PC Women's Hockey Post-season Player Reports

Nicole Anderson- Her acetylene stick from November lost a lot of heat after New Year’s, especially on the power play. Granted, she eventually perked up for two February goals, both of them executed in breakaway fashion, but Anderson should just as soon start looking forward to a more complete campaign as a sophomore next year.

 

Kate Bacon- One of the more admirable performers in PC’s season-ending loss to Connecticut, Bacon kicked plenty of ice chips on an iffy, injury-plagued first half to her sophomore season. After etching three goals and three helpers in her first 21 appearances, she closed up shop with a goal (in the semifinals, no less) and three assists in the last seven.

 

Jess Cohen- Clearly stricken by freshman frostbite throughout November and December, the Friars’ most-hyped rookie thawed back out once she was linked with Jean O’Neill and Alyse Ruff on the starting line. Not unlike Ashley Cottrell of the year before, though, she could stand to step up her firsthand productivity (six goals) to go along with her playmaking proficiency (13 assists).

 

Ashley Cottrell- While she was not quite as consistently productive in the latter phases of the season, Cottrell still finished as both the team’s scoring leader and face-off leader (.534 winning percentage). And as a testament to her two-way proficiency, she also made a fair number of Normorean, 200-foot rushes with the puck.

 

Lauren Covell- The ex-forward’s conversion to defense last autumn ultimately amounted to the following improvements: 14 more games played, nine more points (all assists), 17 more registered shots, and six steps up the plus/minus ladder.

 

Jackie Duncan- Duncan’s doggedness was self-evident as she played through her fourth consecutive injury-nibbled campaign. Though hardly prolific and sparsely utilized, she earned a regular spot as the fourth-line centerpiece and, after recovering from a preseason ailment in mid-November, saw action in 22 out of 23 possible ventures. Remarkably, that made for her smoothest ride since she was a freshman.

 

Christina England- Did not see action beyond about five minutes worth of firefighting duty way back in October during the Mayor’s Cup Mayhem. The hot hand in net simply belonged to Genevieve Lacasse this year, and the backup England was presumably a good sport about it.

 

Jen Friedman- Before the December deceleration, there were six occasions where Friedman did not log a single shot on goal. Afterwards, Friedman appeared in 15 games and had at least one (usually more than one) SOG in 14 of them.

 

Abby Gauthier- When the ice chips settled and the data evened out, the sophomore Gauthier was mostly the freshman Gauthier, reminding everyone that Hockey East is a long stride ahead from St. Mary’s of Lynn. She did muster a nice wraparound assist on Jean O’Neill’s deficit-cutting goal in the Hockey East semifinal, but only after going dry on the previous seven scoresheets. Then again, she has two more years to sharpen up.

 

Emily Groth- Not a whole lot to gauge in Groth’s nine sparsely distributed appearances, during which she simply supplemented the fourth line and went scoreless the whole way through.

 

Christie Jensen- A toe-curling, team-worst minus-8 at the midseason break, Jensen ultimately pulled even on that front and snuck in a few more points from her perch at the brim of the zone.

 

Genevieve Lacasse- She certainly does not have Connecticut’s number anymore. But apart from a couple of shaky –and in one case, very costly- bouts with the Huskies, plus three ghastly games spread out over the first half of the season, the Friars never trailed by more than one goal at any point of any contest. Maybe not so coincidentally, they had Lacasse in the cage for all 35 of those games, a testament not only to her durability but also her priceless composure.

 

Colleen Martin- Not unlike a few of her defensive understudies, Martin reverted to a stay-at-home state after briefly flaunting more daring tendencies in the early phases of the season. That didn’t exactly seem to have an adverse effect on the team’s resurgent second half, though. Looking ahead, the captain’s lasting influence might be judged based on the continued development of rising junior Jen Friedman, her first-pair partner for the duration of the season.

 

Pam McDevitt- With an unholy trinity of zeroes across her goal-assist-points transcript and limited ice time in each of her 31 games played, McDevitt has to resort to the intangibles to find satisfaction in her senior campaign. To that point, she did draw a fair number of opposing penalties, seemingly more than most of her peers did.

 

Jean O’Neill- O’Neill personified the Friars’ second half performance, wherein unwavering urgency translated to a surplus of success. As PC recompensed its 4-7-6 start with an 11-3-3 finish, O’Neill had at least one point in 12 of those latter 17 games. And even on nights when the rest of the team was wilting, such as a 2-1 home loss to Vermont in January or the fateful Hockey East semifinal, she was the one finding the net and stoking any hope that remained. There may be an MVP and/or C title in her near future.

 

Arianna Rigano- Rigano’s pleasantly surprising data makes her a sound candidate for the team’s Seventh Player Award at the team banquet later this month. She upped a 2-2-4 scoring log as a junior transfer to 7-7-14 as a senior and more impressively finished with the best plus/minus among all PC skaters at plus-10.

 

Leigh Riley- Though on the third D-unit, opposite Covell, Riley used the ice time she got to retain the best plus/minus among PC blueliners at a plus-7.

 

Alyse Ruff- Along with her dynamic complement O’Neill, Ruff has made tracks on her junior campaign with nothing but great expectations for her upcoming senior season. She has gradually grown to tame the tasks that come with being a center and has done her job on both sides of the special teams’ spectrum.

 

Laura Veharanta- The good news: Veharanta is only half-done with her college career. After missing the first two games of the New Year with a mild illness, the sophomore winger scraped out a mere two helpers in the homestretch and went pointless for the final eight games. Her cumulative bushel of 12 points was a harrowing 19-point drop from her radiant rookie year.

 

Jessie Vella- Vella only once went for more than two consecutive games without getting her name on the scoresheet. And after receiving a hooking citation in each of her first three appearances, she only took two more minor penalties in the 18 games that followed. That makes it tough for her and her associates not to look forward to next season, when she hopes to stay injury-free and to put more pucks on net (she had but 20 SOG, although five went in).

 

Amber Yung- As quiet a contributor on the ice as she is soft-spoken off of it, Yung can let a little hardware do most of her talking. She would finish second only to Connecticut’s Cristen Allen in the inaugural Hockey East best defender’s derby and last week was penned to the New England Hockey Writers all-star squad. All good signs as she transitions to her senior season, when she will be heavily leaned on to fill Colleen Martin’s leadership skates on the blue line.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

PC Women's Hockey 2009-10 Season In Review

Maybe if they hadn’t slipped so many times in the first period of last Saturday’s Hockey East semifinal, the PC women would have an NCAA tournament game written up in this space today.

 

Or maybe if they had a few more minutes with which to delete the initial 3-0 deficit that ultimately morphed into a 3-2 loss.

 

Or maybe if they had started climbing out of their midseason hole just a little earlier. Or maybe if they had never fallen into that hole in the first place. Or maybe if they had a supra-.500 record against interleague rivals as opposed to the 4-5-4 transcript they ultimately settled for.

 

There are innumerable little culprits that factored into the Friars’ shortcoming in 2009-10, which sentimentally speaking is just the same as the program’s shortcomings in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. No room for error when the time came for the Hockey East pennant race, and eventually no pennant or bid to the Elite Eight.

 

But statistically speaking, this year’s fall was a little harder to come about and accordingly a little harder for head coach Bob Deraney and Co. to accept. This run was almost an unprompted remake of Slap Shot with rigid determination substituting the Hanson Brothers as the X-factor in a rather stirring turnaround.

 

“This year, there wasn’t a moment that I came to the rink that I couldn’t wait to get here,” Deraney said of the 2009-10 campaign and the group that produced it. “I knew they were going to inspire me with their play and not bore me.”

 

At one point, these Friars were apt as ever to distinguish themselves from their immediate predecessors, getting off to their first winning start since before the 2002-05 dynasty died. But then, a combination of injury-induced fatigue and mild conceit that rapidly soured into self-doubt turned a 3-1-1 start into a toe-curling 4-7-6 transcript at the halfway mark of the regular season.

 

Still, one only needed to examine the team’s list of individual games lost to injury and the quality of competition they had faced to predict some sort of resurgence. When PC finally deployed a maximum allotment of 18 skaters on November 14, it was in the midst of facing nationally ranked adversaries for seven consecutive games.

 

That train of pain climaxed in a little bit of gain. The Friars would commence Part II of their schedule –and a viability-salvaging 8-0-2 unbeaten tear- by bumping the almighty New Hampshire Wildcats, 4-1, in the treacherous depths of the Whittemore Center.

 

From there, long yearnings to envision a return to the glory days of a previous generation were gradually requited. In the second week of January, Providence garnered a slot in the national polls in its own right for the first time since January 2006. (Previously, the Friars enjoyed a preseason assignment to USA Today’s No. 9 slot at the start of last year, but promptly spilled that one and never recovered.)

 

And certainly, by the time they had confirmed their first regular season championship trophy since 2005, nobody was going to hesitate in giving these Friars a fair chance. They had kicked piles of ice chips over a shoddy start and every explanatory theory you could attach to it. At 15-10-9 overall, they were several strides above the .500 mark, whereas the previous three installments either finished right on the fence or just one game above.

 

And they had home ice with which to tip the scale on their national resume, which they had already padded by confronting 18 ranked opponents in 34 ventures, going 7-7-4 in that scenario.

 

“It’s their hard work and dedication that sets them apart this year out of the past few years,” said Deraney. “Not to sell them short, because some of those teams made it to the (Hockey East) final.

 

“I haven’t been around a group of young student-athletes like I have this group. Their morals, ethics, and values go back to older days that we always dreamed about. We talk about society nowadays and the youth of America and how they’re soft and this group gives you hope. I don’t mean to be philosophical, but you asked me what sets them apart.”

 

The coach and the databases answer that question well enough. But in wake of an arguably premature playoff exit, which once again terminated their season on the first weekend of March, some Friartownies are asking the more complicated, two-part question.

 

That question would be: why did it have to end when it did? And why did it have to end the way it did?

 

Incidentally, the likes of the Connecticut Huskies, semifinal victors at the Friars expense but losers to Boston University in last week’s title game, could ask the same question. Ditto Northeastern. Maybe if the NCAA had a Dandy Dozen for women’s hockey instead of an Elite Eight, at least two if not all three of those programs would be bracket shoo-ins and reflect the type of season Hockey East cohabitants gave one another.

 

“I’m proud and privileged to be a part of Women’s Hockey East,” said Deraney, who accepted his first Coach of the Year laurel the night before his season ended. “The eight coaches that we have and the eight programs that we have, we all make each other better, and this is going to make us better. As much as it hurts now, it’s going to pay dividends for us down the road.”

 

Still, four constituents from this particular run are making their tracks in two months. Regardless of what the returnees can reap starting next autumn, they will do so in the absence of Jackie Duncan, Colleen Martin, Pam McDevitt, and Arianna Rigano, who will make just the fourth graduating class in Deraney’s 11 years to depart the Divine Campus with no conference championship rings.

 

The coach concluded, in reference to his full 21-player roster, “I’d be proud to call every one of them my daughters with the way they go about their business not only on the ice, but in the classroom, the way they conduct themselves.

 

“That’s the difference. That’s why this one hurts –probably more than any of the others.”

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

On Women's Hockey: PC's Season-Ending Loss Mirrors The Season Itself

First the UConn Huskies, one week removed from dismantling the toughest goaltending guild in Hockey East at Northeastern, invaded the PC women’s property for Day 1 of the league’s championship weekend.

 

Then they invaded the personal space of Friars’ goaltender Genevieve Lacasse enough times to plant themselves a 3-0 first period lead, enough to live off of en route to a 3-2 semifinal triumph at Schneider Arena.

 

Even with zero penalties all day and an offensive firestorm in the latter 40 minutes, Providence couldn’t quite recompense its initial errors. As penance for that, and for the fact that an outstanding January and February couldn’t quite redeem a sketchy October and November, the local Skating Sorority will once again have spring cleaning in its locker room during the second week of March while eight other teams reconvene to tune up for an NCAA tournament game.

 

“I couldn’t be prouder of my team,” said head coach Bob Deraney. “But you have to give credit to the University of Connecticut. They played extremely well today. They got out to a quick start and were able to hold off a furious comeback by us.”

 

The positions from which each UConn goal was scored practically form a triangle when they are mapped out. Radiant rookie Lisa Stathopolous sparked the ignition at 4:18 when she waited front and center on the porch for a setup by Jenniefer Chaisson, who stripped Lacasse along the near post after the goalie vacated her crease.

 

Less than 10 minutes after Amy Hollstein converted just to Lacasse’s right, tucking in an in-your-face rebound left by Michelle Binning. And then, with 2:30 to spare, Binning buried her own firsthand strike from the left side.

 

For the Friars and their hopes of a homemade conference title, the resultant triangle on the first period review chart spelled an ominous disappearance into the dark side of Bermuda. But equal to what they gave up at their end, an early shortage of threats in the offensive zone endangered their voyage.

 

Deraney detected a runaway cruise ship driven by a crew with too keen an appetite to park at the Paradise Island, where his program has not been for five years running and where it once appeared to have no shot based on the first half of its season.

 

“I think our kids cared too much,” he said. “Sometimes caring too much could be just as bad as not caring at all. I think there’s a delicate balance there.”

 

Bottom line: nothing but imbalance was working against the Friars at the conclusion of yesterday’s first period. On top of their commanding 3-0 advantage, the Huskies owned the shot clock, 15-4.

 

More callously, even after PC’s strike force perked up and ran up an even more lopsided 19-2 edge within the second period shooting gallery, UConn sophomore goaltender Alexandra Garcia staged a goaltending clinic for her contemporary counterpart. She repelled everything leading up to the Friars’ penultimate stab of the stanza when Kate Bacon, parked along the far post, shoveled home a feed from Arianna Rigano on her backhand at 17:45.

 

By day’s end, Garcia had repelled 32 out of 34 stabs, proving why she is among the top 10 netminding performers in the nation.

 

Of the 30 SOG Providence piled up after the first intermission, 12 were within the same intimate vicinity as the three the Huskies poked past Lacasse. But the Friars could only connect on two of theirs.

 

“Obviously, you have two great goalies in this game,” said forward Alyse Ruff, who was the only Friar besides Bacon to test Garcia at least once in every period. “Genevieve has always been strong in net for us all season long and Garcia’s a strong goalie as well.

 

“But it was a great effort by both teams. We really wanted to move the puck around and get shots off and she was able to defend those shots and they fought off both penalties.”

 

By “both penalties,” Ruff literally meant the only two that were issued all afternoon. They both went against the Huskies and they overlapped before the halfway mark of the third period, granting the Friars 69 savory seconds of 5-on-3.

 

The power play brigade ultimately mustered three shots on net and no shots in net, preserving the 3-1 difference for another two-plus minutes before Jean O’Neill scored with 5:53 to spare.

 

Ultimately, though, it all traced back to that trifecta of gaffes in the opening frame.

 

“The better team won,” Deraney said in blunt concession. “You have to play 60 minutes. You can’t give away goals. If you do that, it’s going to be awfully hard to win this time of year, and that was the deciding factor today.”

 

True, the Friars had already positioned themselves to host yesterday’s game by conjuring up a District Five to Ducks turnaround. They had morphed a 4-7-6 midseason record to a 15-10-9 transcript heading into the playoffs, including a league-best 11-5-5 record on their conference slate.

 

And realistically, they could have nabbed one more favorable bounce yesterday and mustered the same single-game magic you once saw Gordon Bombay’s pupils pull off against the Hawks or the Icelanders.

 

But because they didn’t, their 2009-10 campaign has abruptly wilted, ultimately reminding them what can happen when fate is tempted too much.

 

“This group deserved a better fate,” Deraney concluded. “But you get what you deserve. UConn deserved to win.”

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press