Penn State Completes Sweep Over Clarkson
The Penn State Men’s Hockey Team completed the series sweep against Clarkson today with a 5-1 victory at Pegula Ice Arena to improve to 2-0-0 on the year.
The scoring started early on in the first period as Clarkson’s Grant Cooper knocked in a fast break just 3:26 into the game. The Nittany Lions didn’t take long to respond by tying up the game off of a faceoff won by Evan Barratt and scored by Alex Limoges less than two minutes after Clarkson’s goal.
Penn State continued their strong start with another goal starting with a faceoff win in the attacking zone. This time it was Aarne Talvitie putting in a rebound for his first career goal in the NCAA. These two goals occurred in just over a minute of each other and put the Nittany Lions ahead 2-1.
Clarkson had a couple of attempts toward the end of the first period to tie up the game with two Nittany Lions entering the penalty box resulting in two different power plays for the Golden Knights. However, the Nittany Lions penalty kill was fantastic and didn’t allow a goal in either.
Nikita Pavylchev opened the second period’s scoring by following up his own shot on a fast break and sliding the puck past Clarkson’s goalie's outstretched foot. With just under seven minutes remaining in the second period, Nate Sucese handed the puck off to Brandon Biro who was left with a one-on-one against the goalie. Biro beat Clarkson’s goaltender on his glove side to increase Penn State’s lead to 4-1.
Clarkson’s emptied the net to bring out an extra attacker late in the third period and almost saw a spark of life when a shot on net hit the pipe and deflected to the boards. Less than 30 seconds later Chase Berger took advantage of the empty net and put the Nittany Lions up 5-1 in what turned out to be the final goal of the contest.
All in all, five different Nittany Lions ended up on the score sheet while Peyton Jones was a brick wall in net after allowing the early goal. Jones finished with 35 saves on the night and made a handful of saves on good scoring opportunities.
After the game Nittany Lions head coach, Guy Gadowsky spoke on Jones play in net saying, “He was awesome. We gave up one in the first five minutes, but boy, was he awesome after that. They had a couple huge chances that he just made great saves on.”
This was a bit of a different Nittany Lions approach to a game as seen in the past. Penn State recorded just 10 shots on net in both the first and second periods but totaled a bit more shots in the third period. Gadowsky alluded to the third period shot total is where he would like to see the team at moving forward. Despite the lack of goals in the third period, Penn State fans should be seeing the “shoot first, pass second” mentality that the Nittany Lions have adopted over the past few years moving forward.
Penn State will continue their long homestand on Friday and Saturday where they will matchup against Niagra.
Nick Mazone is a junior broadcast journalism major who minors in digital media trends and analytics. To contact him, email NickMazone@nycap.rr.com.
