North Country Trip This Weekend for No. 5 Princeton

Friday, February 14

Canton, N.Y.

6:00 PM

Princeton University

St. Lawrence

Photo by: Shelley M. Szwast

North Country Trip This Weekend for No. 5 Princeton

February 12, 2020 | Women's Ice Hockey

The southernmost school in the ECAC Hockey League will head to the northernmost teams this weekend as the fifth-ranked Princeton women's hockey team visits St. Lawrence Friday night and sixth-ranked Clarkson Saturday afternoon.

Friday at St. Lawrence, 6 p.m. | ESPN+ | Int'l Video | Live Stats
Saturday at #6/6 Clarkson, 3 p.m. | ESPN+ | Int'l Video | Live Stats

Princeton moved up a spot to fifth in both the USA Hockey and USCHO polls this week, and Clarkson followed right behind in moving up from seventh to sixth after Ohio State, which Minnesota-Duluth swept last weekend, slipped out of fifth in the polls and UMD used the wins to move from ninth to eighth.

The other ranking at play for the Tigers this weekend is the ECAC standings. With one more win, Princeton will ensure home ice for the first round best-of-three series for the ECAC playoffs on the final weekend of February. With eight points on the table entering the final two weekends, Cornell leads the conference with 33, four in front of Princeton (29) with Clarkson (26) and Harvard (25) following. Yale, in fifth and the first spot out of first-round home ice, has 22 points.

Princeton's Friday opponent will be fighting to keep its place in the ECAC playoffs. With 16 points, the Saints are in eighth place and a three-point edge on ninth-place Union. Clarkson, Saturday's opponent, will be looking for points to keep home ice, standing four points in front of Yale.

Princeton swept the Clarkson-St. Lawrence weekend Nov. 22-23 at Baker Rink, defeating the No. 5-ranked Golden Knights 2-1 on a pair of Sarah Fillier goals to open the weekend before Carly Bullock and Sharon Frankel each had a pair of goals to help the Tigers beat the Saints 6-2. Rachel McQuigge backstopped the win over Clarkson, making 20 saves and allowing no goals outside of family members as sister Brooke McQuigge scored for the Golden Knights. Stephanie Neatby made 22 saves in the win over St. Lawrence.

The Tigers will be looking to extend their winning streak against St. Lawrence to four games, and they'll aim to make it back-to-back wins over Clarkson for the first time since the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons. Overall, Princeton will look to keep its unbeaten-for-2020 run going into a 10th game while having won its last five.

Princeton will also look to claw closer to the program wins record, now sitting on 19. One win would tie Princeton for the third-most wins in program history and mark the team's seventh 20-win season, all in the last 18 seasons, while a sweep would tie the 2019-20 Tigers for second all-time, even with the 2005-06 team and behind only the 2015-16 Tigers' 22 wins.

Individually, Bullock can climb into the top 10 in points in program history with one more point, now at 141. She can tie for the sixth-most goals in a career at Princeton with two more, now at 85. Senior classmate Neatby's 1,782 career saves are five out of fifth place in program history. Sophomore Sarah Fillier is just one point away from 100 for her career.

Following the weekend, it'll be the final series of the regular season when Brown and Yale come to Princeton Feb. 21 and 22.