Weekly Notes

We will begin running a weekly Clarkson hockey notes column at watertowndailytimes.com the week ECAC Hockey play begins.
Until that point I will post a few items noteworthy here. These are in no particular order of importance, just some random thoughts:
* Chris D'Alvise had an excellent weekend, at least if you disregard the last three seconds of Saturday's 4-3 loss at Niagara. By now everyone knows he had the three assists and one goal in the 6-4 win over RIT on Friday. But he also looks like the clear leader to replace Nick Dodge in being Clarkson's top faceoff player. Overall for the weekend D'Alvise was 36-19 on faceoffs, a .654 win percentage. No one else on the team had a .500 or better percentage so that could come into play in Friday's home opener, which D'Alvise will sit out.
* Julien Cayer had an impressive debut. He missed Friday's game with an injury, but he scored a goal in his first college game Saturday, went 5-5 on faceoffs and he led the team in shots with seven.
* In one statistical oddity, Clarkson had almost identical shooting nights last weekend. Against RIT the shots by period were 7-11-7 and against Niagara 8-11-8. Even the shots Clarkson allowed were similar, just reversed. Against RIT it was 10-12-17 and against Niagara it was 17-12-11. Even more odd, the two periods Clarkson allowed 17 shots it gave up just one goal in each.
* Colorado College will be the first No. 1 team to play the Clarkson men at Cheel Arena. They are not the first No. 1 team to play against a Clarkson team in Cheel Arena, however. The SLU women's team was No. 1 when it lost to Clarkson in the 2005-06 season.
* Tigers coach Scott Owens was the only coach I've ever seen who enters the rink from the Zamboni door when Clarkson hosted the Tigers for two games in the 2003-04 season. It makes sense given that coaches were dress shoes and the ice is slippery at that stage. I recall he comes in from the zamboni door and walks along the boards to the rink.
* Colorado College has five NHL draft choices on its squad: forward Chad Rau (Toronto), forward Bill Sweatt (Chicago), forward Scott McCulloch (Chicago), defenseman Kris Fredheim (Vancouver) and goalie Richard Bachman (Dallas).
* Finally....Colorado College has some interesting special teams stats after four games...With all the offensive talent the Tigers have, they are just 4-for-29 on the power play this season. But CC has killed all 28 penalties so far this season.