Much like the ECAC first round, the ECAC Quarterfinals were short on excitement. Other than the first games in the Clarkson and Cornell series going to OT, there really wasn’t much drama. The top four seeds advanced and they all happened to be travel partners, and from New York.
That’s actually happened before, in 2018, with Clarkson as the top seed, followed by Colgate, Cornell, and St. Lawrence, making the matchups the same. Clarkson beat SLU and won the ECAC tournament over Colgate that year, and the ECAC final would be a preview of the NCAA final. Fingers crossed we see that again.
New York teams have figured heavily in the ECAC final four historically with the last New York-less four coming in 2003 with Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Brown in that one. (Clarkson didn’t even exist yet.) In the 25 ECAC tournaments under NCAA governorship, New York teams have made 49 of the 100 final four spots:
- SLU – 15
- Clarkson – 13
- Cornell – 11
- Colgate – 8
- RPI – 2
The final four were pretty even against one another. Colgate swept Cornell in regulation, was swept by Clarkson in regulation, and split with St. Lawrence, the loss in OT. Clarkson split with St. Lawrence in regulation and was swept by Cornell, one in OT. St. Lawrence split with Colgate, both in regulation.
Clarkson and St. Lawrence also played a nonconference series, as they usually do, with the Knights winning both in regulation.
It’s tough to make much out of the ECAC regular season series since teams usually have two different opponents each weekend. When you have to play Clarkson/St. Lawrence or Colgate/Cornell on back to back days, I think inevitably one team gets a worse effort that may not match the relative skill of either team.
#1 Colgate vs. #4 Cornell
The first game was closer than it looked in that Colgate scored an empty-net goal, and not as close as Cornell took a 4-0 lead into the third and Cornell’s last two goals were largely in garbage time. The other game saw all three goals scored in the first period as Cornell was outshot 11-2 in the frame. Score effects didn’t even take over as Colgate outshot them 25-18 the rest of the way.
Cornell is a good team, especially offensively as only Colgate, Ohio State, and Wisconsin topped their 11.4% shooting percentage. Only St. Lawrence, Quinnipiac, and Minnesota even reached double digits there. The Big Red’s goaltending was fine at .926, but seemed inconsistent. That could be due to the youth of freshman netminder Annelies Bergmann. Bergmann was ECAC Goaltender of the month for February so that could be a problem that’s largely solved.
Colgate looked like one of the best teams in the country for most of the season and was the first team to hang a regulation loss on Ohio State. They had a bit of a blip when second-leading scorer Kristyna Kaltounkova missed 4 games for an undisclosed reason. Kaltounkova led the Raiders in penalty minutes, and Colgate is generally one of the least-disciplined teams even though their PIM per game was only 29th. Both of their special teams units are elite, so Cornell will at least need to break even there.
| Colgate | Cornell | |
| Pct | .819 | .790 |
| +/-/g | +3.4 | +1.8 |
| G Rel | +31.23% | +21.61% |
| PP% | 35.25% | 19.39% |
| PK | 94.95% | 94.74% |
| SF/g | 39.1 | 31.1 |
| SA/g | 21.9 | 23.2 |
| Sht% | 11.9% | 11.4% |
| Sv% | .942 | .926 |
| Rel S% | +14.91% | +8.90% |
Top Scorers
Colgate
- Danielle Serdachny: 21-36-57
- Kristyna Kaltounkova: 25-28-53
- Elyssa Biederman: 15-31-46
Cornell
- Izzy Daniel: 20-35-55
- Lily Delianedis: 16-17-33
- Kaitlin Jockims: 12-11-23
#2 Clarkson vs. #3 St. Lawrence
All of these four teams have great power plays and great penalty kills with Cornell’s power play (13th) and St. Lawrence’s penalty kill (also 13th) as the only figures outside the top 5 in the country. Even so, St. Lawrence’s power play lit up the very good penalty kills of Clarkson, Colgate, and Cornell.
However, it was only really a factor in one game between these two teams. Clarkson actually managed a shorthanded goal in the first matchup and the final SLU power play goal came in garbage time in the fourth game.
St. Lawrence was able to compete better at home when they had last change and could optimize the matchups of their heavy icetime loggers. Outside of that, Clarkson’s superior depth and overall skill took over.
Power plays almost never consistently produce as St. Lawrence’s have. They run very hot and cold, sometimes independent of the kill on the other side. It seems that SLU’s would dry up eventually then, but it hasn’t happened yet.
It’s a classic battle of SLU’s offense vs. Clarkson’s defense, though a lot of the time these meetings of elites are decided by the other units. In the season series the Clarkson offense won that matchup fairly handily.
| Clarkson | St. Lawrence | |
| Pct | .889 | .750 |
| +/-/g | +2.3 | +1.0 |
| G Rel | +25.48% | +13.54% |
| PP% | 28.33% | 29.41% |
| PK | 94.29% | 87.50% |
| SF/g | 35.3 | 30.5 |
| SA/g | 20.9 | 28.6 |
| Sht% | 9.6% | 10.6% |
| Sv% | .945 | .923 |
| Rel S% | +11.93% | +5.11% |
Top Scorers
Clarkson
- Nicole Gosling: 14-22-36
- Haley Winn: 8-27-35
- Dominique Petrie: 13-20-33
(Yep, those are two defenders on top.)
St. Lawrence
- Abby Hustler: 24-31-55
- Julia Gosling (cousin): 22-29-51
- Anna Segedi: 18-20-38
Title IX Hockey 