Boxscore

UTICA, N.Y. – The late-season swoon continued for the #10 Manhattanville men's hockey team on Saturday night in Utica, as the Valiants came up just short in dropping a 3-1 decision to the #8 Pioneers in ECAC West Conference action at the Utica Memorial Auditorium.

In a game the Valiants had to win to keep any hopes of a top-three seed in the upcoming ECAC West Conference Tournament alive, the visitors got just 10 shots on goal in the first two periods and then could not complete a comeback in the third despite badly outshooting the Pioneers.

Utica struck first at the 8:43 mark of the first period, as Tim Coffman came down the ice on a two-on-one with Evan Chlanda and beat junior netminder Pierre-Olivier Lemieux (Rimouski, Que./Neepawa Natives (MJHL)) for his 11th score of the year. That goal was the only goal of the opening frame, in which Utica held an 8-4 edge in shots.

Unfortunately for the Valiants, history repeated itself in the second period as Utica scored a shorthanded tally for the second straight night that changed the course of the evening. Just 11 seconds after Jon Gaffney went into the box for Utica, Trever Hertz took a feed from Chris Santiago at 12:31 and gave the home team a two-goal lead that they kept after 40 minutes of play.

Manhattanville came out of the second intermission in full desperation mode, looking to mount a comeback. The comeback started just 40 seconds into the final frame, when senior captain Lem Randall (Yellowknife, N.W.T./OCN Blizzard (MJHL)) got a tip on the puck in front of the Utica net and beat UC goalie Evan Smith for his sixth of the year on the power play. Assists on the score went to freshman Adam Young (Edmonton, Alta./Grande Prairie Storm (AJHL)) and senior Sasha Romanenko (Kharkiv, Ukraine/Hebron Academy).

The Valiants continued to pressure the Utica defense for the remainder of the frame, yet could not get the game-tying goal. Lemieux was pulled from his net with 42 seconds remaining in a final effort to tie the score, but it resulted in an empty-net score by Doug Marshall with 17 seconds on the clock that sealed the win for the Pioneers.

For the game, Manhattanville had a 23-21 edge in shots and went 1 for 6 on the man advantage. Utica was held scoreless on three man-up chances.

The loss puts Manhattanville (14-8-1, 2-8-0 ECAC West) into the first round game of the ECAC West Tournament on February 23, and the Valiants will need wins in their final two games of the regular season against Hobart to avoid a fifth-place finish. Utica (17-5-0, 6-3-0 ECAC West) moves into a tie for first place in the conference with Elmira.

Manhattanville will take next week off to regroup in advance of its final two games of the regular season on February 18-19 against the Statesmen. Both games are 7 p.m. faceoffs and both games will be video streamed live on GoValiants.TV starting at 6:45 p.m.