Men's Hockey: Tigers fall to St. Lawrence to end season

The second and third games of the ECAC Tournament series between the two schools were close, however, and Princeton found itself on the wrong side of the statistics sheet, failing to take advantage of both of its opportunities to advance to the quarterfinals.

“It’s always tough to end the season,” senior defenseman and co-captain Taylor Fedun said. “It’s a pretty awful feeling, especially to go out the way we did.”

The Tigers narrowly missed out on a first-round tournament bye, but their sixth-place conference finish earned them home ice against the 11th-ranked Saints. That placement paid dividends for Princeton in the first game, a resounding 4-1 win for the hosts. Freshman forward Andrew Calof opened the scoring within the first two minutes, while another flurry in the second period put the Tigers up 3-0.

Though the visitors answered with a power-play goal in the same frame, sophomore forward Rob Kleebaum iced the game in the third to finish off the scoring.

With one win under its belt and needing just one more to advance, Princeton seemed poised to make its way to the second round of the tournament. But it was not to be: St. Lawrence, after going down 1-0 in the second game to another Kleebaum goal, converted two power-play goals from a total of five opportunities.

“Five-on-five, we, for the most part, controlled [game two],” Fedun said. “It was just a steady slew of guys taking penalties ... I can’t quite put my finger on [why that was].”

Saints forward Kyle Essery found the net midway through the third period for the visitors’ third goal of the game, which stood up to even the series at a game apiece.

The loss galvanized the Tigers in Sunday’s decisive third game. The hosts came out of the blocks with a flurry of shots to test St. Lawrence goaltender Matt Weninger, but to no avail. The Saints weathered an early Princeton power play before scoring the first goal of the game on just their third shot and scored again five minutes later to go ahead by two.

“Our first period [in game three] — by no means did we get dominated,” Fedun said. “We outshot them 16 to five, and to come out of that down 2-0, that’s never a good feeling.”

That goal was all Weninger needed. The goaltender looked fantastic, recording 48 saves and allowing just a single goal, a power-play strike by junior defenseman Derrick Pallis.

Asked if he expected that sort of performance out of Weninger, Fedun said, “definitely not.”

“You could even tell that they didn’t know that because he didn’t even start the first game,” he added.

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And despite another furious stretch towards the end of the game, the Tigers saw shot after shot blocked or turned aside by the St. Lawrence defensive unit. The game finished 2-1 to the Saints, giving them their second victory of the series and eliminating Princeton from the ECAC Tournament.

So ended the season for the men’s team, as well as eight seniors’ collegiate hockey careers. Unlike that of the rest of their teammates, the seniors’ futures will not involve possible redemption next season. But it’s unclear what the future will hold for Fedun.

“We’ve tried to stay away from thinking about what was going to happen at the end of the season because we were hoping that the season wasn’t going to be ending for a while ... I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” Fedun explained.