UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Junior Kevin Wall (Penfield, N.Y.) registered the 10th hat-trick in program history to pace Penn State to a weekend sweep of Niagara following a 6-2 victory in non-conference action on Friday evening inside Pegula Ice Arena.
HOW IT HAPPENED
- Penn State (5-1-0) started sluggish, but used a five-minute penalty kill midway through the opening frame to turn the momentum as sophomore Tyler Paquette (Collegeville, Pa.) fired bar-down for the shorthanded goal off a beautiful drop pass by freshman Carson Dyck (Lethbridge, Alberta) for the 1-0 lead at 9:44 of the first period.
- Wall doubled the lead with a powerplay goal as he laced a shot from the high-slot past the blocker of Niagara net-minder Jake Sibell for the 2-0 advantage at 14:39 of the first frame.
- The Purple Eagles (0-4-0) capitalized on a defensive miscue by the Nittany Lions to cut the deficit in half heading into the first intermission as Albin Nilsson ripped a shot over the shoulder of sophomore Liam Souliere (Brampton, Ontario) for the 2-1 score at the 18:06 mark.
- Penn State regained the two-goal edge as freshman Ryan Kirwan (DeWitt, N.Y.) blocked a shot at one end of the ice springing himself on a breakaway and he deked right and finished left for the 3-1 lead at 4:58 of the second period.
- Niagara cut the deficit to a single goal as Walker Sommer snuck one past Souliere at 7:17 of the third period for the 3-2 score.
- The Nittany Lions then used three unanswered goals led by Wall to run away with the victory. The junior made the score 4-2 at 13:18 of the third period as he simply just beat a Purple Eagle defenseman to the puck and slipped it under the blocker of Sibell for his second of the game.
- Wall was then awarded a penalty shot just over four minutes later and he was able to convert to secure the hat-trick at the 17:28 mark.
- Paquette added late insurance as he cashed in on the empty net for his second goal of the game and the 6-2 final score at 17:56 of the final frame.
GOALTENDING
- Souliere moves to 2-0-0 on the year after stopping 33 shots in the victory including all 20 he faced during the six Niagara powerplay chances.
- Sibell falls to 0-2-0 on the year after a 34-save performance.
GADOWSKY POSTGAME
Opening Statement
"The kill was excellent, six for six but that included a five-minute [major penalty]. Certainly, we don't want to have to kill that much but really I thought we did a great job, led by Liam [Souliere]. Obviously, if you're going to kill well you're going to have to have good goaltending, which we did. And then as far as [Kevin] Wall goes. It's really nice to see him do a lot of really, really good, smart team things, especially in the third period. Winning battles and playing hard and it's nice to see guys who do team things get rewarded, which he did, and I thought Tyler Paquette did in more of a long term way as well. He's been working extremely hard all offseason, and it was nice to see him get rewarded.
Q: Coach, can you speak a little more to the way that you thought [Tyler] Paquette played tonight, specifically offensively but also on the penalty kill?
A: "Yeah, it's nice to see him score a shorty [goal], because he's been doing a really good job on penalty kills, as well as his killing partner Carson Dyck, and it's nice to see them get rewarded offensively. Obviously, that's not why you go out to kill, but they've been doing a good job and like I said before with [Tyler] Paquette, specifically, he's the guy that does the right things. He works extremely hard on off days, he's a great student, he represents himself and this university extremely well and guys like that get rewarded. His rewards have been coming for a while and he earned that, he did. He earned a shorty [goal], it was a heck of a shot, but he also earned to get two goals." Q: Guy, I've asked you before about kind of that balancing act between being aggressive and maybe being a little bit too undisciplined which results to penalties, how would you evaluate how your guys did there tonight?
A: "Not well, at all. We didn't find the line, and I don't like [that] we took those stupid penalties, like the couple retaliation. If you do that, that that will bite you, and we know that. So not only did we have a careless mentality, we were also careless with our sticks. We didn't do a good job, that must change. Obviously, we understand that if we're going to go in and play against some of the powerplays that are in our league, then we're going to be in big, big trouble if that's going to be a pattern, we have to change."
Q: Sometimes when you have what looks like really good nights on special teams in the box score, you're a little hesitant to praise them because you think the results don't always match the process, but what did you like about the process?
A: "I do think our best penalty killer was [Liam] Souliere for sure. But like I said, it doesn't matter what you do if your goaltender is not your top penalty killer, you're not going to have good stats, however, I thought that we adjusted really well to their two looks. Sometimes this causes trouble from transitioning one to the other. I thought Souliere actually did a really good job of transitioning from one look to the other, one look to another look, and we did a good job of making adjustments. So that's what I thought went well." NOTES
- Wall's first-career hat-trick marks the 10th in program history and the ninth all-time on home ice with the last eight of those nine coming at Pegula Ice Arena. It was the first hat-trick for Penn State since Liam Folkes' lit the lamp three times at Merrimack on November 29, 2019.
- Wall had five goals on the weekend and is now tied for the Big Ten lead with six on the year ranking tied for third nationally after registering his third multi-goal game of his career and his second-consecutive this season while collecting his ninth career multi-point game and his second this season.
- Penn State improves to 8-0-1 all-time against Niagara and is now outscoring the Purple Eagles 38-10 in those contests.
- The Nittany Lions were outshot most of the night before peppering the Niagara net with 17 third period shots to just six and ending the game with the 40-35 advantage.
- Niagara held the slim edge at the faceoff dot winning 36-of-70 (51.4 percent) draws, however, junior Connor MacEachern (Brooklin, Ontario) went 12-for-15 (80 percent) to lead all players.
- The Nittany Lions were a perfect 6-for-6 on the penalty kill, while going 1-for-4 with the man-advantage. Penn State has now killed off 23-straight penalties including all 10 against Canisius two weeks ago and all 11 against Niagara.
- With a pair of first period assists senior Clayton Phillips (Edina, Minn.) secured his first multi-point effort of the season and the sixth of his career.
- Paquette secured the first two goals of his Nittany Lion career marking his first career multi-goal and multi-point game.
- Dyck collected a pair of assists to secure the first multi-point game of his career.
- Penn State improves to 5-0-0 on the year when scoring first and when holding a lead entering the third period. PSU is now 132-12-10 all-time when leading entering the final frame.
- The Nittany Lions also hit their magic number of five goals for the third time this season improving to 85-1-2 all-time when scoring five or more goals with 27-straight victories under those circumstances.
NEXT UP
- Penn State hits the road for the first time this season with a single contest against North Dakota as part of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame game at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee next Saturday with puck drop slated for 8:00 p.m. ET.
- This marks the first-ever meeting between Penn State and North Dakota.
For more information on the 2021-22 season presented by the Penn State Bookstore: the Official Bookstore of Penn State Athletics, visit the men's hockey page at GoPSUsports.com or call 1-800-NITTANY Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.