7.
Princeton came out firing in the second. Sproat picked up his second goal of the night just 2:01 into the period, firing a one-timer past Brown goaltender Scott Rowan. Goeckner-Zoeller got another assist. The Tigers went on to score twice more in the period, putting the game effectively out of Brown's reach. Neundorfer made it 4-0 with 14 minutes remaining and senior defender Luc Paquin tallied his first goal of the season with just under 6 minutes remaining, adding to Princeton's 5-0 advantage.
Leroux lost his shutout with 5:41 remaining in the third when Brown's Sean Hurley beat him with a wrist shot to the glove side, making the score, 5-1. Leroux ended the night with 31 saves, improving his record to 2-0-1. The win was Princeton's first in six years at Brown.
"It was only a matter of time for these [new systems under head coach Guy Gadowsky] to take hold and actually start producing," junior forward Sebasitian Borza said.
The Tigers were looking for their third win in a row against Harvard the next evening, but the Crimson jumped out to the early lead 1:43 into the game, courtesy of a Noah Welch goal.
The Tigers quickly leveled it, however, when Borza scored his first of the season with 12:39 left in the period. At the end of the first, it was still knotted at 1-1.
But the second period brought disaster. It began relatively calmly with Harvard and Princeton trading a goal each at the beginning of the period. Midway through the second, however, Tiger freshman Eric Pridham was called for checking from behind. Harvard capitalized three times on the five-minute power play that followed, and climbed to a 5-2 lead. Princeton got one of them back just before the end of the period with a Sproat goal.
But that was as close as the Tigers would ever get. The third brought three more Crimson goals, extending the lead to 8-3. Princeton counterattacked valiantly, but it was simply too little, too late. Sproat got his second of the night, and Goeckner-Zoeller and Paquin rounded out the scoring for the Tigers in the 8-6 defeat.
Sophomore goalie B.J. Sklapsky stopped 30 in the shootout, while Harvard's Dov Grumet-Morris made 29 saves for his team.
Overall, the Tigers gave up five shots on the power play, something they have been hoping to really control all year long.
"The penalties we got called for should have been ones we avoided," Borza said. "We realize the mistakes we made in giving up those penalties."
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