Box Score Finish with 3-1 Win Over Colgate
NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Multiple-point conference weekends in a strong ECAC Hockey are hard to come by. The No. 10 Yale men's hockey team got its second three-pointer in three weekends with a 3-1 win over Colgate before another sold out Whale.
Alex Lyon, the Yale junior goalie, stopped 20 of 21 shots and finished the weekend allowing just one goal in 125 minutes. The Elis were coming off a scoreless tie with Cornell on Friday.
The Bulldogs, who got two of their three tallies from defensemen, outshot the visitors 40-21 and moved into fifth place with eight points.
Senior defenseman Ryan Obuchowski put the Blue up 2:14 into the game with a shot from the top of the left circle that went through some traffic before finding the net. Two Raiders tried to clear the puck, but Stu Wilson poked it out to his blueliner for the shot that hit the skate of a defenseman in the low slot. The puck was was bouncing around in front of the Colgate net after Ryan Hitchcock fired a shot off of Charlie Finn's pads.
The Elis had two power plays in the first period but that tally was at even strength.
The Bulldogs were buzzing in the second period and Finn was seeing shots coming from all directions. Before the period reached its middle point, the home team found the back of the net again on its 10th shot, a one-timer by junior John Hayden.
The Elis finished with 21 pucks on net in the second and the second tally really got things flowing Yale's direction in a big way. Joe Snively controlled possession behind the Colgate net and then fed it to Chris Izmirlian, who moved out from the left side and fed Hayden in the low slot. The big Yale forward turned it around quickly, sending the puck five-hole on Finn at 8:23 for his third of the year.
"Snives (Snively) cycled it low and I came around the net. There was a little space and I thought about shooting before I saw Hayds (Hayden) with a good angle. I slide it under a defenseman's stick and he one-touched it five hole," said Izmirlian.
Charlie Curti, a freshman defenseman from Mound, Minn., put Yale up 3-0 with his first collegiate goal almost two minutes later. Wilson, who had two points, skated with the puck over the Raider blueline and then left it for Frankie DiChiara high on the right side. The junior winger pushed started to go low and then left it for Curti, who skated across and then turned to fire from the top of the slot.
"The coaches were telling us to get shots through. We had been getting good screens in front. All I had to do was get the puck through… and I got lucky," said Curti.
Lyon, who robbed Hunter Racine from point-blank range with a left pad save in the first, picked a rising wrister out of the air with a difficult sreen job by a big Colgate forward eight minutes into the third. Racine ended up with the lone Raider score in the final minutes of the contest, but the Eli goalie came up with a few big stops to insure the three-point weekend.
"We played pretty well the entire game," said Izmirlian. "We came out strong and finished strong. They tried to get chippie with us. We don't want to play their game. I think we proved we are a better team."
Bulldog Bites
Yale is in the middle of a string of games against high powered teams. The Elis played Cornell, No. 9 in the pairwise rankings, last night. Yale has Providence (2) next Saturday and Quinnipiac (1) the following Friday…
Filed by Steve Conn, Yale Associate AD & Sports Publicity Director
image by Steve Musco
