Dartmouth 3 - Clarkson 4

By Dave Sherzer

POTSDAM, N.Y. - The Dartmouth men's hockey team's power play was clicking on all cylinders last night. The only problem was that Clarkson's power-play unit had a few more cylinders.

The Big Green scored two man-advantage goals in a hostile road arena, but the homestanding Golden Knights answered with three of their own, paving the way for a 4-3 win before 2,849 fans at Cheel Arena.

Junior right winger Matt Poapst led Clarkson with two goals, while team scoring leader Kent Huskins contributed three assists.

With the Big Green leading 2-1 in the second period, the Golden Knights scored three goals in an eight-minute, 23-second span to take a 4-2 lead. They never looked back.

Dartmouth suffered a loss for the first time since Dec. 30 and just the second time since Dec. 9. The Big Green (7-8-1, 4-4-1 ECAC) is 6-3-1 in its last 10 games.

"We don't like coming up here and just playing okay," said head coach Bob Gaudet. "Clarkson played very well, especially on the power play.

"I thought our guys played hard, but we shot ourselves in the foot with a bad stretch in the second period. It's just not good enough."

With upwards of 40 members of his family in the stands from nearby Cornwall, Ontario, second-line center Jamie Herrington potted two goals, the first of which gave the Big Green a brief 2-1 lead early in the first period.

Other than that, there were few bright spots for the Dartmouth, making its first overnight trip since early November. The Big Green had a tough time protecting goaltender Nick Boucher against Clarkson's potent offense.

"I always get that extra jump coming to play at Clarkson and St. Lawrence because it's so close to home," Herrington said. "It was exciting for me to score a couple in front of the people I know, but we just have to pull out some victories."

The teams skated to a 1-1 draw in the first period, trading power-play goals.

Seven minutes into the game, the Golden Knights struck first, as a Jason Costa minor penalty led to Poapst's seventh lamp-lighter of the season. Poapst, a forward, took a pass from the blueliner Huskins and lined the puck past Boucher (24 saves) for a 1-0 lead.

Minutes later, the Big Green responded. With his team skating with the extra man, sophomore Kent Gillings danced around a defenseman and rifled a tough-angle shot past Mike Walsh (26 saves) for his sixth marker of the season. Mike Murray and Trevor Byrne earned assists on the play.

The Big Green took a 2-1 lead with a Herrington netter early in the middle frame, but the floodgates soon opened for the Golden Knights.

Midway through the period, senior Don Smith began Clarkson's three-goal surge, one-timing a David Evans pass between the pipes to light the lamp on the power play. Less than a minute later, sophomore defenseman Chris Bahen gave the Golden Knights a 3-2 lead, gathering a rebound and poking it past a diving Boucher for his third of the year.

Late in the period, a pair of Dartmouth penalties gave the Golden Knights a 5-on-3 power play, setting the stage for their third man-advantage netter of the night. Poapst recorded the goal, rattling the cage with a 10-foot liner to make it 4-2.

Herrington cut the deficit to 4-3 midway through the third stanza, lighting the lamp just a second after a Big Green power play had ended, but that would end the scoring, along with Dartmouth's four-game unbeaten streak.

"There were two good hockey teams out there," Gaudet said. "We knew it was going to be a one-goal game. I'd like to think that we could come out on top, but Clarkson played very well. They had a lot of desire."

The Big Green is back in action Saturday night at Appleton Arena with a game against St. Lawrence.

Big Green Notes: This is the third of eight consecutive games for Dartmouth against a team from New York State. The Big Green is 2-1 so far in that stretch. ... The team stopped at Lake Placid, N.Y., on the way to Clarkson for a practice skate on Thursday. Lake Placid, the site of the 1932 and 1980 Olympic Games, plays host to the ECAC Tournament each March. ... Herrington's two goals doubled his season output to four. He now has three goals and an assist in five career games against Clarkson.