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 (Photo by Bill Allen/NJ SportAction) caption:
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Tiger Men's Hockey Drops Heartbreaker But Sees Frustration as Fuelling Hunger
By Bill Alden
With just over five minutes remaining in the third period of its game with St. Lawrence last Saturday, the Princeton University men's ice hockey team was on the brink of an impressive victory.
Scrapping hard, Tiger junior forward Dustin Sproat fought through a scramble in front of the goal to find the back of the net and give Princeton a 4-3 lead with 5:14 remaining.
With a Baker Rink crowd of 1,902 on the edge of their seats, the Saints put a damper on things as they evened the score with 2:05 remaining and then scored the winning goal with just 34 seconds left in regulation. Seconds later, St. Lawrence added an empty-net goal to add insult to injury and doom Princeton to a 6-4 defeat.
While his players understandably left the ice with their heads down, Princeton head coach Guy Gadowsky managed a smile as he reflected on the heartbreaking setback.
"You know what, it was a heckuva hockey game," said Gadowsky, whose club fell to 5-12-1 overall and 4-8 in ECAC Hockey League play with the loss. "It was back and forth. There are a lot of positives you can take out of tonight. Unfortunately we came out on the wrong end."
Indeed, for much of the evening it appeared that Princeton's aggressiveness was going to translate into the program's first win over St. Lawrence since February 2002.
Just three minutes into the game, Princeton seized the lead on a goal by Kevin Westgarth. St. Lawrence responded with two tallies and took a 2-1 lead after the first period.
In the second 20 minutes, Princeton looked particularly sharp as Sproat and Jesse Masear both scored while Tiger goalie Eric Leroux blanked the Saints, making nine saves.
The topsy-turvy affair took another twist as St. Lawrence scored 2:42 into the third period. The teams battled without a score for the next 12 minutes until Sproat's second goal triggered the late fireworks.
With his team having fought hard as well on Friday when it fell 3-2 to Clarkson, Gadowsky had no qualms with what his team gave him over the weekend.
"You take away a little bit of the first half of yesterday's game and they were very aggressive," said Gadowsky, who is in his first year guiding the Tiger program. "They love playing here at Baker Rink. The fans were great and they love playing in front of them. I think they showed it."
If the team can keep up its intensity, Gadowsky believes fate will ultimately smile on the Tigers. "We believe in something called the hockey gods," explained Gadowsky, a hockey star at Colorado College in the late 1980s.
"If you want to take an example of that, it's Dustin Sproat. He's a guy who worked so hard on the boards and took hits to make plays. He backchecked extremely hard and he's the one that scored the go-ahead goal really using his guts. The hockey gods reward players that give extra effort. I think the same goes for teams." As he puts his stamp on the program, Gadowsky is dwelling more right now on effort rather than wins or losses. "You did a lot of things that allowed you to have a chance to win the hockey game," added Gadowsky, whose team has already scored 55 goals so far compared to the 62 tallied by the Tigers in their 31 games last winter.
"If you are just going to look at the end result then we're going to live and die with every loss. We won't know if we're improved. I think that we showed a lot of improvement this weekend."
With the Tigers heading into their winter exam break, they will have to exercise special self-discipline in order to lay the foundation for more improvement.
"They're extremely intelligent guys, you can't get into Princeton without having good time management skills," said Gadowsky, whose team is next in action when it hosts Bentley on January 25.
"They are on their own. We have good leadership and they will run the practices. The guys are going to have to show a lot of discipline to do well on their exams and at the same time make sure they stay in condition. The timing couldn't be better for a gut check."
In Gadowsky's view, the disappointment from the loss could lead the players to answer that gut check by redoubling their efforts. "It's up to them to see how focused they'll be," said Gadowsky.
"They could look at this as a really bad loss and be depressed about it. Or they could look at this as an opportunity to say we played hard and we had a couple of bad bounces. It could fuel their fire to be a little hungrier, that's what I'm hoping."
