Vermont Cynic

Issue date: 2/6/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Ian Jansen-Lonnquist Sophomore Dean Strong (8) skates for a rebound in Friday night's game against Providence

On a wintery Friday night, the men's ice hockey team rewarded those who braved the treacherous weather by sinking Hockey East adversary the Provi-dence College Friars 3-2.

In front of the Gut's 52 straight sellout crowd, the Cats relied heavily on a dominant special teams per-formance to extend their na-tion best unbeaten streak to seven games (4-0-3).

Thanks to power-play goals from sophomore Corey Carlson, junior co-captain Torrey Mitchell and fresh-man Colin Vock, the #14 Cats improved their overall record on the season to 15-8-4 (10-4-4 Hockey East).

The Cats quickly jumped out to a 1-0 lead at 6:45 of the first period. Capitalizing on a Friar interference penalty, Carlson one-timed a beau-tiful pass from freshman Brian Roloff past Friar goal-tender Tyler Sims for his 8 strike of the year.

Despite being outshot 8-7, UVM carried the 1-0 lead into the second stanza.

The Cats nearly took a 2-0 advantage midway through the second, but sophomore Kyle Kuk's partial break-away bid sailed high of Sims' net.

Desperate to shift mo-mentum, Providence's Jon Rheault tied the game with a gorgeous backhanded break-away goal at 12:56.

However, with just three minutes remaining in the period, the Cats converted on another man advantage to retake the lead, 2-1.

Mitchell fired a rocket from the right point that de-flected off a Friar defense-man and past Sims for his 11 goal of the year and 99 career point.

With under a minute re-maining in the second and again on the power play, an opportunistic Vock pounced on a lively rebound from sophomore Peter Lenes' shot and gave UVM a seemingly commanding 3-1 lead.

However, at 7:22 of the third, a shorthanded break-away goal from Colin Mc-Donald pulled PC to within one at 3-2. Luckily for the raucous Catamount fans, this score would stick.

Fallon, who was recent-ly named a Hobey Baker Award finalist, finished with 20 saves to earn his 45 ca-reer victory, tying him for third place on UVM's all-time list.

"We challenged the guys this week. We talked about how in several of our games we haven't achieved our power play goal," said Cats' head coach Kevin Sneddon. "I think that got us fired up a little bit. A lot of different players did a nice job for us tonight."

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