Union Hands Saints 2nd Straight Shutout, 6-0
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Wally JohnsonKyle Flanagan works the puck away from Union's Mark Bennett
Union College received points from a dozen different players and two goals from Massena native Match Hatch, continuing its domination of the North Country teams with a 6-0 win over St. Lawrence in an ECAC Hockey game Saturday night.
Union, ranked 14th nationally, won its ninth straight against Clarkson on Friday and beat the Saints for the seventh straight time on Saturday completing the weekend sweep. St. Lawrence was shut out for the second time this season by Union and the offense-starved Saints were blanked for the second game of the weekend. Union improves to 15-6-6 overall and 9-3-3 in league play while the Saints lost their fourth straight and are winless in their last six, slipping to 8-15-3 overall and 4-9-1 in league play.
Union goalie Troy Grosenick, who leads the nation in goals against average and save percentage, recorded his fourth shutout of the year and second over the Saints with 26 saves, but wasn't really tested until a couple of good Saint opportunities in the third period.\
"Going into Union when you're struggling is not going to cure your ills," said St. Lawrence associate head coach Mike Hurlbut. "They don't give you a lot defensively, and while I thought we did some things a lot better than we did last night at RPI, we made some mistakes that they capitalized on."
The Dutchmen scored a pair of goals 3:22 apart midway through the first period to take command of the game and while the Saints turned in a solid second period, they couldn't solve Grosenick and Union added a third goal with just 3.8 seconds to go in the period
Senior center Kelly Zajac started the scoring as he drove to the net in a one-on-one with a Saint defender and tucked the puck between Matt Weninger and the post at 10:30. Jeremy Welsh scored his team-leading 18th goal at 13:08 as he went hard to the net and took advantage of a Saint turnover as the puck was forced free by Josh Jooris behind the net and went right to Welsh.
The Saints were held to just four shots on goal, two of which came from outside the Union zone in the first period, the fifth straight game the Saints have not hit double digits in shots in the first 20 minutes. SLU came on stronger in the second period and while they put 11 shots on the Union net, they couldn't get any past Grosenick, who leads the nation in both goals against average and save percentage. Weninger kept the Saints in the game through two periods with another yeoman effort in net which included several point blank saves and finished with 35 stops for SLU.
Union cushioned its lead at 19:56 of the second as Zajac got off a good hard shot which Weninger got a pad on, but the rebound went right to a charging Mat Bodie at the opposite faceoff circle and Bodie buried his seventh of the year into the open net.
Hatch scored twice in the third period, getting his fourth of the year on a rush after a blocked shot by Wayne Simpson at 3:39 of the third and scoring Union's sixth from the top of the faceoff circle with 1:37 to play Between those goals , freshman Max Novack scored his fifth as he tucked in a backhander on a two-man rush on Weninger after a turnover in the middle of the Saint defensive zone.