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Harvard hangs on to drop Saints in regular season finale

Posted 2/27/11

The St. Lawrence University men's hockey team put together a late rally on Saturday night at the Bright Hockey Center against Harvard University.  However, the team was unable to overcome a …

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Harvard hangs on to drop Saints in regular season finale

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The St. Lawrence University men's hockey team put together a late rally on Saturday night at the Bright Hockey Center against Harvard University.  However, the team was unable to overcome a three-goal deficit, falling to the Crimson, 4-3, leaving the Saints as the No. 11 seed in the 2011 ECAC Hockey Tournament.

Harvard finishes the regular season with a 9-19-1 (7-14-1) mark and will be the No. 10 seed in the conference tournament.  The Saints fall to 10-19-5 (6-15-1) and will head to Princeton, NJ to take on Princeton Tigers in the first round best-of-three series next weekend.

St. Lawrence scored the lone goal of the first period at the 3:34 mark, when junior Pete Child tallied his fifth goal of the campaign.  The South Burlington, VT native hammered a slap shot past Harvard goalie Ryan Carroll on the power play to put the Saints on top 1-0, with assists going to senior Jared Keller and rookie Pat Raley.

The star of the first period was Saint netminder David Grilk, who turned in 13 saves in his first collegiate start to keep the Crimson off the scoreboard through 20:00 minutes of play.  However, turnovers in the defensive end would cost the Saints late in the second period, as the Crimson scored back-to-back goals only 21 seconds apart to take a 2-1 cushion. 

Michael Biega got the Crimson kick-started as he stole the puck in the offensive zone and sent a hard shot just wide of Grilk.  However, the rebound came back off the end boards right to Conor Morrison, who punched in the rebound to even the score at 1-1.  Then, at 16:01, David Valek stole the puck behind the Saints' net and found Michael Del Mauro in front to put the home team on top 2-1 after two periods.

The Crimson, which held a 16-7 advantage in shots in the second period, would push their lead to 4-1 early in the third period.  A bad turnover behind the St. Lawrence goal would lead to an easy tally for Marshall Everson only 12 seconds into the third to give Harvard a 3-1 lead.  Biega then converted a two-on-one try at 3:57 with a one-timer that blitzed past Grilk for a 4-1 lead.  Assists on the fourth Harvard goal went to Pier-Olivier Michaud and Morrison.

St. Lawrence would put together a late rally to get back to within striking distance thanks to consecutive goals by senior Aaron Bogosian and first-year student Greg Carey.  Junior Mark Armstrong used a slick spin move in the offensive zone to find classmate Max Mobley.  Mobley then chipped a pass to the near side to Bogosian who laced a one-timer past Carroll to cut the visitors' deficit to 4-2.

Carey would follow at 17:05 of the third period with a power play goal, his 18th tally of the year, to pull the Saints back to within one at 4-3.  The Hamilton, ON native ripped a wrist shot past Carroll's glove, with an assist going to Keller.

Though St. Lawrence would pull junior netminder Joe Spadaccini, who replaced Grilk after the fourth Harvard goal, the team was unable to come up with the tying score and fell in Cambridge, MA by the score of 4-3.

Harvard closed with a 37-35 advantage in shots on goal, but finished 0-for-3 on the power play.  Meanwhile, St. Lawrence was a perfect 2-for-2 with the extra skater.  Carroll made 32 saves to get the win, while Grilk made 30 stops in a losing effort.  Spadaccini added three saves as well.

Game one of the Saints' best-of-three series against Princeton is scheduled for Friday, March 4.