Another rough night for a shorthanded Clarkson team as Minnesota-Duluth completes a weekend, nonconference sweep with a 4-2 win.
Clarkson was missing Scott Freeman, who had both an ankle injury and the flu, as well as Jeremiah Crowe, who had the flue. The Golden Knights played with one less forward than usual and also had one less defenseman.
To make matters worse, defenseman Bryan Rufenach was given a game disqualification for a major penalty on a check from behind at the end of the first period and will miss Clarkson's ECAC Hockey opener at Quinnipiac on Friday.
Clarkson was outshot 44-22 and had 16 penalties for 54 minutes. Mark Borowiecki was also give a major penalty in the third period, but his was just a game misconduct.
Clarkson's goals were scored by Brandon DeFazio and Borowiecki
Three Stars
No. 3: Brady Lamb, UMD: one goal, one assist
No. 2: Jack Connolly, UMD: two assists and five shots on goal.
No. 1: Rob Dorson, UMD: played a part in every goal with one goal and three assists. In one of hockey's oddities, he was a minus-one.
Rating WCHA Officials
In case any fans were wondering if WCHA officials give their own league teams a break in non-conference games the statistics don't really show any bias.
There have been 22 games this season where a non-WCHA team faced a WCHA team on its home ice.
The non-WCHA teams have 151 penalties and the WCHA teams 137. That average comes to 6.8-6.2 per game, not really anything noticable.
The only thing I noticed is there have been six major penalties called on non-WCHA teams (though three came for Clarkson this weekend) and just two on WCHA teams.