Yale Athletics

The Yale men’s hockey team (10–17–2, 7–13–2 ECAC) dropped their final two games of the regular season, as they were defeated on Friday night by Harvard (6–17–6, 6–10–6 ECAC) and by Dartmouth (11–9–9, 9–6–7 ECAC) on Saturday. The Bulldogs will enter into the ECAC postseason as the 10th seed in the conference and will face off against St. Lawrence (10–18–6, 8–10–4 ECAC) in a first-round matchup in Canton, NY.

In Friday’s rivalry game against Harvard, the Elis scored the game’s first goal when first-year forward Iisai Pesonen ’27 notched his fifth of the year by deflecting a point shot from Ryan Conroy ’24 on the powerplay with twelve minutes remaining in the second period. 

However, just six minutes later, Harvard found the equalizer when another first-year forward, Ryan Fine, found the back of the net. Fine fired a shot pass into traffic and it bounced off a Bulldog D-man’s skate and slipped past goalie Jack Stark ’27. Sixty minutes was not enough to decide the outcome of this back-and-forth game, but the Crimson found the back of the net in overtime.

In the end, Harvard secured the extra point with the overtime win, but the game could have easily gone either way. Both netminders, Stark and Harvard’s Aku Koskenvuo, were impressive as they combined for 55 saves in between the pipes and came up with clutch stops all night long for both teams. 

On Saturday, Yale traveled up to Hanover, New Hampshire, to take on Dartmouth in both teams’ final regular season game of the 2023-24 season. Dartmouth came in on a five-game winning streak, and they showed no signs of slowing down.

Although the Bulldogs once again jumped out to an early lead, on a beautiful one-time goal from Ian Carpentier ’24, Dartmouth bounced right back with a power play equalizer. They then added one in the second, one more in the third, and an empty net goal in the waning minutes to secure a 4–1 home victory.

As the Bulldogs head into the postseason, they will need an offensive spark in order to extend their season past this Friday’s matchup against St. Lawrence. After all, the Bulldogs only managed one goal each in their last four regular-season games and registered the second-fewest total goals scored in ECAC conference play all year. That being said, there are some clear positives heading into the postseason.

In ECAC conference play, the Bulldogs only allowed 57 goals against in 25 games played – the third lowest in the ECAC, behind only nationally top-ranked No. 7 Quinnipiac and No. 13 Cornell.  

Furthermore, with Stark in the net, the Bulldogs have shown that they can compete with any team in the country, as the first year has been phenomenal all year. With him in between the pipes, the Elis know that they will always get solid goaltending.

When the Bulldogs lace up the skates against SLU on Friday night, their season will be on the line. If they win, they will advance to the league quarterfinals and face one of the top four seeds in a best-of-three-game series. If they lose, they will be packing their stalls at Ingalls the next day.

This season, the Bulldogs cruised to a 5–0 victory in their November home matchup against St. Lawrence, but fell 4–2 in the January game at Canton. The Bulldogs are 13–6–3 all-time against the Saints at home, but only 6–9–2 in games played at St. Lawrence.

With the two losses this weekend, the Bulldogs ended the regular season in the same place they did last year in the conference.