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The Dartmouth
July 3, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Men's hockey drops Quinnipiac, falls to Princeton

The Dartmouth men's ice hockey team had a tough win-loss split on the road this weekend against ECACHL competition, as the Big Green beat No. 19 Quinnipiac in a wild 5-4 game on Friday night before being shut out 3-0 by Princeton on Saturday.

The loss on Saturday dropped Dartmouth (12-10-3, 8-7-3 ECACHL) into fifth place in the ECACHL standings with 19 points. The Big Green previously held a tie for fourth place with Cornell, but the Big Red's three-point weekend pushed it into sole possession of fourth place with 20 points.

Quinnipiac's (14-10-5, 9-5-4 ECACHL) loss to the Big Green pushed the Bobcats out of second place into third place, three points behind second-place Clarkson. Princeton (10-12-3, 7-9-2 ECACHL) remains stuck in the lower half of the league at eighth place. St. Lawrence holds on to the top spot in the conference with a 13-4-1 league record and 27 points, just two points ahead of Clarkson.

Captain Tanner Glass '07 said that it is hard to ignore the progress of other teams in the league this late in the regular season.

I don't know if worry is the right word, but you always pay attention to other teams going down the stretch. February is a big month," he said.

On Friday night, the Big Green found a spark in the line of Glass, David Jones '08 and Nick Johnson '08 as Dartmouth edged the nationally-ranked Wildcats in front of a sellout crowd in Hamden, Conn.

The Big Green's top line accounted for four of the five goals and scored nine of Dartmouth's 15 points in the contest, including the game-winning power play tally with 9:41 remaining in the third.

Glass could not point to one specific reason for the line's success.

"Things were just clicking for us. Passes were hitting the tape, and whenever we needed a goal, it just seemed like the puck would go to the back of the net," he said.

With the Big Green leading 4-3, the Bobcats benefited from an elbowing penalty to Jon Grecu '08 and connected on their third power play goal of the game to knot the score at 4-4 with 13:38 left in the third period.

Minutes later, Johnson curled from behind the net to the left post after receiving a pass from Kevin Swallow '09 and jammed the puck past Quinnipiac netminder Bud Fischer for the deciding 5-4 lead.

The game saw a slew of penalties for both teams and included in plenty of odd-man goals. Dartmouth was hit with 11 penalties compared to eight for Quinnipiac, but the Big Green earned 22 penalty minutes while the Bobcats received 27. Dartmouth went two for six on the power play, while the Bobcats netted three extra-man goals on nine chances.

Jones opened the scoring just over three minutes into the period. Goalie Mike Devine '08 redirected a shot with a kick save over to Glass, who then found Jones further up the ice. Jones one-timed the pass to Fischer's high glove side for a 1-0 Dartmouth lead.

The game's next four goals all came in extra-man situations. After Johnson added a power play goal less than a minute and a half after Jones's tally, Quinnipiac gained a five-on-three power play after penalties to Josh Gillam '10 and Peter Boldt '10. Just four seconds before Gillam's penalty was to expire, Ben Nelson tipped a pass in front of Devine past his glove to cut the Big Green's lead to 2-1.

The Bobcats then added their conference-leading 13th short-handed goal of the season 37 seconds into the second period when Mike Atkinson collected the puck in the Dartmouth defensive zone and shot the puck home to tie the score.

Later in the stanza, two Big Green penalties and one Bobcat penalty gave Quinnipiac another power play that Jean-Marc Beaudoin converted to shift the lead back to the Bobcats.

Dartmouth notched two even-strength goals in a 1:50 span in the second to retake the lead. After J.T. Wyman '08 chipped in his eighth goal of the year from assists from defensemen Grant Lewis '07 and Mike Hartwick '07, Glass then benefited from some nice passing from his linemates Jones and Johnson and buried a shot over Fischer's head for a 4-3 lead.

Connor Shields '09 made a pivotal clearing play early in the third before the Bobcats final goal of the contest. Dan Hessingson stole a Big Green pass near Devine and pulled Devine out of the net, leaving the second-chance rebound in clear view of the net. However, Shields skated in and cleared the crease of the puck to eliminate Quinnipiac's chance.

Defensively, the Big Green held freshman Brandon Wong, the ECACHL's leading goal scorer coming into the weekend, to zero points, but allowed senior defenseman Reid Cashman to notch three assists to increase his conference-leading total to 26.

Glass said that the Big Green did not alter its game plan to account for the individual skill of Wong.

"We didn't focus on him at all. Quinnipiac is a good team with a balanced offense and a strong power play. We got a lot of penalties that game, and that was something we didn't want to do. We tried to shut them down in the power play, and I guess that didn't work," Glass said, alluding to the Bobcats' multiple power play goals.

The Big Green could not channel this momentum from the big win over Quinnipiac the following night at Princeton, as the Tigers held Dartmouth to its first scoreless game of the year.

Princeton goalie B.J. Sklapsky made 33 saves in the contest for his second shutout in two years. Devine ended the game with 28 saves.

A small Princeton rink and Sklapsky's great night in net caused problems for the Big Green's offensive systems.

"We were playing in tight quarters. It felt that their penalty kill and their forecheck were always on top of us," Glass said. "Their goalie had an unbelievable night. He made some unbelievable saves late in the third period."

Fatigue also was a factor, according to Glass.

"Taking so many penalties on Friday night and having some of our top guys playing a lot of minutes [on Friday] hurt us on Saturday," he said.

Sklapsky's shutout did not come without some tough moments posed by the Big Green.

With Princeton leading 1-0 on a Mark Magnowski goal early in the first period, Connor Shields set up a one-on-one with Sklapsky just minutes later. Sklapsky made the initial kick save on Shield's shot and then denied second-chance opportunities from Wyman and Shields.

With 7:24 left in the first stanza, Swallow had a shorthanded chance denied by Sklapsky, and the Big Green could not convert a power-play situation a few minutes later on the senior goalie.

In the third, Dartmouth started the period with over a minute remaining on a tripping power play, but four Big Green shots proved to be no match for Sklapsky. Dartmouth went zero for 10 on the power play in Saturday's contest.

With less than two minutes to play, head coach Bob Gaudet pulled Devine for an extra skater to help generate some late-game offense. The move was unsuccessful, as Sklapsky not only made saves on all three Big Green shots, but Kevin Kaiser potted an empty net goal with 58 seconds to play to push the margin to 3-0.

The Big Green wraps up its ECACHL road trip next weekend with two games against Ivy League foes. Despite possessing the best overall record of the Ancient Eight, Dartmouth is currently in fourth place in the Ivy League hockey standings with a 3-3-1 mark, good for 7 points. Yale leads the race with a 5-2-1 league record and 11 points.

Dartmouth plays Brown on Friday, Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. in Providence, R.I., and Yale on Saturday, Feb. 17 at 4 p.m. in New Haven, Conn. The game against the Bulldogs will be available on national television on ESPNU.

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