On Saturday night, St. Lawrence handed Clarkson its worse ECAC loss since
an 8-0 loss to RPI in 1954.  St. Lawrence completed the series sweep.
In 1987-1988, St. Lawrence beat Clarkson 3 times, including the ECAC
Championship game.
 
Goals:
St. Lawrence  2 2 1- 5
Clarkson      0 0 0- 0
 
Shots on goal:
St. Lawrence  15 11 10- 36
Clarkson       9 10 13- 32
 
Goal-Tenders:
St. Lawrence: Spagnoletti, Clarkson: Currie (2 periods), Roggles (1
	period)
 
Power-Plays
St. Lawrence: 3 for 9
Clarkson: 0 for 9
 
Referee: Gallagher
 
The game was a matter of SLU being ready to play and Clarkson not
playing up to their full potential.  This is a problem Clarkson has had
all year minus two games.  The team is more talented and experienced
than last year's which beat Lake Superior St.  With the up-coming 6 road
games, Clarkson will have to pull itself together in order to avoid the
preliminary play-off round.
 
SLU dominated most of the play in the first period.  There was a lot of
heavy hitting going on.  Clarkson did manage to keep up with the Saint
forwards, but weren't always able to clear the puck out of their zone.
Late in the period, with St. Lawrence a man up, Clarkson was applying
some offensive pressure when Clarkson defenseman Mueller crashed into
the goal and Spagnoletti.  Ref. Gallagher whistled a charge against
Mueller.  However, Gallagher didn't see the SLU player riding Mueller
into the goal and chose to ignore Beattie of St. Lawrence when he jumped
on Mueller after the whistle.  Gallagher's referee-ing was suspect all
night long.  He called a lot of penalties, but it seemed to my biased
eyes that he was letting St. Lawrence get away with a lot.  There were
several trips, interferences, holds and hookings that should have been
called if he was going to be consistent with his other calls.  I'm not
whining because Clarkson deserved to lose and they did have 9 power play
opportunities.  It;s just that it left a bad taste in my mouth.
 
Back to the game, St. Lawrence scored their first goal during the 5 on 3
pp.  Mike Lappin passed the puck from the boards to the left of Currie
back to LaPerriere at point.  LaPerriere moved it across iced to LaCroix
who sent a slap shot along the ice inside of the right post past Currie
extended leg.  The goal was at 14:56.  With SLU still on the pp, they
brought the puck right back into the Clarkson zone.  Clarkson's defense
was running around with their heads cut off for 26 seconds before Mike
Lappin scored to make it 2-0 from Eric LaCroix and Martin LaCroix (first
goal scorer).
 
Clarkson came out and played better in the first half of the second
period.  They at least had the puck in the St. Lawrence zone.  However,
there were no tough shots and several misses on a couple of scoring
chances.  Daniel LaPerriere made it 3-0 at 5:25 when he fired a high
shot from just before the red line on Currie's left side that went up
into the high right corner.  Clarkson did continue to control the puck
for the next 5 minutes, but the St. Lawrence defense was up to the task.
St. Lawrence scored again on the power play at 19:47, when Mike Lappin
put a rebound in past a well screened Currie.  LaPerriere and Eric
LaCroix assisted.
 
St. Lawrence was playing more defensive in the third period.  This
allowed Clarkson to generate more shots on Spagnoletti.  However,
Spagnoletti was able to stop all attempts and preserve the shut out.
Clarkson had four power play chances, pressed offensively but couldn't
score.  There were several cross ice-knock it in chances missed, two
break-aways stopped and a post hit.  Near the end there were several
more penalties called on Clarkson.  Some I thought were for wearing a
green jersey or for shooting on goal.  To give an example, I heard the
following on the radio Canton (SLU) radio statio that was covering the
game.  A SLU player slashed Guy Sanderson.  The annoucers described how
the SLU players stick broke across Sanderson's leg.  They were surprised
to find out that Sanderson was being given a penalty for cross-checking.
They did see anything.  It turned out that Sanderson was getting a 10
min misconduct penalty as well.  Now the announcers couldn't understand
why Sanderson was only getting a two minute minor, they thought that it
should have been a double minor and a 10 min misconduct.  Later on, Todd
Marchant was injured in the leg.  The radio announcers said that he got
hit with the puck.  Marchant had to be helped to the lockerroom by two
people.  Somebody who saw what happened said that an SLU player had his
stick between Marchant's legs and twisted his leg and knees as he took
Marchant down to the ice.  I don't know the extent of Marchant's injury.
Massoud finished off the scoring at 18:48 when he intercepted a Clarkson
pass in the Clarkson zone and went in on Roggles all alone, beating him
with a back-handed shot.
 
With both teams having to exit down the same corridor, there was some
extra words said and some stick jabbing after the game.  This had to
broken up by both coaches, the ref and linesmen.  It seems that this is
a frequent problem in the Clarkson-St. Lawrence games at Appleton
because of the single entrance to the ice.
 
Mike Zak
Clarkson '87, '91,...