Dartmouth’s top three scorers came through in the clutch to lead the Big Green to an upset 4-1 victory over the fifth/sixth-ranked Clarkson University Women Hockey team before 624 fans at Cheel Arena on Friday night.
The loss drops the Golden Knights out of first place in the ECAC Hockey standings and is a severe blow to Clarkson’s bid to claim the conference regular-season title. With one game remaining in the regular season, the Knights fall two points behind Cornell in the league standings. Clarkson, which is 20-9-4 overall and 14-5-2 in ECAC Hockey, hosts Top-10 ranked Harvard at 4:00 p.m. The Green and Gold, who are 1-4-1 in February, must defeat the Crimson and hope Union knocks off Cornell at Lynah Rink on Saturday to win the regular season title.
Clarkson started out strong against Dartmouth (12-13-2, 9-11-1), outshooting the Big Green 12-5 in the opening stanza. Senior Dominique Thibault (L’Orignal, ONT) gave the Knights the early lead with her team-high 18th goal of the season, an unassisted tally at 5:06.
Dartmouth, however, answered back with a power-play marker from Sarah Parson’s at 14:23. Parson’s connected on her team-high 19th goal of the season on a shot from the slot with Sasha Nanji and Amanda Trunzo assisting.
The Big Green took the lead in the second period with another power-play tally, this time off the stick of Jenna Cunningham at 11:43. Cunningham scored during a scrum in front just 11 seconds into the man-advantage for her 18th goal of the season. Nanji and Camille Dumais assisted.
Dartmouth, which has won four of its last five games, sealed the victory with two more goals in the third period. Jenna Hobeika knocked in a rebound off of Lisa Berreman’s shot at 13:52, and Trunzo scored into an empty net with 40 seconds remaining for her 18th goal of the season.
Clarkson held a slight 23-22 advantage in shots. Junior Lauren Dahm (Baldwinsville, NY) posted 18 saves for the Knights. Mariel Lacina made 22 stops for the Big Green.
Dartmouth was 2-of-3 on the power play, while Clarkson was scoreless in both its man-advantage opportunities.
