Sophomore goaltender Dustin Traylen (Kirkland, QUE) posted a career-high 43 saves to backstop the Clarkson University Hockey team to a 2-2 overtime tie against Dartmouth College before 4,360 fans at Thompson Arena in Hanover, NH on Friday night. The Golden Knights, who own a 3-1-2 mark in their past six games, will play Vermont on Saturday. Clarkson stands at 9-8-5 overall and 4-4-2 in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
“I give our guys credit,” stated head coach George Roll. “Dartmouth is one of the stronger teams we have seen this year, but we didn’t quit in a pretty tough environment. We just struggled to score, as they did too. Dustin was the Dustin of old. He made the big saves when we needed them.”
The Knights started out slow against Dartmouth, falling behind 2-0 midway through the first period. The Big Green opened the scoring with a shorthanded tally at 4:15. Lee Stempniak added his second goal of the game at 13:54 to give the home squad a two-goal advantage.
Clarkson answered back 61 seconds later with its first goal as sophomore John Sullivan (New Bedford, NH) scored his sixth goal of the season, knocking in a rebound. The Knights’ top two leading scorers, juniors Mac Faulkner (King City, ONT) and Chris Blight (Cambridge, ONT) assisted. Sullivan has recorded eight points (2-6) over the past four games, while Faulkner and Blight extended their point-scoring streaks to 10 games each.
With one second left in a Clarkson power play, sophomore defenseman Chris Brekelmans (London, ONT) ripped a shot from the point for his fourth goal of the season to tie the game at 18:21. Senior Jean Desrochers (Dalhousie, QUE) and sophomore Jeff Genovy (Kalamazoo, MI) recorded assists.
That was all the scoring for the remainder of the contest as both teams’ goaltenders came up with several big saves. Dartmouth outshot Clarkson 45-33, including a 25-10 margin over the final 25 minutes. Both squads struggled on the power play with the Knights going 1-of-8 on the man-advantage, while the Big Green were 0-of-6.
