St. Lawrence celebrated their opening night at Appleton Arena with a
scintillating 1-0 victory over Rensselaer.  The only goal was scored by
Mark McGrath on a power play late in the second period on a nice feed in
front from Paul DiFrancesco (Derek Ladoceur getting the other assist).
The skating pace was quite quick, with a surprising number of good
scoring chances (7-8 power plays a piece) which weren't indicated by
the final score.  SLU's Eric Heffler was credited with around 37 saves,
including a beauty sticking a pad out to just stop an Eric Healy
breakaway in the second period.  Rensselaer's Prekaski was almost Heffler's
equal, although his official save count (20) seemed a good bit too low
to me.  SLU also missed a clean breakaway when defenseman Justin Harney
went too high in the second.
 
The third period rolled along quickly with lots of open skating, until
a bumpy stretch with frequent whistles (offsides, etc) from 6:30 to about
4:00 left.  Then SLU got a late power play which thwarted Rensselaer's
tying and got things moving again.  Perkaski came out for the 6x5 advantage
but SLU broke the puck out in the last 20 seconds and several Rensselaer
players made great sliding saves to keep SLU from the empty net goal.
 
Overall it was an entertaining and exciting match.  Hard to believe that
the same SLU team that gave up 12 goals in their first game would hold the
potent Rensselaer attack in check for all of this one.
 
Robin Lock - St. Lawrence University
[log in to unmask]
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.