After a fast start on Saturday night, the Clarkson University Hockey team could not maintain the pace and suffered a 4-3 loss at Niagara University before 1,573 fans at Dwyer Arena.
The Golden Knights, who began their season-opening Western New York road trip on Friday with a 6-4 victory at RIT, will open the home schedule at Cheel Arena with a two-game series against Top-5 ranked Colorado College this coming weekend.
“Our undisciplined play and loss of focus really cost us the game,” stated head coach George Roll. “There were some good efforts, I thought Lauri Tuohimaa’s line (Nick Tremblay, Scott Freeman) was exceptional tonight, but we deserved this loss. It is early in the season, and hopefully we will learn from this. That is the most important thing. We can’t control the officiating. You can only control the way you play and your emotions, and tonight we did not do a good job of that. Give Niagara credit, they earned the win, no question about it.”
Against Niagara, Clarkson jumped out to a quick start, scoring just 1:21 in, and held a 2-1 lead through the first 20 minutes. Sophomore Lauri Tuohimaa (Helsinki, Finland) tallied first for his second goal of the weekend, finishing off assists from sophomores Bryan Rufenach (Cameron, ONT) and Scott Freeman (Whitby, ONT). Niagara (1-2-1) tied it up at 10:48 on Dan Baco’s goal, but the Green and Gold went back on top at 17:56 as freshman Julien Cayer (Lonqueuil, QUE) flipped in a rebound at the side of the net off classmate Louke Oakley’s (Whitby, ONT) shot. Freeman also set up the goal for his fourth assist of the weekend.
Power plays were the focus in the second period with the Purple Eagles connecting twice with the man advantage, while Clarkson added an extra-man marker as the teams skated through 40 minutes tied 3-3. Niagara’s Brian Dowd and Vince Rocco sandwiched power-play goals around senior defenseman Phil Paquet’s (Quebec City, QUE) first goal of the season at 16:35. Rocco’s goal came with just 43 seconds remaining in the middle frame to make it 3-3.
The Knights had an excellent opportunity to regain control early in the third with a lengthy two-man advantage, but could not convert through the 1:40 of 5-on-3 play.
At 11:08, Bryan Haczyk came through with the game-winner for the Purple Eagles, knocking in a big rebound off Dowd’s shot.
The Knights chances of tying the score late in the game were greatly diminished when they were send to the box four times in the final 2:49 of the game.
Niagara went 2-of-11 on the power play, while the Knights were 1-of-7 with the man advantage.
The Purple Eagles out shot Clarkson 40-26. Junior Tim Potter (Bakersfield, CA) started in the Knights’ goal and turned aside 22 of 24 shots before leaving after 28:30 of play suffering from cramps. He had 16 first-period saves. Freshman Paul Karpowich (Thunder Bay, ONT) played the final period and a half and made 14 saves for the Knights.
