Women's Hockey Log: Teams' Similarities Make For Heated PC-BC Matchups

No two teams in the Women’s Hockey East Association have garnered as much bonus mileage this season as Boston College and Providence. Their encounter yesterday afternoon at Schneider Arena would elongate into the Eagles’ league-leading eleventh overtime game of 2009-10, the Friars’ tenth.

 

Was it much of a coincidence that yesterday –or, for that matter, the clubs’ two previous meetings, which both required a shootout- took so long for one side to lay down the knockout pin in a defensive and intensive arm-wrestling match? Friars’ head coach Bob Deraney thinks not.

 

“I think we’re mirror images of each other,” he said, a statement with which the stats sheet would have indubitably concurred six weeks ago, when the teams played to a 2-2 regulation tie at Conte Forum and morphed each other’s records to 5-7-7. But it certainly would not appear that way this morning, in the aftermath of a 2-1 PC triumph that improved them to 11-7-8 and docked the lately luckless BC program to 5-11-9 overall.

 

Data be darned, whenever the Friars and Eagles lock twigs, Deraney stressed, “You have to battle for every inch of the ice. They’re forecheck is very difficult to break, and I like to think ours is the same way, so it’s a game of confrontation. That’s why I think these games are so evenly matched.”

 

Confrontation? With each other? That’s nothing new to those sporting the Friar Black and Eagle Maroon, BC skipper Katie King speculated. Each roster has at least one player hailing from the states of Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Four Eagles and two Friars in Nicole Anderson and Kate Bacon all whet their skates at the ever-rigorous Minnesota high school level.

 

And away from their respective homes, there have been countless confrontations at the elite youth levels. Just for one example, current PC sophomores Ashley Cottrell and Genevieve Lacasse were part of a Detroit Little Caesar’s U19 program who lost to BC rookie goalie Corinne Boyles and the Chicago Mission in the 2008 USA Hockey national finals. The following year, Boyles’ team relinquished its title at the hands of current PC forward Jess Cohen, BC defender Dru Burns, and their associates at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School.

 

“I think we have some teams that just work extremely hard out there,” said King. “I think a couple of (each team’s players) played against each other when they were younger, Minnesota kids and whatnot.

 

“And I know PC has always been a great team in our league and we’re always trying to come out with a win.”

 

High time in overtime
Yesterday, the Friars spread their collective ice time beyond regulation for the tenth time out of 26 total games this season. Up to that point, they were a so-so 0-1-8 in the extra frame, with two of those ties amounting to at least an extra Hockey East point courtesy of a shootout victory.

 

But Jean O’Neill’s turbine tour of the puck down the left alley and homeward bound snapper to the left of Boyles bucked that trend. More critically, it allowed Providence to extend its active hot streak to six consecutive wins, the program’s longest such tear since the climax of the 2004 Hockey East pennant race.

 

“It’s great to win anytime. Whether it’s regulation, overtime or a shootout, it’s a win.” Deraney said simply. “I don’t mean to downplay it, but you’ve got 65 minutes to win a hockey game, and that’s the way we look at it. It’s just great to win another hockey game, no matter how you do it.”

 

Same basic elements
As was the case in last year’s event, when the Friars surpassed Northeastern, 3-2, this season’s Skating Strides Against Breast Cancer game at Schneider Arena was preceded by PC senior defender Colleen Martin singing the national anthem and culminated with a home OT victory. The Friars are now 3-1-0 all-time when hosting their chapter of the league-wide charity.

 

Quick Feeds: With her 30 saves on 31 shots faced yesterday, Lacasse has ascended to second place on the Hockey East save percentage leaderboard (.927), trailing only her personal rival, Florence Schelling of Northeastern…O’Neill, along with Cohen, Cottrell, and Alyse Ruff, now has two game-clinchers to her credit this season…Yesterday was PC’s first win when tied after two periods. They were previously 0-4-5 in that situation. Conversely, the Eagles had been unbeaten (1-0-4) when knotted at the start of the third period…Sophomore forward Abby Gauthier was the only skater on either end to be credited with a plus-2 rating in yesterday’s game. Seven other Friars, along with three Eagles, were a plus-1…BC sophomore center Mary Restuccia led all puckslingers yesterday with six shots on goal. She also took a game-leading three minor penalties…Leigh Riley earned an assist on Kate Bacon’s first period goal, granting the stay-at-home junior her fourth point on the year and doubling her career totals from where they stood at the end of last season.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Women's Hockey 2, Boston College 1: Friars Kill Eight Penalties Before Bumping BC In OT

Even though she came in bearing the second-most active stick blade on the Providence College women’s hockey team, Jean O’Neill was hardly a tangible factor through 64 minutes of action yesterday.

 

Formerly tied with linemate Alyse Ruff for second with 72 shots on goal, trailing only Arianna Rigano under that heading, O’Neill had thrust five attempts at Boston College goaltender Corinne Boyles (19 saves) throughout the day, only to see them all blocked or telepathically diverted wide.

 

Meanwhile, both clubs were swinging and missing on umpteen power play chances apiece, a tormenting trend that rolled right on into overtime when PC’s Abby Gauthier was flagged for hooking with 2:39 to spare.

 

But the Friars’ drew out their PK veil –already a grubbily glamorous 7-for-7 on the day- for one more effective tour of duty. BC’s daylong drought continued, but O’Neill’s would not.

 

As if on cue, the junior A-captain scooped a fugitive puck within her own far face-off circle just when the time came for Gauthier’s jailbreak. A presto odd-man rush ensued and would quickly culminate with O’Neill roofing an airborne snapper into the opposite post, stamping a 2-1 victory with a mere 30.2 seconds left.

 

In its duration, PC’s now six-game winning streak has arguably never been in as much peril as it was yesterday. The Friars were tied for nearly two full periods against a team desperate to regain its groove. They whiffed on six power play chances that might have renewed or augmented an initial 1-0 lead. And then they were a half-minute away from watching yesterday’s result go down as a tie on their national transcript.

 

Well, none of it mattered in the end, head coach Bob Deraney insists. A win is a win.

 

“They’re all hard-earned,” he said. “They’re all hard in different ways. I think today was a great test for us to deal with adversity.

 

“Boston College is not what their record is. I’ve seen them on tape and I’ve seen them play in person. They’re a very good team with a lot of different challenges and a lot of different weapons, so we had a different type of adversity today and we overcame it, which is really good.

 

“The penalties? They’re part of the game, so you have to learn how to kill them off and face that adversity straight-on and knock it back. Fortunately, we happened to kill that last penalty with 30 seconds left and O’Neill made a (heck) of a play.”

 

The Eagles, who throughout this month have turned in nothing but anti-Friar results, let their extreme desire be felt on the stats sheet, particularly as they owned the first period shooting gallery, 17-5.

 

Along the way, they induced Providence to its first of two five-on-three deficits when Ruff and Rigano were called at 9:39 and 10:29, respectively.

 

But that was not before Kate Bacon smuggled in the icebreaker on the Friars’ first offensive threat of the day. Her own goaltender, Genevieve Lacasse (30 saves), already having repelled five Boston stabs, Bacon administered Boyles’ first test at 5:00 of the opening frame. During the same hustle, she collected a feed from Rigano behind the cage and, upon looping around the far post, blindly buried a backhander with 5:48 gone.

 

In the last 12 minutes before intermission, however, the Eagles let the Friars test Boyles twice more while they fired on Lacasse another 13 times, including five while Ruff and Rigano were doing time.

Nothing doing. The Scarborough Save-ior was perfect all through the sweatiest first period of her season.

 

“Sometimes I don’t really trust shots,” confessed BC head coach Katie King. “Sometimes I don’t think the shots tell the truth, but today I think Lacasse played great. She made the stops she needed to make, and that’s huge for her team.”

 

Indeed, for the Friars were no more productive when BC went off. They mustered five attempts, only one of which Boyles needed to play, over two first period power plays. And after Allie Thunstrom, the lone star in the Eagles’ galaxy most of this season, tied the game at 6:41 of the second on a textbook end-to-end breakaway, both teams twice alternated penalties before intermission.

 

Yet the 1-1 draw would not budge and nobody charged up more than one shot on any given power play segment.

 

“We use a lot of different bodies killing penalties,” said Deraney. “I think that’s a key as to why we can stay so fresh and be so successful on the penalty kill. I wish our power play had been a little bit better today, but I think Boston College had a lot to do with that.”

 

PC’s most promising power play swarm was a four-shot deal halfway through the third period. But less than three minutes after that fell through, they slipped into another 5-on-3 disadvantage, one that lasted 39 seconds but only saw Lacasse dealing with one bid.

 

Then, at 4:06 of the bite-sized bonus round, O’Neill lost a face-off to Mary Restuccia and the likes of Thunstrom and Danielle Welch were quick to try their luck on Lacasse. But just as nimbly and without so much as summoning another whistle, the Friars turned the action the other way, amounting to O’Neill’s walk-off strike.

 

“If you want to be a contender, you have to be able to deal with adversity and find a way to win,” Deraney concluded. “That’s what I’m most proud of today. We found a way to win.”

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

On Women's Hockey: Friars Vie To Exploit Eagles

Through its ascent to real deal national relevance in recent weeks, the PC women’s hockey team has already verified the adage that preaches beating the best in order to enter the company of the best.

 

They have done so by doubly dispatching long-ranked Cornell, which earned them the No. 9 slot in last week’s USA Today Top 10 poll, and then pulling off a most startling sweep of New Hampshire, a feat which this week got them first-time admittance to the tenth slot on US College Hockey Online’s leaderboard.

 

With that squared away, now would be the right time to show the way to retain –or, better yet, build upon- such coveted recognition once one has it. The best method is showing why you are among the best and the hottest by repressing the colder teams while they are down.

 

Enter the Boston College Eagles, who are here today for Part I of a home-and-home set, slated to entertain Part II tomorrow up at Conte Forum, and still trying to thaw out from a month-long slump.

 

When PC and BC last encountered one another two weeks prior to Christmas, their records were an identical 5-7-6 overall. By night’s end, after the host Eagles claimed an extra Hockey East point in the postgame shootout, they continued to bear duplicate transcripts at 5-7-7 apiece.

 

Since then, though, the Friars and Eagles have literally been the league’s hottest and coldest teams, respectively. Providence is on a 6-0-2 tear for the nation’s second-best active unbeaten run, whereas Katie King’s shorthanded pupils are missing the input of Olympic ambassadors Kelli Stack and Molly Schaus more direly by the day. Including their knot with the Friars, they are a vinegary 0-4-3 in their last seven games.

 

And with Vermont’s surprise 2-1 overtime defeat of Boston University last night, every one of the Eagles’ conference cohabitants has now notched at least one W during their protracted famine.

 

But this slump could be a lot worse from a BC standpoint and this weekend’s matchup card could look a lot easier from a Providence perspective. The Eagles, as they have recently demonstrated at the expense of St. Lawrence and the Friars themselves, can perk up its shallow strike force when the situation is desperate enough and the opposition is not sharp enough to safeguard its lead.

 

Twice in their last six outings, while unable to seal a full two-point package, the Eagles have salvaged a tie by deleting an initial two-goal deficit in the closing stanza. They did so back on Dec. 11 when they initially trailed Providence, 2-0, before the game was 10 minutes old, only to slow down the bleeding and ultimately whip up two strikes of their own in the third. The Friars’ ordinarily reliable power play spilled five chances after the first period that might otherwise have wrested that game out of reach.

 

More recently, nine days ago up at Chestnut Hill, the Eagles let St. Lawrence sculpt itself a 3-1 advantage, but pulled even via rookie Caitlin Walsh and revivalist sophomore Mary Restuccia within the final seven minutes of regulation. And two weeks to the day, to a slightly less dramatic degree, they cemented a 3-3 draw versus Yale with five goals coming in a matter of two minutes and 52 seconds halfway through the second period. Starting at the 9:50 mark and ending with 12:42 gone, an initial 1-0 BC lead morphed into a 2-1 deficit, then a 2-2 knot, then a 3-2 disadvantage, and finally a 3-3 tie.

 

Case in point, BC’s relatively unripe and numerically challenged line chart –which has but 16 skaters, including six freshman and six sophomores, to work with on any given night- can click and make an outing worthwhile when they have the chance. And the more desperate their situation becomes late in the season, the closer they might be to blowing their top on someone.

 

If the Friars don’t want to be that victim –and they ought to detest that prospect more than anyone at the enchanting rate they’re going- they will need to come out quick and confident (as they have done a lot lately) and work towards draining the Eagles’ tanks.

 

Indeed, in all five of their January games, BC has authorized more than 10 opposing shots in the third while consistently garnering less than 10 shots of their own. And in their last four losses, they have entered the final frame with nothing worse than a two-goal deficit on their hands. In one case, they spilled a 4-3 edge and watched Northeastern rejoice in a 7-4 triumph. On other occasions, the opposition has simply laid down their insurance and laid down the law around their own net.

 

Oh, and since New Year’s, BC’s opponents have substantially outclassed them in the discipline department, giving the Eagles no more than three power plays per night while earning at least four of their own. As is common knowledge to any Friartownie, Providence has already made a habit of out-disciplining their adversaries all season.

 

Bottom line, the Friars want anything but a single ice chip of directional diversion for either party in question this weekend. First-place Northeastern is in a nonconference engagement with Niagara, and four points would mean usurping the throne atop the standings.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press