Hockey shuts down Colgate, falls to Cornell

Split.

No, that's not the sound of senior goaltender BJ Sklapsky's pants ripping after making one too many sprawling kick saves for the men's hockey team. Nor is it the sound of head coach Guy Gadowsky pulling out his hair after a missed shot on an open net or a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty.

With a solid 2-1 win over Colgate followed by an 8-4 shellacking at the hands of Cornell, that splitting is just the sound of another weekend in the ongoing saga of the Tigers' 2006-07 campaign. For the second week in a row and the fifth time this season, Princeton (11-14-3 overall, 8-10-2 Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Hockey League) went middle of the road with one win and one loss.

With two games to go in the season, the Tigers are in the thick of a tie for sixth place in the extremely tight ECACHL standings.

"We basically have mixed feelings," senior defenseman Brett Westgarth said. "We got some much-needed points on Friday, but we just didn't get the job done on Saturday."

Friday night, Princeton hauled up to Hamilton, N.Y. , ready to settle the score with the Raiders (13-17-4, 7-10-3), who won the teams' first meeting earlier in the year.

Initially, neither team could crack the other's staunch goaltending, but just over seven minutes into the second period, senior forward Grant Goeckner-Zoeller blocked a clearing attempt straight onto the stick of freshman forward Cam MacIntyre, who buried the puck for his third goal of the year.

Barely seven minutes later, MacIntyre worsened the red-light burn of Colgate goaltender Mark Dekanich with a power-play marker for his second score of the night. Sklapsky kicked out two shorthanded scoring attempts in the Tiger zone, springing sophomore forward Lee Jubinville, senior forward Darroll Powe and MacIntyre on a three-on-two break. A nifty drop pass from Powe set up MacIntyre's goal for the 2-0 lead.

The Raiders finally got on the board with a goal midway through the final period, but try as they might, they could find neither the lost ark nor a second goal, and Princeton skated away with the 2-1 win, one of its finest defensive performances of the season.

Sklapsky came up huge, turning in a masterful 37-save performance to post his second straight victory.

"BJ Sklapsky played unbelievable Friday night," senior defenseman Daryl Marcoux said. "He was playing his angles well and had great rebound control. He even played well Saturday night, we just didn't give him a lot of help."

Indeed, as dominant as Sklapsky and the team's defense were against Colgate, the next night in Ithaca, N.Y., they got downright embarrassed. Big Red forwards had their way with Princeton all evening in what was the Tigers' worst defensive performance of the season.

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Cornell wasted no time in taking control of the game, scoring its first of eight goals just 59 seconds in. Nineteen minutes and three goals later, the Big Red already owned a 4-0 lead, thanks to a couple of redirections and a pair of power-play goals.

"[The Cornell skaters] were playing very well down low," Westgarth said. "They got loose in front of the net a few times, and they seemed to bury their chances every opportunity they got."

Sklapsky, who had started the game, watched the final two periods from the bench while freshman Zane Kalemba took his turn in the trenches. The switch did little to stave off Cornell's attack, however, as the Big Red pumped four more goals past Kalemba, all in the second stanza.

The Tigers managed only one score during that stretch, a power-play goal from Jubinville that he tipped in off a missed shot by MacIntyre 25 seconds into the period.

Princeton got three goals back in the third period thanks to Powe, junior defenseman Mike Moore and senior forward Christian Read. Though Kalemba allowed no more pucks past him in the final period, the Tigers' seven-goal comeback attempt fell short as Cornell completed its season sweep of Princeton with an 8-4 pummeling.

"We just didn't come quite prepared to play," Marcoux said.

Lost in the fray was Goeckner-Zoeller's 100th career point, an assist on the third-period goal by Moore. The last Tigers to accomplish this feat were Jeff Halpern — who now skates for the NHL's Dallas Stars — and Scott Bertoli in 1999.

Princeton closes out its season next weekend with home games against Clarkson and St. Lawrence, the top two teams in the ECACHL.