In senior captain David Jankowski's 100th career game, Justin Paul scored his sixth goal of the season, but the St. Lawrence University men's hockey team ultimately fell 3-1 to the second-ranked Quinnipiac Bobcats on Friday night at Appleton Arena.

St. Lawrence fell to 7-14-6 overall and 5-8-4 in the ECAC with the loss, while the Bobcats improved to 25-2-3, and 14-1-1 in league play.

After getting beat up by Quinnipiac earlier in the year, the Saints came out firing outshooting the highly ranked Bobcats 9-5 in the first period. Kaden Pickering nearly got St. Lawrence on the board six minutes into the game when the senior captain found room in the middle of the Quinnipiac zone. Pickering's hard wrist shot was turned away by the blocker of the scrambling Yaniv Perets.

Despite the pressure, the Bobcats found the net first capitalizing on a turnover. Michael Lombardi collected a Saints' turnover and touched it ahead to Ethan de Jong, who found Michael Chorney at the blueline. Chorney threaded a shot through the defense and past Emil Zetterquist to take the lead.



The lead was nearly doubled late in the period, when Joey Cipollone found himself all alone in front of the net. Cipollone tried to beat Zetterquist with his stick handling, but the senior stood tall gloving down the dangerous point-blank effort.

The Saints had two more great scoring chances from Tucker McIntosh and Aleksi Peltonen in the second frame, but Quinnipiac would take the 2-0 lead with six minutes and 28 seconds left in the period. Ty Smilanic was the beneficiary of some great passing, as the sophomore buried a tic-tac-toe play from Jacob Quillan and Wyatt Bongiovanni.

A bad bounce gave Quinnipac the 3-0 lead in the third, when Brendan Less's shot from the blueline was going way wide of the goal, but deflected off a Saints' stick and into the back of the net.

Paul injected some life into the Skating Saints lineup later in the third with his sixth goal of the season. Just seconds after St. Lawrence killed off a power play, Mason Waite sent an outlet pass to Jankowski, who found Paul with speed. The sophomore faked a slap shot and burnt his defender then backhanded a shot past the blocker of Perets to make it a 3-1 game. Jankowski tallied his team-leading ninth helper of the year on the play. 

The Saints turned up the heat trying to find a second goal to put the game within reach, and posted nine shot attempts in the remainder of the game. St. Lawrence played three minutes and two seconds of six-on-five hockey with the extra skater, but were unable to score again.

Zetterquist stopped 23 shots in the game, while Perets stopped 22 in the win.

Quinnipiac had the lone power play of the contest and went 0-for-1 and gave up a goal shortly after.

The Skating Saints will wrap up the weekend tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. when they take on Princeton University at Appleton Arena.