Saints sweep weekend, edge RIT

Junior Alex Petizian declared his candidacy for number one goaltender for the St. Lawrence University men's hockey team Saturday night, playing a spectacular game to backstop the Saints to a 2-1 victory over the Rochester Institute of Technology and a weekend sweep.



Petizian made 28 saves, 15 of them in the third period as the Saints held off a furious rally by the Tigers to improve to 2-2 on the season heading into a home opener against New Hampshire next Sunday. Petizian made his first back-to-back starts since January of last season when he beat Harvard and Dartmouth on the road. He earned ECAC Hockey Goaltender of the Week honors for his effort.



The Saints also continued their outstanding penalty killing, stopping all eight RIT power plays including one in the final 25 seconds with the goaltender pulled for an extra attacker.



"Alex played very well at Niagara and may have been even better tonight," said Saint coach Joe Marsh. "RIT is a very good team and really turned up the pressure in the third period. We made some solid defensive plays, but Alex was the key."



The Saints dominated the first period, but RIT goalie Jared Demichiel was solid, making 14 saves. He stopped Jared Keller shorthanded 3:45 into the game and robbed Casey Parenteau at 6:10 to keep it a scoreless game after the first 20 minutes.



The Saint penalty kill continued to excel with the help of some big saves by Petizian and the Saints finally broke the scoring ice on a play which started with the Saints down a man. Jared Ross took the puck away from a RIT defender at the top of the power play umbrella as the man advantage was winding down. He sent the puck ahead to Aaron Bogosian who skated into the RIT zone and unleashed a rising wrist shot which caught the upper
corner of the net at 11:30 for the unassisted goal just two seconds after Brock McBride had returned to the ice after serving a hooking call.



A poke check in the neutral zone by Shawn Fensel set up the second Saint goal with Jared Keller taking the puck and hitting Travis Vermeulen for a breakaway. Vermeulen skated in tight and beat Demichiel to the glove side for his second of the season and second of the weekend at 12:48.



RIT's third period comeback began with a two-on-one eight minutes in and junior Brent Alexin scored his first goal of the season with a shot which just snuck under the crossbar at 8:04 to make it a 2-1 game.



The Tigers continued the pressure and Petizian came up big on Tyler Brenner just seconds after the RIT goal to keep the Saints in front. He had four more big one-on-one saves as the period wound down to keep the Saints in front.



"I thought we played a pretty solid road game," added Marsh. "We blocked a lot of shots and did a good job on the penalty kill. We had some great chances early, but their goalie played a very good game as well. This was a good weekend for us and we were able to get a number of guys into the lineup again on each night, so we can start to solidify our regular lineup."