A flurry of goals late in the first period gave the Clarkson University Women's Hockey team an insurmountable lead as the Green and Gold cruised to a 6-1 win over rival St. Lawrence at Appleton Arena in Canton on Thursday night.

Ranked 5th/6th in the national polls, Clarkson, received goals from six different players to improve to 21-3-3 on the season with a 9-3-3 ECAC Hockey record. The Saints drop to 13-11-3 and 7-6-2 in conference. It is the sixth consecutive win for the Knights over St. Lawrence, including three games this season. Clarkson will try to extend its eight-game unbeaten streak (7-0-1) when it faces off against the Saints again in a 3:00 pm game at Cheel Arena on Saturday afternoon.

"I thought tonight was a great total team effort," said Clarkson Head Coach Matt Desrpsiers. "We had a lot of players contribute to that win in a lot of different ways. St Lawrence started the game well and made Shea make a couple big saves to keep them off the board early. I thought we did a good job pushing forward and working hard to get our first goal. That really seemed to give us a spark and some momentum to get a couple more timely goals at the end of the first period. I really liked the effort our team showed throughout the game, especially on our penalty kill. We are going to need to bring a similar effort on Saturday if we want to come away with another win."

Offensively, Clarkson was led by Olivia Howe. The senior assistant captain had a hand in four of Clarkson's six scores, finishing with a goal and three assists. One of the goals Howe was not involved in was Clarkson's opener. It was Genevieve Bannon who scored at 14:13 in the first period, the second game in a row she has scored after recording a pair of goals against Colgate last Saturday. Senior captain Shannon MacAulay and sophomore Savannah Harmon were credited with the assists.

Clarkson's next two goals happened seemingly in the blink of an eye. First, freshman Kelly Mariani scored with one minute remaining in the first period, as Howe and fellow senior assistant captain Erin Ambrose grabbed the assists. Just 16 seconds later Clarkson had a third goal. This time it was junior assistant captain Cayley Mercer who scored, with Howe and Mariani picking up the assists.

The Golden Knights grabbed a commanding 4-0 lead at the 5:27 mark in the second period. Freshman Cassidy Vinkle scored the goal, with Howe and Ambrose once again providing the assists.

A power-play, extra-attacker goal for St. Lawrence at 9:37 in the second gave the Saints a little bit of life heading into the third period, but Howe ensured a miracle comeback did not occur. Howe scored a goal of her own at 7:00 in the third with Mariani and Mercer setting her up. Finally, with less than two minutes remaining, sophomore Katelyn Fournier scored off assists from Harmon and Jessica Gillham to close out the Knights' fourth, sixth-goal outing of the season.

Clarkson finished with a 33-28 edge in shots. Clarkson failed to score on its three power-plays while St. Lawrence scored on one of its four extra-man opportunities. Sophomore goaltender Shea Tiley made 27 stops for Clarkson. Grace Harrison made 23 saves for St. Lawrence and Sonjia Shelly closed the game out with four stops.