Box Score NORTHFIELD, Vt. – For over a decade, the Norwich men's ice hockey team and ECAC East regular season titles have gone hand in hand.
The Cadets (16-5-3, 14-1-3 ECAC East) added another to their mantle on Friday night with a 4-2 win over Connecticut College at Kreitzberg Arena.
Pier-Olivier Cotnoir tallied two goals to lead the offense as Norwich wrapped up its unprecedented 13th straight ECAC East regular season title.
Christophe Paquet got the NU offense rolling early by banging home a loose rebound into a wide-open net after Conn. College goaltender Andrew Margolin made the initial save on Greg Eskedjian's shot. Tory Allan also picked up an assist on the goal coming just 2:17 into the game.
Cotnoir increased the Norwich lead to 2-0 at the 9:41 mark of the first period when he fired home a pass from Colin Mulvey from the middle of the left face-off circle. Travis Janke also recorded an assist on the play.
Norwich outshot Conn. College 17-1 over the first 20 minutes.
The Cadets were unable to maintain their momentum in the second period as they were never able to get a third goal to put the Camels away.
Instead, Conn. College got a late tally from Ryan Riffe with just 13 seconds left in the period to cut the deficit to 2-1. The goal was Riffe's seventh of the season and it came off assists from Mike Sinsigalli and Dawson Luke.
The Cadets wasted little time getting their two-goal lead back as Blake Forkey notched his sixth goal of the season at the 1:22 mark of the third period off an assist from Chad Anderson. Forkey took a wrist shot that squirted through Margolin's five-hole and just trickled over the line to give NU a 3-1 lead.
Conn. College battled back though and cut the deficit to one again when Julien Boutet beat NU goaltender Parker Carroll off assists from Joe Capuano and Steve Servideo at the 18:36 mark of the third.
However, Cotnoir put the game away with an empty-net goal from the Conn. College blue line for his 14th goal of the season at the 19:22 mark of the third period.
Carroll made nine saves for Norwich to improve to 9-0-2 on the year. Margolin turned aside 33 shots for the Camels to drop to 6-11-3 on the season.
Norwich is now unbeaten in eight straight games and is 6-0-2 over that span.
The Cadets close out the regular season Saturday afternoon with a 4 p.m. game against Tufts University in the last ever ECAC East/NESCAC Interlock game at Kreitzberg Arena.
