Tigers beat Yale for second-straight win

Princeton (4-3 overall, 1-0 Ivy League) won its second consecutive game and posted its first Ivy League victory of the season, beating Yale (2-5, 0-3) 11-8 in the 89th meeting between the two schools. The win improves the Tigers’ record to 67-20-2 all time against the Bulldogs.

“Overall, it was more of a two-steps-forward one-step-back sort of game. But compared to our past few games, which have been more one step forward and two steps back, it was definitely a step in the right direction,” head coach Bill Tierney said. “We played with a lot of emotion early and certainly played hard, but we made some incredible mistakes with an 8-3 lead. But overall, it was a good game to learn from, and we’ll certainly take the 1-0 record in the league.”

Thanks to the Tigers’ constant attack and relentless offensive mindset, the Bulldogs were forced to commit numerous slashing and cross-checking fouls, earning them numerous penalties. Princeton took full advantage of its eight separate man-up advantages, successfully converting on three of those opportunities.

With Princeton up 5-2 with just under six minutes left in the second period, junior attacker Tommy Davis beat his defender on a wrap-around on the right side of the goal during a 30-second man-up advantage. Davis’ 12th goal of the season electrified the Orange and Black crowd.

The Tigers, however, were plagued the entire game by their inability to win face-offs: The team only managed to win six of 22.

“Not winning the majority of the face-offs was actually not very critical at all. We knew Yale had a tough faceoff guy, and of course we tried to win as many as we could: It’s always nice to have more possessions. But we were mainly just concerned with not giving them any fast breaks off the face-off, and I think they only managed two the entire game,” Tierney said. “[Senior midfielder] Alex Berg’s had a great year, and he’ll continue to be put up against some of the best face-off guys in the nation, including against Syracuse next week. But we just have to make sure we don’t make any mistakes off the face-offs. As long as that doesn’t happen, winning them and losing them doesn’t matter that much.”

What cost Princeton far more than lost face-offs was lazy passing. One such error led to a Bulldog goal while the Tigers had a man-up advantage.

Such errors during the game were discouragingly common, and without excellent goaltending from senior Alex Hewit, the Tigers would have surely fallen in their Ivy opener.

“Right now, every aspect of the game needs work,” Tierney said. “I think Alex Hewit was at his absolute best yesterday. But we just need to keep the pedal down for 60 minutes and learn to play the whole game. We also could’ve been a lot better offensively in the second half.”

Offensively, the Tigers were led by freshman attack Jack McBride, senior attack Bob Schneider, junior midfielder Mark Kovler and Davis, each of whom had two goals. As the fourth quarter ran down with the Tigers up by four, Princeton began to hold the ball, passing back and forth in the Bulldogs’ half of the field. The Tigers also started playing aggressive defensive and forced turnovers in the second half of the fourth quarter. In the past two meetings against Yale, Hewitt has accumulated a .738 save percentage.

“Alex Hewit played big today defensively, and he really bailed us out with his saves,” junior defenseman Chris Peyser said. “Coming in, we knew they had some strong offensive players that are all scoring threats, so we had to perform well on defense. I think individually everybody could have done better on their matchups, but overall it was definitely an improvement on the Albany game.”

Since the Tigers’ opening 13-6 win over Canisius, they have seen their share of ups and downs, with each victory followed by a defeat. The win over Yale marks Princeton’s first chance to build a win streak this season as it heads into their final non-conference game of the year next weekend against Syracuse at the Carrier Dome.