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McGill's late goal salvages 2-2 tie with Clarkson women

Posted 2/5/17

A late goal allowed the third-ranked Clarkson University Women's Hockey team to salvage a 2-2 tie at Harvard on Saturday afternoon. Clarkson is now 21-4-5 on the season with a 15-1-2 conference …

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McGill's late goal salvages 2-2 tie with Clarkson women

Posted

A late goal allowed the third-ranked Clarkson University Women's Hockey team to salvage a 2-2 tie at Harvard on Saturday afternoon.

Clarkson is now 21-4-5 on the season with a 15-1-2 conference record while Harvard is 3-17-4 overall and 3-11-4 in ECAC Hockey.

"This time of year you have to expect everyone's best game so we knew Harvard was going to come out hard and play well today," said Head Coach Matt Desrosiers. "I thought we brought a decent effort, but could have done a better job creating some better scoring opportunities for ourselves and taking advantage of the ones we did get. Fortunately we were able to capitalize at the end of the game to come away with a tie."

After a scoreless first period, Clarkson struck first. It was leading scorer and co-captain Cayley Mercer who got the Golden Knights on the board 5:29 into the middle frame. The goal came on a power-play with Ella Shelton and Loren Gabel getting the assists.

However, Harvard struck back with two goals to take the lead. The first came on an extra-man opportunity for the Crimson, with Haley Mullins scoring at 8:32, with just 24 seconds remaining in the power-play. Lexie Laing and Kat Hughes had the assists. Laing set up the go-ahead goal for Clarkson at 19:01 as Chelsea Ziadie getting the goal.

Clarkson went into the third period trailing 2-1 and spent the first 19 minutes of the period unsuccessfully trying to tie the score. At the same time, Harvard pushed forward trying to gain a bit of breathing room. With each team failing to score on its first 10 shots of the period, Clarkson pulled Shea Tiley from the goal to gain an extra attacker, giving Clarkson a 6-on-4 advantage in skaters as a Harvard player was serving a penalty. The move paid off as Rhyen McGill latched onto a rebound from a shot by Mercer and McGill was able to score to tie the game with just 48 seconds remaining.

McGill's goal sent the game to overtime and gave Clarkson a chance to score its first overtime goal this season, as the Green and Gold were 0-1-4 in overtime games coming into the day. Unfortunately, Clarkson could not pick up its first overtime win on Saturday, as all four of the Golden Knights' shots in the extra time were turned away.

Clarkson finished with a 39-26 advantage in shots. Clarkson was 2-4 on the power-play while Harvard scored on one of its three extra man opportunities. Tiley made 24 saves for Clarkson while Beth Larcom had 37 stops for the Crimson.

Clarkson will return for its two final home games of the regular season next weekend as Quinnipiac and Princeton come to Potsdam.