Hockey is a team sport, but there were several outstanding individual performances in ECAC Hockey last weekend.
St. Lawrence forward Mike Marnell had four goals in the Saints’ 7-2 win over Brown on Saturday. The junior had three goals on the season entering the game, and appears poised to surpass the career-high 11 goals he had as a freshman.
Cornell sophomore Mitch Vanderlaan followed up last Saturday’s hat trick against Yale with two goals against Princeton this past weekend. He now has seven goals in seven games after socring eight times in 34 games last season.
Colgate senior Charlie Finn made a career-high 47 saves in a 4-3 win over Princeton Friday, and also became the fifth Raiders goalie to win 50 games. Finn is five wins away from tying the program record.
Offense not a problem for Harvard
It’s one thing to unload offensively against Arizona State, a program in its second year of NCAA competition; it’s another to score five goals against a Boston College team that had been good defensively entering the weekend.
Yes, Harvard’s offensive numbers for the season are boosted by the 13 goals it scored in two games against the Sun Devils, but the outburst against the Eagles on Friday showed that the Crimson shouldn’t have a problem scoring goals this season.
Harvard’s defense appears to be improved from last year, when it lost in the league title game to Quinnipiac. The Crimson are holding opponents to under two goals per game, and held Boston College to exactly that number. The Eagles entered Friday averaging four goals per game.
Saints on a roll
The second four-point weekend in a row has St. Lawrence sitting in a good spot heading into the upcoming Friendship Four tournament in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
St. Lawrence swept Brown and Yale at home to improve to 5-0-1 in league play and 8-4-2 overall. The Saints face Quinnipiac in Belfast on Friday in a game that could have tiebreaker implications later in the season. A St. Lawrence win would give the Saints a season sweep of the Bobcats.
It’s early in the year, but St. Lawrence, Quinnipiac and Harvard, and to an extent, Union and Clarkson, look to be setting up as the upper echelon of the league.
