Men's Hockey: Offense strong in exhibition

Under first-year head coach Bob Prier, the Tigers opened their 2011-12 season last weekend with two monumental exhibition home game wins against Guelph University and Division-III No. 6 Neumann University.

Princeton sealed its first game’s initial lead with a final score of 9-4, the first time the Tigers scored nine goals in a single game since 2004 in an exhibition game against Windsor.

The Tigers followed the first win with a 5-1 final score in their favor against Neumann as Princeton special teams scored four of their five goals.

Looking to the regular season, sophomore forward Andrew Ammon, one of the team’s top three leading scorers in preseason play, said “we feel really good [going into the Ivy League Shootout].”

“We are excited to finally get the regular season going,” Ammon said, “and see how we match up against some strong league opponents.”

The Tigers concluded last season with a 17-13-12 overall standing and an 11-9-2 record in ECAC Hockey. During a two-month span in the middle of the 2010-11 season, Princeton won nine of 11 games and thus earned a national Division-I ranking in the top 20. Their season came to an abrupt and unexpected end when St. Lawrence upset Princeton in the first-round best-of-three series in the ECAC Hockey Tournament.

Princeton’s athletic department hired Bob Prier two weeks later, an assistant coach from the opposing bench when the Tigers lost in the playoffs. Prier had acted as assistant coach for the Tigers in 2002 before a nine year tenure at St. Lawrence. He takes over for Guy Gadowsky, who left after seven successful seasons to lead Penn State's first varsity hockey program.

While the Tigers graduated eight seniors from last year’s team, they bring in seven currently healthy freshmen this season. In addition, sophomore forward Andrew Calof, last year’s leading scorer and ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year, returns for the 2011-12 season. Senior defender Derrick Pallis and junior forward Rob Kleebaum, who each scored over 20 points last season, also will take the ice.

The team’s netminders, sophomore Sean Bonar and junior Mike Condon, will contend for the starting spot this season. Bonar recorded a 2.20 goals against average last year and a .912 save percentage, while Condon finished with a 2.82 GAA and a .902 save percentage last season.

The fifth installment of the Ivy Shootout marks the first of three times the Tigers will compete against Yale and Brown during the 2011-12 season. In its most recent matchups against each team, Princeton defeated Brown 7-3 but lost to Yale in a close 5-4 game.

In the overall statistics in the team’s exhibition games against Guelph and Neumann, sophomore forward Jack Berger led Princeton with four goals (after finishing the Guelph game with a hat trick), followed by junior defender Michael Sdao and Ammon with two goals each.

Junior forward Eric Meland, Kleebaum, Calof, sophomore defender Kevin Ross and senior forward Mark Hagel also added to the scoreboard in the opening two games. Overall, the Tigers outshot their first two opponents 92-48.

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“Our exhibition games went well. Our offense and powerplay seemed to click getting scoring from both our forwards and defensemen,” Ammon said.

“Some guys that really stepped up were Jack Berger with a hat trick on Saturday and Kevin Ross, who paced the offense on Sunday with a goal and a nice assist,” Ammon added.

Though the team was pleased with the victories, Ammon said that there was plenty of room for growth.

“Some things we are looking to improve on are our penalty kill and limiting our turnovers,” he said.

The Tigers will continue play throughout fall break after the Ivy League Shootout, facing No. 20 Quinnipiac at home on Tuesday, Nov. 1 and traveling for games against Harvard on Friday, Nov. 4 and Dartmouth on Saturday, Nov. 5.