The two leading scorers in ECAC Hockey and the conference's top goaltender came to the forefront on Saturday afternoon at Cheel Arena as the Clarkson University Women's Hockey team gained a hard-fought 2-1 victory over Yale.

Winners of 15 straight, the #2-ranked Golden Knights improve to 26-3-1 overall and stand in first place in the ECAC Hockey standings with a 16-2 league mark. The Green and Gold are two points ahead of second-place Colgate with four games remaining in the regular season. Clarkson travels to Princeton and Quinnipiac next weekend.

"I thought we started the game well by just keeping things simple in all three zones," stated Head Coach Matt Desrosiers. "We built off that at the beginning of the second period and had some good offensive zone time, but weren't able to capitalize on a few good chances. Yale did a good job pushing the pace a bit towards the end of the second and into the third period making it a very tight game the rest of the way. Overall I thought we did a good job battling through a week where we had three games after a tough road trip last weekend. It will be important for us to recover well this week heading into another difficult road trip."

Junior left wing Loren Gabel (Kitchener, ONT) and freshman Elizabeth Giguere (Quebec City, QUE) provided the goals and senior goaltender Shea Tiley (Owen Sound, ONT) turned aside 18 of 19 Yale (9-12-4, 7-9-2) shots to help Clarkson extend the nation's longest current winning streak.

Gabel scored just 1:29 after the opening faceoff, connecting on a wrist shot from between the circles for her 28th goal of the season. Junior defenseman Josiane Pozzebon (Bourget, ONT) and Giguere assisted. Named ECAC Hockey Player of the Month for January, Gabel is one goal away from tying Jamie Lee Rattray's '14 school record for most goals in a season. Gabel has 58 points on the season and 127 career points (68-59) through 111 games.

Giguere made it 2-0 in the middle frame, finishing off a 2-on-1 rush with Gabel with her 21st goal of the season at 7:29. Sophomore linemate Michaela Pejzlova (Pardubice, Czech Rep.) also assisted. Giguere, who has tallied at least one point in 29 of the 30 games this season, has 57 points, including a league-high 36 assists.

Giguere was named ECAC Rookie of the Month for the third time this season, earning the January honor.Yale got on the scoreboard less than a minute later when Greta Skarzynski capitalized on a Clarkson turnover in its own end and fired in a shot just under the crossbar at 8:22 to make it a 2-1 game through two periods.

Yale made a late bid to tie the game with their goaltender pulled in the final 38 seconds, but the Green and Gold shut down the visitors bid to force overtime.

Clarkson put 25 shots on the Bulldogs' net. The Knights went 1-of-2 on the power play and killed off Yale's lone man-advantage opportunity.