Women's Hockey | 2/21/2018 5:53:00 PM
Winners of three straight and 18 of its last 19 games, the Clarkson University Women's Hockey team enters postseason play on a roll. The Golden Knights, guided by 10th-year head coach
Matt Desrosiers and assistants
Britni Smith and
Tony Maci have earned the #1 seed in the ECAC Hockey playoffs after claiming a share of the regular-season title, its fourth conference crown in the past five years.
Clarkson will host Yale in a quarterfinal series at Cheel Arena this weekend. Game 1 of the best-of-three series will take place on Friday at 3:00 p.m., followed by Game 2 on Saturday at 3:00 p.m. If the series is tied after Saturday, the Knights and Bulldogs will face off again on Sunday at 2:00 p.m. in a deciding Game 3. If the Green and Gold defeat Yale in the quarterfinals they will host the ECAC Hockey Championship at Cheel on March 3-4. Clarkson won its first league championship tournament title last year at Cheel.
The Knights, led by their Senior Class –
Katelyn Fournier,
Savannah Harmon,
Lauren Lefler,
Shea Tiley and
Amanda Titus – closed out the regular season by defeating Dartmouth (4-0) and Harvard (3-1) this past weekend at Cheel.
Ranked #2 in the national polls, Defending NCAA Champion Clarkson boasts a 29-4-1 overall record and posted a 19-3 ECAC Hockey mark.
Clarkson vs Yale ECAC Hockey Quarterfinal Game Notes (pdf)
USCHO.com Poll
USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Poll
NCAA Pairwise
ECAC Hockey Standings
B993's Mike Vaillancourt's Coaches Corner
• Clarkson, which has qualified for the ECAC Hockey playoffs in every year it has been eligible, is 22-20 through 13 seasons of league postseason play. The Knights are 17-14 in the quarterfinal round having won seven of their 13 series, including the past five. Clarkson and Yale have never faced off against each other in the postseason.
• The Knights boasted the top-rated offense and defense in ECAC Hockey action, scoring 4.09 goals per game, while allowing only 1.32 GPG through 22 league games. Overall, the Knights are ranked fourth in the nation in offense (3.88 GPG) and third defensively (1.24 GPG).
• One of the top lines in the country powers the Clarkson offense. The trio of sophomore center
Michaela Pejzlova, junior left wing
Loren Gabel and freshman right wing
Elizabeth Giguere has accounted for 47.8% of the Knights' scoring with 163 (73-90) of the team's 341 (132-209) points. Gabel, Giguere and Pejzlova are the top three scorers overall in ECAC Hockey.
• Gabel leads the league in scoring with 61 points and tied the Clarkson single-season goal-scoring mark with 29 tallies, also shared by 2014 Patty Kazmaier Award winner Jamie Lee Rattray '14.
• Nearly doubling the point total off all the other conference freshman, Giguere has made a big impression in her first collegiate season. She shattered the Clarkson freshman scoring mark with 60 points on 24 goals and a conference-leading 36 assists.
• Pejzlova tallied 42 points (20-22) and leads the Knights in power-play goals with 7.
• Senior
Shea Tiley ranks among the NCAA's best in all the major goaltending categories. She posts a a .939 save percentage (3rd) 1.30 GAA (4th), a .864 winning percentage (3rd) and is second in shutouts with 10.Tiley has posted 107 career wins and 34 shutouts through her four years with the Green and Gold.
The Series:
The Golden Knights are 21-6-1 all-time versus Yale and are 13-1-1 in their last 15 matchups. Clarkson has only lost twice to Yale at Cheel Arena, once in its first-ever contest (2-1ot) and then on January 30, 2015 (3-2). The Knights have not lost consecutive games to the Bulldogs since the 2004-2005 season when Yale swept the season series. The Golden Knights and the Bulldogs have never faced off in a playoff series. Clarkson swept this year's regular-season series; the first matchup in November ended in a 4-0 shutout win for the Knights. The Bulldogs traveled to Potsdam just a couple weeks ago on February 3rd and lost 2-1 in a tough game.
Loren Gabel,
Michaela Pejzlova, and
Rhyen McGill each have tallied six points in their careers against the Bulldogs to lead the Knights' offense. In the two matchups this year, Gabel and linemate
Elizabeth Giguere did the majority of the scoring. Gabel scored twice and tallied three assists for five points in the two games, While Giguere posted a goal and an assist in each game for four points in her first two career games against the Bulldogs.
Shea Tiley is 6-1 all-time against Yale, posting a 1.58 goals against average and a .921 save percentage in seven games.
Scouting Yale
Yale has struggled in its recent playoff history, winning just one game in its last three postseason appearances. The Bulldogs have reached the playoffs eight times in the last 14 seasons, including this year. Last season, Yale was eliminated in two games at St. Lawrence, losing 4-1 and 4-0. The Bulldogs' last playoff win came in the 2013-14 season when they took the opening game of their series against Harvard 3-2 in overtime. Yale then proceeded to fall in the next two games to the Crimson, (3-2, 4-0) to lose the series. The Bulldogs' last series win came in the 2004-2005 season, when Yale took down Princeton 4-2 in back-to-back home games to advance to the semifinals. The Bulldogs proceeded to lose in the semifinals 2-1 to Harvard in overtime.
Yale enters the playoffs as the eighth seed in the ECAC after going 8-12-2 in conference play. Yale, 10-15-4 overall, was only 4-8-2 on the road. After losing five games in a row, including a 4-1 loss against Princeton this past Friday, a playoff-clinching win was needed on Saturday. Yale fought out a 2-0 victory against Quinnipiac to clinch the eighth seed and a trip to Potsdam.
Greta Skarzynski leads the Bulldogs with 14 goals on the season, one of which came in their 2-1 loss to Clarkson a few weeks ago. She also leads the team in points with 25. Tera Hofmann and Gianna Meloni have split time in net all season for Yale. Hofmann is 3-8-3 on the season in 16 games and Meloni is 6-5-1 in 15 games.
