Yale will be hitting the ice about 20 minutes from now. Here's a few notes and quotes from some pre-practice interviews.

• Yale learned one weekend can be a real momentum killer. Firing on all cylinders as it trekked up to God's country of upstate New York, and minutes away from starting the series with a Friday night win at St. Lawrence, the wheels fell off quickly. "I thought we played perfect protecting a one-goal third period lead," Keith Allain said. "(St. Lawrence) had nothing going, they had no life. We had numerous chances to extend the lead. We didn't, which was our failure. We took an offensive zone penalty with 3 minutes left in the game, we do a great job on the kill, and they score a bad, off-angle goal on their only shot of the power play with a minute left. It kind of stunned us, and they won the game in overtime."
• A night later, Clarkson bottled up Yale for a period before the Bulldogs found some flow. Still, another tough goal, a bad bounce off a Bulldog skate, gave the Golden Knights a lead that served as the game's only score. "Again, I thought we could have easily won that game 1-0 if we just played the same way," Allain said. "It was one of those weekends."
• Consistency in the offensive zone continues to hamper Yale, which appeared to have solved the issue with nine goals in two games with Harvard and Brown the week prior. Allain said there were several instances in which Yale skaters had opposing goaltenders of St. Lawrence and Clarkson clearly beaten, but failed to convert. "That's an area we have to get better at," Allain said.
• Yale's normal routine was interrupted by this week's blizzard. Monday is a typical off day, but since the university issued a mandate nixing all activity for Tuesday, Allain and his staff scrambled the team together for an impromptu Monday practice session.
• The offensive struggles extend to the Bulldog power play, with an 11 percent success rate is ranked 53rd of 59 teams. Yale's seven power play goals ranks ahead of only Brown. Allain continues to work and tweak the unit in practice every day. Mike Doherty says he's encouraged by the emerging chemistry on the power play units. "We're starting to find each other more and more each game," Doherty said. "We're not too down on it. We know how important they are each game, but as long as we keep making progress the goals will come."
• Alex Lyon is opening many eyes around the league as he builds on a successful freshman campaign. Boasting a .937 save percentage in the final weekend of January will do that. Allain says its a product of Lyon's worth ethic, much of which comes in sessions with volunteer goaltending coach Josh Siembida. "He's become more consistent because I think he trusts his positioning a bit more. He lets some pucks hit him that before he felt he needed to make saves on. That part of his game has gotten better. And he'll continue to improve. He's certainly not a finished product yet."