After a tough game Friday night, the Colgate men’s hockey team responded with a great team effort in a 3-1 win over Princeton on Saturday afternoon.
Colgate (3-5-1, 1-1-0 ECAC) was led by its goalie on the backend as Charlie Finn pushed aside 27 shots to earn his first collegiate win in his third start. The netminder made 21 of those 27 saves in the second and third periods, including a highlight-reel stop that kept the Raiders ahead late in the game.
Head coach Don Vaughan called on the rookie tonight and got a great effort.
“We know he is a great goaltender, it is just a matter of him getting that first win,” Vaughan said. “The monkey is off his back and we have a great situation back there with three goalies, that on even given night I have no problem playing one of the three.”
The sophomore class continues to put up numbers on the stat sheet and tonight was no different. Darcy Murphy and Tylor Spink scored two of the three goals and three of the four assists tonight were from the Class of 2016. Spink had two points for the Raiders as he added an assist on Spiro Goulakos’ first goal of the season, which turned out to be the gamewinner.
“We played in layers better tonight,” head coach Don Vaughan said. “I thought we did a great job with our secondary defense and pressured well, but we also had the layers to our game working and we talk a lot about that. As a five-man on-ice defensive unit, we did a much better job.”
Princeton (1-3-0, 0-2-0 ECAC) went winless in its trip to Central New York after losing to Cornell last night. The Tigers also had a rookie in net with Colton Phinney. He made 29 saves in net with 14 coming in the second period. Ryan Siiro had the lone goal for the visitors with assist to Aaron Kesselman and Mike Ambrosia.
The first two points were scoreless, but each team had multiple chances to grab a hold of the lead with a combined 11 power plays and two 5-on-3 opportunities for the Raiders. Princeton had four chances in the first period, but Colgate’s penalty kill was up to the task and Vaughan was pleased with the effort of his team’s defense.
“It was phenomenal,” Vaughan added. “We spent a lot of time looking at it and the guys responded. I think we did a much better job of getting into lanes tonight. Your goalie has to be your best penalty killer and tonight he made huge save when he dove across the crease and that’s the one that probably secured the win for us.”
The offense picked up in the third period with four goals combined. Colgate got it started with Murphy scoring on a beautiful feed from Kevin Lough. The defenseman took the puck off a face off win from Mike Borkowski and circled behind the net. It looked like Phinney committed to Lough trying the wrap around, but he slipped the puck out to Murphy and he chipped it past Phinney on the near side for the 1-0 lead.
Goulakos then got that all-important second goal with a blistering blast from the top of the circle. Jake Kulevich fed him in the puck along the blueline and he skated into his shot that went through traffic and past Phinney. The two goals came in the first 4:18 of the third.
Princeton got back in the game with 11 minutes left with Siiro scoring a hard-fought goal in front. It was a broken play in front of Finn and Siiro somehow got an awkward backhander past the rookie to end the chance of shutout.
The Raiders cemented the win with Spink scoring on a bad luck turnover for the Tigers. On a clearing attempt, a Princeton defenseman broke his stick and Spink stole the puck and went in alone on Phinney. He fired a shot off the right post and in. The play was reviewed as the goal was initially waved off, but the sophomore was given his second goal of the year after the review.
Colgate was able to keep the Tigers off the board the rest of the way and earned its first league win of the campaign with a 3-1 win. The Raiders outshot Princeton by a 32-28 margin. Both teams were scoreless on the power play.
Vaughan felt the team hasn’t gotten the luck on offense recently, but was happy to see the team continue to skate.
“We were snake bit a little around the net with three pipes tonight,” Vaughan. “To stick with it and get a few goals after that, was good to see. It was a good bounce back win for us after a really difficult loss last night.”
The Raiders are back on the road next weekend with two more conference games as Colgate heads to the capital district to take on Union and Rensselaer.
