Women's Hockey Log: Jean O'Neill Back On Top Of PC's Depth Chart

For the moment, Friars junior Jean O’Neill is renewing the old sense of her days on the PRO Line opposite classmate Alyse Ruff and recent graduate Mari Pehkonen, a unit that famously came together for the stretch drive in 2007-08 and combined for 15 goals and 33 points in the last 14 games.

 

All through the first official week of practice and for Saturday night’s preseason bout with McGill University, O’Neill assumed the left wing on the top line, supplementing Laura Veharanta and Ashley Cottrell, the top two returning point-getters in the program.

 

And for what it’s worth, persuasive hints of chemistry would show up on the scoresheet. The top trinity combined for eight of the Friars’ 25 total shots and aggregated six points. O’Neill left her mark on the night when she hustled through neutral ice as Veharanta’s breakout feed sent Cottrell flying down the far alley for a two-on-one rush. O’Neill absorbed a crisp cross-ice pass and wristed it home over the blocker of McGill goaltender Gabrielle Smith, spawning a 3-0 lead with 3:41 remaining in the second period.

 

Just like that, all three linemates had statistically conspired on the same scoring play. And for the rest of the night, O’Neill, like the majority of her active colleagues, garnered substantial amounts of ice time in all situations, including both ends of the special teams’ spectrum.

 

Everyone was needed chiefly for the fact that a hefty handful of injuries confined Providence to a mere 15 skaters –nine forwards and six defenders- and that two of the four ailing forwards included nascent scorers Kate Bacon and Abby Gauthier, who like O’Neill before them are temporarily sidetracked in terms of building on their freshman foundations.

 

Depending on everyone’s return, the line combinations could be largely tweaked as time goes along.

 

But for the moment, far as head coach Bob Deraney would offer, all five of the timetables for return

are indefinite. “We’ve got some nicks and bruises, and it’s too early in the season to rush anybody,” he said. “They’re going to take a while, but we’re hoping to eventually get everybody back, and that’ll make us a much better team.”

 

A year ago at this time, it was O’Neill’s preseason ailment creating one of the voids in the depth chart. She would miss the preseason game and five of the first 10 regular season ventures before she paced herself in thawing out her game once she had returned to stay.

 

Her high point last season, which was defined by her grinder-type role on a line with Gauthier and Katy Beach, was a five-point-in-six-game stretch between January 25 and February 13, which upped her scoring transcript from a 1-2-3 to an eventual final of 3-5-8, a far cry from a smooth rookie ride highlighted by a 7-10-17 log and five two-point performances.

 

But with a stable bill of health the top gun Veharanta and the proficient playmaker Cottrell, the more ideal scenario has every reason to return for O’Neill this season.

 

Drawing class
In the first half of Saturday’s second period, freshman center Nicole Anderson –who logged three shots on net and four penalty minutes- drew two power plays in a matter of two minutes and 14 seconds. She first went down via a hook by McGill’s Caroline Hill, effectively setting up Ruff’s icebreaker. Only 41 seconds after Ruff converted, Anderson drew an interference minor at the expense of Cathy Chartland.

 

Quick feeds: Ruff, having her first go-around as a center rather than a winger, led the team with 13 face-off wins and five shots on net Saturday…Through the pregame warmup session prior to the McGill scrimmage, sophomore Bre Schwarz paired up with junior Leigh Riley as a defensive tandem while Lauren Covell winged the third forward line. However, for the better part of the game itself, the two switched those positions…Defenders Colleen Martin and Amber Yung each picked up an assist Saturday….Individual game tickets for all 18 regular season home games go on sale starting today at 9:00 a.m. at a price of $5 for adults and $2 for both kids 15 and under and seniors 60 or older…Seven of the Friars' first nine regular season games, all in the coming month of October, will be at home, starting with this weekend’s two-night drop-in from Maine.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

On Women's Hockey: Exhibition Loss To McGill A Much Lesser Evil For Friars

At least for about the first half-hour of clock time, last night’s fixture presented vintage Providence-

McGill women’s hockey, if such a thing can even be identified.

 

By the time Jean O’Neill had converted a stimulating two-on-one rush with Ashley Cottrell with 3:41 to spare in the second period, the Friars –who between three meetings in 1981, 1985, and 2003, had run up the Montreal-based program by a 24-0 aggregate- were up 3-0 and on a path to rerunning old patterns in this matchup.

 

The illusion would be literally gone in 60 seconds, when with 2:41 remaining, Rebecca Martindale pumped home the Martlets first goal at PC’s expense in team history. From that point forward, an array of vinegary realities settled into the Friars’ water bottles as their guests proceeded to chalk up a 6-1 run in the third period, amounting to a 7-4 decision at Schneider Arena.

 

They were thus enlightened to the fact that this is a new era on both sides. PC is no longer the urban legend whose coach has to advise players to make X-number of passes to avoid running up the score.

 

Meanwhile, McGill, the two-time defending Canadian Interuniversity champion, could easily be wearing a Wisconsin Badgers “W” or a Golden Gophers “M” with a tiny maple leaf stamped in the middle of it, denoting them as a Canadian chapter of college hockey excellence.

 

They, like the Badgers, will even be missing their head coach, Peter Smith, for the duration of the 2009-10 campaign as he attends to Olympic duties.

 

All that just made it an enticing recipe for the Friars’ annual preseason extramural scrimmage. The old practice of facing a Provincial Women’s League team was clearly not giving them the launch pad they needed to ignite their NCAA run, hence the drastic change in select Canadian invitee of the year.

 

“McGill’s a very good team, and if you did the research on our record against them, it’s a much different team than they’ve ever had before,” said Friars’ skipper Bob Deraney. “They’ve got a terrific coaching staff that’s attracted a lot of great players. That was a really good test for us and that was the idea. I wanted to see what our weaknesses were.

 

“I think it told us a lot and now we’ve got some concrete things to work on. I know we can play a lot better, but we had some spurts where we played really well and executed the way we wanted to.”

 

To start, those spurts came primarily in the form of sophomore stopper Genevieve Lacasse playing as if she had never been on break. She thwarted all of 15 McGill stabs to retain a scoreless knot through the opening frame.

 

Later on, the Friars’ strike force –which charged up 25 shots on net between 12 individual skaters- perked up to sculpt a 3-0 edge, starting with junior Alyse Ruff’s backdoor connection at 6:46 of the second. Within another 10 minutes, returning top gun Laura Veharanta (two goals, three points total on the night) and O’Neill augmented the edge. And Cottrell, last year’s established resident playmaker, was also on her normal par with two helpers.

 

But in a subsequent hurry, a short supply of bodies and patience prevailed. PC had a grand total of four skaters –Kate Bacon, Jackie Duncan, Abby Gauthier, Emily Groth, and Jessie Vella- all watching from the stands as they recuperate from offseason afflictions, reducing the line chart to only three forward lines.

 

As the score devolved from a 3-1 lead to a 6-3 deficit within the first dozen minutes of the third period, the frayed Friars paid four consecutive trips to the penalty box and authorized three power play goals.

 

“It’s a big factor, especially at this time of year,” said Deraney of the short bench. “But you have what you have, you get out there, and I think it adds to our conditioning, our mental toughness, and stamina. You’ve got to learn how to play when you’re fatigued.”

 

Meanwhile, backup goaltender Christina England had a forgettable return to game action –her first lick of it since the preseason exhibition of two seasons ago. Deployed in relief of Lacasse to commence the third, her transcript for the night would ultimately read 9:27 worth of playing time, four saves, four goals-against, and unwelcome credit for the loss.

 

By the time Ann-Sophie Bettez snuck in her second strike and fourth point on the night for a 5-3 difference, a conspicuously disconcerted England was reassigned to the pine.

 

But this was, after all, just a puck-based PSAT for everybody concerned. Record-wise, it will all stick like a fallen snowflake in above-freezing temperatures.

 

“Believe me, I’m not very happy with the result, but I’m proud of the effort,” Deraney concluded.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Women's Hockey Log: Deraney Foresees League-wide Parity

It was probably the last thing one would want in the way of intrigue, but yesterday’s freshly disclosed Women’s Hockey East preseason coaches’ poll is calling for a strict duplicate of the 2008-09 regular season standings. If such did in fact come to fruition, that would mean yet another venture to the revered Lake Whittemore off the coast of the University of New Hampshire for the conference championship weekend, and yet another bye into that stage for the likes of Boston College.

 

It would also mean yet another Beantown Showdown between third-seeded Boston University and sixth-rate Northeastern in one quarterfinal clash, and yet another Battle for Southern New England between Providence and Connecticut in the other. For the Friars and Huskies, it would amount to a postseason threematch, dating back to PC’s 5-1 semifinal shellshock of UConn at Freitas Ice Forum in 2008.

 

Well, at least in these hypothetical events, a few healthy rivalries are all but guaranteed to intensify.

 

But beneath the 1-through-8 surface, the poll exposes a bonus morsel of hope for the likes of Providence, which garnered two of the anonymous first place votes while the remaining six were split between UNH and BC. The four-time defending champion Wildcats have laid claim to virtual first place by way of earning more cumulative points (50).

 

Expectably, head coach Bob Deraney was not going to escape being asked on those two votes during yesterday’s preseason league-wide teleconference. But he did his best to pull off a self-effacing C-cut and insist that, even with a lack of positional shake-up, every team will be reckonable in the coming year.

 

“I have to tell you,” he said. “Northeastern has a goalie (in Florence Schelling), Vermont is much improved, and Dan (Lichterman) is doing a (heck) of a job in Maine. I think anybody can make noise this year.

 

“I found it interesting that we’re ranked fourth, and then two coaches think that we should be Number One in our league. I think it’s really hard to judge anybody this year. It’s going to be really exciting, not so much for the coaches, but for the fans, because every game, you’re going to show up not knowing who’s going to win.”

 

The more the altogether trivial poll suggested otherwise, the more Deraney pushed the notion of parity. The dividing line between fourth-place PC and fifth-place UConn, i.e. the equator of the standings and the deciding factor for postseason home ice, marks the greatest gap in point total between any two teams. The Friars were allotted an aggregate 43 voter points, a mere seven behind New Hampshire, but 12 ahead of the Huskies’ 31. UConn is, in turn, trailed by Northeastern (27), Vermont (22), and Maine (20).

 

And yet, Deraney concluded, “I think this is going to be one of the (most) dog-eat-dog seasons that Hockey East has ever had from top to bottom. We have a lot of parity in our league, due to several things. One, I think, is the tremendous coaching and coaching staffs that we have who have done a wonderful job of recruiting and attracting great players into our league.

 

“But also, with the defection of the Olympians on various teams –UNH and Boston College- adds to the parity our league.

 

“We’re gonna have our hands full, there’s no doubt about that.”

 

Sophomore surge?
When asked about the return of the two nascent faces of the franchise –top gun Laura Veharanta and incumbent goaltender Genevieve Lacasse- for their sophomore years, Deraney pointed quickly to their minor glitches the popped up last year and asserted that they have already been mended.

 

He was especially keen on highlighting his refined expectations of Veharanta, who topped the team charts with 31 points as a frosh despite a six-game scoring drought during the stretch run in February.

 

“Laura Veharanta has come back in 50 times better shape than she was a year ago from a stamina standpoint,” he said. “I think towards the end of last year, she got a little fatigued, and people were pushing her around, and she got a lot of attention. She really wasn’t in the physical shape to handle that kind of attention. I think this year, she’s come back ready to play a full season.”

 

As for the Scarborough Save-ior, “Having one of the best (goalies) in the country come back in better shape than she was a year ago, I think we’re going to have an opportunity to be in every game.”

 

Quick feeds: During yesterday’s conference call, Deraney divulged that freshman forward Jess Vella is still healing an offseason ACL tear and is expected to see her first lick of collegiate action sometime in November.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press