Outside the door to the PC women’s hockey locker room sits a simple, hand-drawn placard reading “0-0.” The attitude it preaches –in a novel diversion from the trite “no lead is safe” pep talk- is quite fitting for a team like this.
Through 14 games in their 2010-11 season, the Friars have gone up, 1-0, on 12 occasions. They have outscored their adversaries, 13-3, in the first period. And their defense, fifth in the nation with an average of 1.79 opposing goals per game, is especially reliable when granted a multi-goal cushion.
Such a luxury has technically not been lacking of late, but it has been a little less automatic than it was in the middle three weekends of October. When it doesn’t come, whiffed opportunities and foregone chances are to blame. In turn, a few radiant chances to win and opportunities to ascend the conference and national rungs have been spilled.
But yesterday, Bob Deraney’s strike force exploited an unlikely victim in Northeastern stopper Florence Schelling, using a productive jumpstart to set the pace for a 4-1 triumph at Schneider Arena.
It was the first time in seven total encounters that the Friars put more than three pucks behind the Swiss Save-ior. And it was the first time in six outings that they tuned anybody’s mesh more than thrice, after it had been the norm in their first eight games.
“I’m just glad to have our team back,” said Deraney. “I don’t know where they were the last couple of weeks, but we played the type of hockey today that I’d like to see on a consistent basis.
“It was fun to watch,” he added.
Rarely does such an assessment occur to someone with a direct stake in the action. Partisan and nonpartisan spectators can accept and indulge in the tension of a contest with leads and momentum prone to swaying at the rate of a New England weather forecast. But the people in control of the game want, well, more control of the game.
“It’s just important that we have the momentum right at the start of the game and when we get that first goal, we have to keep the momentum going from there,” said top gun Kate Bacon, who inserted her 10th and 11th goals of the season, both on the power play.
Amidst a timely nine-day break away from game action that ended on Tuesday, Deraney stated his desire to “not be our own worst enemy.” Indubitably, in the team’s five “non-wins” on the year, the offense has been PC’s foremost self-inhibitor simply because it was subconsciously satisfied with brittle, early 1-0 advantages.
But yesterday, Bacon and defender Rebecca Morse each beat Schelling a mere minute and 45 seconds apart before the game was nine minutes old. Bacon struck again at 3:06 of the second period, intercepting a Northeastern clearing attempt at the brim of the zone and snapping a low 5-on-3 conversion to the right of Schelling.
“We talked about it this week,” said Deraney. “We have created scoring opportunities, but we never really created scoring chances, and there’s a big difference. If you really looked at the quality of our opportunities, they weren’t scoring chances, they were just opportunities. Today, we tried to take those opportunities and turn them into chances, and because of that we were rewarded.”
The whole principle couldn’t be simpler. The greater the gap, the higher the pressure on the adversary to start kindling something of their own and the less time they have to do so.
“We let them jump out to a quick two-goal lead and it’s tough to bounce back from that,” said Huskies’ head coach Dave Flint. “Especially with the goaltending they have. You know you’re not going to get a bunch of goals against (PC goalie Genevieve Lacasse).”
Ironically, Flint was away serving as one of Mark Johnson’s U.S. Olympic sidekicks when, exactly one year to the date of yesterday’s meeting, his pupils deleted a 3-0 deficit and laced a 4-3 albatross around Lacasse and Co.
But those Friars were still thawing out from the residual numbness of growing pains. These Friars know how to keep their challengers in a deeper hole, assuming they dig it for them first.
Yesterday, Flint watched his pupils dig desperately through the third period, ultimately pelting Lacasse with 26 shots on goal. The Scarborough Save-ior repelled everything but a power play conversion via Katie MacSorley with 13:10 to spare.
With a game total 39 stops, Lacasse leap-frogged Molly Schaus of Boston College for the top save percentage (.945) in Hockey East. But it could have been a less pleasurable workout, perhaps one like the 20-shot second period against Dartmouth this past Tuesday or the 26-puck salvo via Boston University two weeks ago.
The difference this time: a bulkier differential in her favor on the scoreboard.
“I don’t know if you stress it,” Deraney said. “Every time you come that’s the goal, is to get one and just continue to build on it.”
Kind of like how the Friars got one more assertive victory –their first in a while- and would be wise to build upon that.
Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com
This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press
