With the regular season heading into the home stretch and the playoff picture starting to take shape, the Dartmouth men's hockey team suffered what could be two very costly losses over the weekend, losing 7-4 to the St. Lawrence Saints on Friday night and dropping a excruciating 4-3 decision to the Clarkson Golden Knights on Saturday night.
With the two losses, the Big Green (3-10-1 ECAC, 4-15-2 overall) remained in a ninth-place Eastern College Athletic Conference tie with Union, with seven points each, but a Princeton win over the weekend left both Princeton and Yale trailing close behind with six points.
After some solid play in early to mid-January, the Big Green are 0-4-1 in their last five games, with two losses each coming at the hands of St. Lawrence and Clarkson.
With just eight games remaining in the regular season and a sure dogfight for a playoff spot on the horizon, the squad will need to put the painful memories of this weekend behind them and prepare for the stretch-run.
St. Lawrence 7, Dartmouth 4
On Friday night, St. Lawrence, behind a whopping six-assist performance from Derek Ladouceur, jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first period and never looked back, cruising to a 7-4 victory.
The good news for the Big Green was that St. Lawrence superstar Burke Murphy, who scored five goals against Dartmouth in the last meeting between the two teams, was held to just one goal on the night. The bad news was, it didn't matter, as Murphy's teammates more than picked up the slack.
After getting several scoring chances in the first and still coming away empty-handed, the Big Green were scorched for four goals in the second half of the first period.
The goals came from Scott Stevens, Paul DiFrancesco, Stevens again and Bob Prier. Prier's goal was the stuff of highlight films, as the freshman winger went end-to-end, deked one Dartmouth defender and beat Big Green goalie Scott Baker '97 as his legs were being cut out from under him.
In the second period, the Big Green finally woke up, scoring two goals to cut the St. Lawrence lead in half, to 4-2.
First, a bad play by Saints' goalie Jon Bracco allowed Darren Wercinski '97 to put Dartmouth on the board at 1:50 of the second. Bracco lazily went behind the left side of the net to play a dump-in by Jon Sturgis '98, but the puck caromed off the boards and out in front to Wercinski, who tucked it into the empty net, past an out-of-position Bracco, for a powerplay goal.
At 14:53 the Big Green made it 4-2 when Curtis Wilgosh '99 also scored on the powerplay, off a nice passing play from Alex Dumas '97 at the point and David Whitworth '98 at the side of the net. But St. Lawrence's Jeff Kungle answered with a powerplay goal to make it 5-2 at the end of two, and the Big Green would get no closer in the third.
Tom Ruzzo '97 and Bill Kelleher '96 scored in the final stanza, but St. Lawrence also tallied two goals of their own, to make the final score 7-4.
Coach Roger Demment was not pleased with the Big Green's play in the first period that led to the insurmountable 4-0 deficit.
"As soon as we get a couple of goals scored against us, we roll over and play dead," he said. "We cannot play that kind of hockey ... and expect to come out with points."
Clarkson 4, Dartmouth 3
On Saturday night, the Big Green took their coach's advice to heart -- the squad fell behind 3-0, but instead of "playing dead," the team clawed its way back to even the game at 3-3.
Unfortunately for the Big Green, though, the result was the same as the night before, as Clarkson's Guillaume Besse scored off his own rebound 8:38 into the third and the Golden Knights came away with a 4-3 victory.
The Big Green, with the goalie pulled and an extra skater on the ice in the final minute, furiously pressured Clarkson goalie Dan Murphy, but simply could not put the puck in the net. In the final seconds, with utter chaos in front of the net, the Big Green crashed the goal, trying to push the puck over the goal line, but it was not meant to be.
"We did everything ... except put it in the net," a dejected Demment said after the game.
Dartmouth goalie Ben Heller '97, starting for only the third time this season, played pretty well on Saturday night, stopping at least two breakaways, and as Demment said, keeping the Big Green in the game.
But Heller appeared to be out of position on Besse's game-winning score midway through the third.
Besse came down the left side and took a slapper that Heller steered aside to the left of the net, but Besse picked up his own rebound and found daylight between Heller, still recovering from the initial save, and the shortside goalpost.
The goal merited a furious comeback by the Big Green, punctuated at 1:03 of the third by the game-tying goal by Alex Dumas '97, a powerplay tally on a slapshot from the point that beat a heavily screened Murphy.
In the second, the Big Green had pulled to within 3-2 on goals by Wilgosh and Whitworth. Wilgosh's powerplay score came when the freshman camped out in front and kept jamming at his own rebound until it squirted past Murphy. Whitworth then scored on a breakaway goal with a Clarkson defender draped all over him.
Clarkson opened up a 1-0 lead just 3:30 into the first on a score by Jean-Francois Houle and then extended to a 3-0 advantage in rapid fashion in the second, on goals 31 seconds apart by Besse and Chris De Ruiter.
Demment called the loss "very disappointing" and "very discouraging," given the team's stellar play in the second half of the game. "It's very difficult to swallow," he added.
As the rest of campus celebrates Winter Carnival this weekend, the Big Green will try to improve their playoff standing when they hit the road for ECAC games against Cornell and Colgate.
