Junior wing John Zeiler snapped a 3-3 tie with a power-play goal with 8:10 to go to lift St. Lawrence to a 4-3 win over Miami and a sweep of the series between the two teams. The Saints completed the pre-ECAC Hockey League season of their schedule with a 4-3-1 record, playing teams ranked in the top ten in seven of the eight contests.
Miami went into the weekend ranked 10th nationally, but has now lost four straight and is 4-4-0 on the season. The Saints won the second game of a weekend series for the first time in four tries this season.
“That wasn’t really a concern going into Saturday’s game,” said Saint coach Joe Marsh. “When you look at who we played, where we played and how we played, we were getting consistent efforts every time out. It is obviously nice to get the sweep and the guys really had to work for it.
“That was a tightly contested game from start to finish. Miami has an explosive power play and they are both physical and outstanding skaters. I am very pleased with the way our guys responded and with what we have accomplished with a difficult opening month of the season in terms of non-league competition.”
St. Lawrence grabbed the early lead as just seconds after the Saints finished off a penalty kill, Stace Page and T.J. Trevelyan broke into the Miami zone on a two-on-one. Trevelyan passed to Page at the goalmouth and the senior center put his second of the season over the shoulder of goalie Brandon Crawford-West at 11:35.
The RedHawks came back to tie on a power play just under a minute later as Taylor Husted collected a rebound off the end boards and tucked it past Saint goalie Mike McKenna to make it 1-1 after one.
The Saints regained the lead just 50 seconds into the second period when sophomore defenseman Drew Bagnall pinched in from the point, took a pass from Page and tucked it past Crawford-West for his first of the season, but the RedHawks tied it on Chris Michael’s fourth of the season on a five-on-three power play at 6:14 of the second.
Trevelyan put the Saints in front with his fifth of the year on a shorthanded breakaway with just 19 seconds to go in the second period. Miami tied it in a scramble in front of McKenna as Joe Pomaranski scored his first of the year at 6:14 of the third, but Zeiler took a pass from Trevelyan and put the puck around a sprawled Crawford-West for the eventual game winner as the Saints cashed in on their tenth power play of the game.
“We had some good special teams play at various points in the game, but didn’t get all we could have out of it,” said Marsh. “I thought we had some great chances that Crawford-West somehow kept out of the net and Mike McKenna was equally as effective on some great chances for Miami. It was a very solid effort across the board for the whole weekend.”
Crawford-West finished with 36 saves for Miami while McKenna had 25 for the Saints.
