A dominating opening thirty minutes allowed the fifth-ranked Clarkson University Women's Hockey team cruise to a 9-1 win over Rensselaer on Friday night in Cheel Arena. The nine goals are a season high for the Golden Knights.

Clarkson is now 22-3-4 overall and 10-3-4 in conference while Rensselaer falls to 9-14-4 and 7-8-2 in ECAC Hockey. Rensselaer is now the second team this season that Clarkson has defeated after losing an earlier matchup and extends Clarkson's 10 game unbeaten streak.

Clarkson opened the scoring with a power-play goal 4:25 into the first period. It was senior assistant captain Renata Fast who scored after freshman Cassidy Vinkle knocked the puck into her path. Less than two minutes later, Clarkson had a second goal when junior Genevieve Bannon latched onto an errant Rensselaer pass and skated in to score an unassisted goal.

Rensselaer drew one goal back at the 7:21 mark, but that was the only score for the Engineers.

At 8:47 in the first, sophomore Lauren Lefler scored her first goal of the game with classmate Amanda Titus and freshman Rhyen McGill getting the assists.

In the second period, Clarkson added another trio of goals. First, freshman Loren Gabel scored on a power-play when Bannon passed to her in front of the Engineers goal. Just 23 seconds later, Clarkson scored again when sophomore Jessica Gillham stole the puck and played a one-two with Vinkle before scoring herself. Finally, senior captain Shannon MacAulay scored on a backhand from right in front of the goal.

Not content with a five goal lead, Clarkson continued to attack on offense in the third period. The Green and Gold got their third power-play goal when senior assistant captain Erin Ambrose scored on a slap shot from straightaway. Next, Lefler got her second goal when she was able to tip in a shot from in close. The scoring was closed out by freshman Kelly Mariani who, after a shot from junior assistant captain Cayley Mercer, knocked the puck out of the air and into the goal.

Clarkson finished with a 39-12 advantage in shots and scored on three of its five power-plays while killing all six of Rensselaer's extra man opportunities. Sophomore goaltender Shea Tiley made six saves in the first two periods with junior McKenzie Johnson making five stops in the final third. Rensselaer used three goaltenders. Lovisa Selander started and made four saves in 8:47 of action. Kira Bombay relieved her and made 25 saves in 47:17 before Sara Till came in for the final 3:56, making one save. The win is the largest home league win for Clarkson since beating Rensselaer 10-0 on December 2nd, 2011.

Clarkson will host Union tomorrow in a 4:00 pm game in Cheel Arena.