After losing to Princeton on Friday night, the men's hockey team, anchored by strong goalie play from Mike Clemente '12, took down Quinnipiac in a 3-2 game on Saturday to snap an eight-game losing streak.
Brett Wilson of Princeton (20-7-0, 14-6-0 ECAC Hockey) netted two goals and added an assist to help the Tigers take down the Bears for the third time this season. Tigers goalie Zane Kalemba, the ECAC leader in goals against average and save percentage, stopped all but one of the 26 shots he faced.
Matt Vokes '09 scored his fifth power-play goal of the season with less than five minutes remaining in the first period. The Bears (3-20-4, 3-14-3 ECAC Hockey) got out to a 3-2 lead early in the third period, and the Bobcats (15-14-3, 8-9-3 ECAC Hockey) couldn't come back despite pulling their goalie in favor of an extra attacker with 2:15 remaining.
Princeton 4, Brown 1
Princeton took its home ice fresh off of a 3-1 loss to St. Lawrence last Saturday. That defeat put an end to a four-game winning streak for the Tigers, a stretch that included a 2-1 victory over then-No. 5 Cornell. Princeton defeated Brown in Providence twice earlier this season, by a combined score of 9-2.
Princeton pounced on Brown in the first period, gaining a 19-6 shot advantage. For the first time in their last four games, the Tigers scored the game's first goal when Brett Wilson beat Clemente 11:47 after the puck dropped.
Just over thirteen minutes into the middle frame, Lee Jubinville scored a breakaway goal on an assist from Wilson, earning Wilson his 100th career point.
The Bears tightened Princeton's lead just over a minute later with assistant captain Aaron Volpatti '10 snapped a wrist shot for his fifth goal of the season, making the score 2-1.
But that would be the only goal Kalemba let in all night.
"He's been obviously tremendous," said Head Coach Roger Grillo. "He's a good goaltender. They're a good team. It's very difficult to control the puck against them."
The final frame was close on the shot charts, but not on the scoreboard. Princeton only outshot the Bears 17-15 in the period, but managed to score two more goals - one, a flick over Clemente and the other, an empty net goal with 12 seconds left on the clock after Grillo pulled Clemente for an extra attacker. Despite the final score, Grillo remained optimistic following Friday's game.
"I thought we played extremely well on Friday and actually the score of the game was much different than the actual game," Grillo said. "I thought it was as well as we played maybe all year."
Brown 3, Quinnipiac 2
Brown returned to the ice on Saturday to take on the Quinnipiac Bobcats, who had tied No. 7 Yale the night before, 3-3.
The Bobcats took down the Bears in a 5-1 game on Jan. 30 at Meehan. But Brown got its second road win of the season in the rematch.
According to Grillo, the difference between the two games was simple.
"We got some timely goals and capitalized on some opportunities. And I thought we just played a little bit better defensively," he said.
Twelve seconds into their second power-play of the night, Vokes shot from the bottom of the left face-off circle and beat Quinnipiac goalie Bud Fisher to put the Bears ahead, 1-0, with five minutes to go in the opening period.
It took over thirty minutes of ice time before anyone scored again, but momentum shifted to Quinnipiac when Brown took five penalties in under eight minutes in the middle of the second period.
A minute into a five-on-three power play during that stretch, Quinnipiac's David Marshall, the second-leading scorer in the ECAC, put a high wrist shot past Clemente to tie the game, 1-1.
With less than three minutes left in the middle frame, Brown regained a one-goal lead when Mike Wolff '12 scored his first career goal. Sean McMonagle '10 centered the puck to Wolff at the point, and Wolff fired a hard shot into traffic. The puck split defenders and eluded Fisher on its way into the back of the net, to put Brown ahead, 2-1.
Brown scored consecutive goals for the first time since Jan. 17 when Assistant Captain Jordan Pietrus '10 extended the Bears' lead with his fourth goal of the season. Ryan Garbutt '09 dropped the puck into the Quinnipiac zone, and Pietrus chased it down and won possession in front of the net. He fired a hard shot at Fisher from short range. The Quinnipiac goalie slowed the puck down, but it slipped through his legs to put the Bears ahead, 3-1.
"It's great to see a guy like (Pietrus) who does work as hard as he works to get rewarded for it," Grillo said.
Fisher left an empty net in favor of an extra Bobcat attacker with 2:15 left. Bryan Leitch, the nation's leading scorer, added to his totals when he netted a goal with 36 seconds left to bring the Bobcats within one. Quinnipiac couldn't put another puck on net, though, and the Bears left with their third win of the season.
Tempers flared after the final buzzer and six players, three on each team, were charged with fighting and given one-game suspensions. Vokes, Volpatti, and Mike Stuart '09 will have to watch Friday's game against Colgate from the stands.
"I looked back, and I saw two guys go after Stuart," Volpatti said. "And then I saw another guy go in, so I went after him and it was a matter of just protecting your teammates. It sort of got out of hand from there."
Grillo seemed to agree with Volpatti that the altercation was blown out of proportion.
"It was not anything near what it seems like on paper," Grillo said. "I wouldn't even call it a fight. It was, you know, a little bit of a scrum. In my mind it started with their players, I think, a little frustrated that we had won, and so they came charging in."
The Bears will have to overcome their three-player loss when they face-off against Colgate (10-16-6, 5-11-4 ECAC Hockey) in their final Friday of regular-season hockey. Brown defeated Colgate when the teams faced each other on Jan. 23 in a 4-1 game in Hamilton, N.Y. Then, on Saturday, the Bears will play their last game of the regular season, a final tune-up for the ECAC Hockey Playoffs, when they take on No. 11 Cornell (17-6-4, 12-5-3 ECAC Hockey).
