On Women's Hockey: PC's Ruff Wraps Up Another Gift

Report based on Live Stats

 

St. Cloud, Minn.- It was Game No. 21 in the Friars’ 2009-10 endeavor and it fell on birthday No. 21 for the young woman who sports No. 21 on the back of her sweater.

 

Even for nonbelievers in hockey-based omens, therefore, yesterday has to go down forever as Spooky Sunday, seeing as Alyse Ruff pumped home both goals in PC’s 2-0 triumph over Minnesota State, granting herself a savory 3-1-4 weekend transcript and the team a 1-0-1 record in their excursion to the Easton Holiday Showcase. (Just remember, though, this is the player who in each of three collegiate seasons has not gotten her scoring groove on until she has lit one up on Colgate, so Friartownies might be advised to petition the Red Raiders for next autumn’s season opener.)

 

Already an elder stateswoman on the Friars’ relatively youthful offense and a convert from wing to center as of her junior campaign, Ruff seems to have settled on a new production line flanked by her classmate and off-and-on partner Jean O’Neill and progressive rookie Jess Cohen. The newly molded threesome combined for 10 registered shots on St. Cloud State in Saturday’s tempestuous 4-4 tie, then collaborated on yesterday’s decider on a power play with 2:06 gone in the second period.

 

By day’s end, Ruff, O’Neill, and Cohen had launched 11 of PC’s 31 total stabs at Mavericks’ goaltender Alli Altmann, who between Ruff’s two strikes had engaged in a nearly excruciating air hockey-paced battle with Genevieve Lacasse, who would turn away all 31 shots issued by MSU to salvage her first shutout since opening night of this season.

 

Ruff’s dagger goal, inserted with 10:05 to spare in the third period, would grant ex-linemate Arianna Rigano her fourth assist on the year and stay-at-home junior defender Leigh Riley her second point. It also added on to the junior pivot’s history of timely, breath-granting tallies.

 

The timing, execution style, and implications of yesterday’s insurance goal virtually matched that of last year’s Hockey East quarterfinal versus Connecticut. That day, the Friars subsisted on Laura Veharanta’s icebreaker from the 0:14 mark of the opening frame all the way until there was 10:10 gone in the third when none other than Ruff characteristically halted on the porch of goaltender Alex Garcia and waited to spoon home Erin Normore’s pass from behind the net.

 

Of course, that play had its own identical ancestor. Less than four months prior, the same visiting UConn team would victimized with the third period more than half-gone and a salivating PC strike force on the power play attack. Six seconds after a 5-on-3 morphed into a 5-on-4, Ruff capped the power play cyclone by tilting home a feed from Veharanta, spawning a 1-0 edge en route to a 2-0 triumph. It would be her third decider in as many Providence wins.

 

Overall, having now played in all 93 possible games and charged up a 31-22-53 log in her career, Ruff has stamped seven game winners plus one equalizer. Out of 31 total goals, 17 have come in the third period, including six of her seven this season.

 

On eight separate occasions since orientation, she has spotted the Friars a one-goal edge. Another four times, she has augmented a brittle lead to a cozier two tally difference. She has thrice sawed a two-goal deficit in half, and five other times she has pulled a knot on the board. (Remember when she singlehandedly deleted that 2-0 Vermont lead in the third period back on Nov. 10, 2007, effectively paving the way to a 4-2 victory?)

 

Perhaps most enticingly, though, Ruff has contributed consistently and substantially on the power play, having poured on 21 career points in that situation, including a 4-4-8 log this season –second only to Ashley Cottrell for the team lead- and a 2-1-3 showing this weekend.

 

And much to head coach Bob Deraney’s delight, the power play wealth has diversely spread beyond Ruff. Cottrell has four goals and 10 points when PC is at least one player up, Veharanta and Nicole Anderson each have six points, O’Neill and Amber Yung five. As a team, over their last nine outings, the Friars have connected on 14 of 52 opportunities, swelling their connectivity rate from 11.9 to 18.9 percent in that span and placing them second in the league behind New Hampshire in the power play department.

 

That situation could still be a little more rewarding. After all, under altered circumstances, Providence might have pounced on a late invitation to put St. Cloud State to rest on Saturday and allow Ruff’s unassisted conversion to stand as the winner. Instead, they slipped and settled for a bittersweet draw.

 

No matter. For Ruff in particular, the do-over worked rather well yesterday. Now all heads shall turn to this coming weekend’s two-game home series with Cornell. That would be the team which, one year ago today, happened to spill a 3-0 lead and allowed the likes of Ruff to score twice and polish off an exhilarating 4-3 win for the Friars.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

On Women's Hockey: It's Finish Or Be Finished For Friars

Report based on Live Stats

 

St. Cloud, Minn.- Make no mistake, there was a lot to like about the way the PC women broke out of their Christmas chrysalis and recharged the ignition for the climactic phase of their season. When yesterday’s ice chips settled and the ink ran dry on the scoresheet at the National Hockey Center, there were three power play goals, four Friars with multi-point efforts, only three minor penalties, shots on net from 14 out of 18 skaters, a 35-save workout by Genevieve Lacasse, and an invisible but invaluable nonconference point.

 

But still, that solitary point could have had a partner. A real deal victory could have been stamped late in the third period on yet another power play strike with St. Cloud State’s Lisa Martinson locked away for cross-checking and only 3:46 to spare.

 

Nothing doing. Jennifer Friedman –one of the Friars’ two-point scorers on the day- fired the lone shot during that 5-on-4 segment while the Huskies threw out a few shorthanded attempts at the other end, adding a bit of a breeze to their eighth and final PK.

 

Moments later, with St. Cloud having deployed the six-pack attack in the final minute, a one-woman show they call Felicia Nelson inserted her fourth goal of the day to ultimately draw a 4-4 knot.

 

The more these kinds of outcomes transpire, the more apparent it is that every tie is half-full and half-empty at once. Providence has now consumed 20 of its 34 regular season contests and, at 5-7-8 overall, still has more ties than it does either wins or losses. To have that kind of a statistical peculiarity at so late a stage is akin to preteen ballplayers still using a tee.

 

Scan over the Friars’ list of accomplishments thus far. Only once have they achieved back-to-back wins, that being on opening weekend versus Maine in October. Likewise, they have only once had to swallow a succession of losses, those being at the end of October in the form of 5-1 and 3-1 decisions versus Brown and Boston University.

 

Neither wins nor losses have been more than two in a row this season. Conversely, PC has managed to chalk up one three-game tying streak and, reaching all the way back to their final game in 2009, have another string of brother-smooches in the works.

 

Yesterday’s welcome-back icequake presented the big picture rather well. The Friars are on a fence dividing Puck Purgatory and Paradise and, whenever tilted in one direction or the other, tend to take a few whiffs of the air, then saddle back up into limbo.

 

Nelson planted a fast and furious 1-0 lead for the Huskies at 4:14 of the opening frame, burying the very first meaningful shot Lacasse had seen in three weeks. Then the Friars took a few gulps of spiritual Rockstar, drew two quick penalties and scored twice on as many power play shots for a 2-1 edge with only 8:28 gone.

 

The rest of the ride revolved around the alternating tasks of protecting a brittle one-goal lead and restoring it every time Nelson messed up the works. Along the way, top point-getter Ashley Cottrell scooped up two assists, indicating no loss of life in her hot twig. A cold Jess Cohen picked up a helper, giving the rookie her first point in five games. Sophomore Abby Gauthier, who came in with but three points in 18 games and was filling in for an absent Laura Veharanta on Cottrell’s line, charged up an encouraging goal-assist value pack, as did junior Alyse Ruff.

 

Ruff, who will work on her twenty-first birthday in today’s tangle with Minnesota State, nearly bagged herself an early present in the form of a go-ahead goal early in the third. It was PC’s third power play conversion on six tries and the clutch capstone student’s seventh power play point on the year.

 

And it could have been the seventh game-winner of her career, if this were only football and the benches cleared for handshakes with 30 seconds still on the clock. Or if only the Friars had converted on their next power play that fell 43 seconds later or on the next one that came within the final five minutes.

 

Or if only they had not slipped into submission early in the middle frame, when Lacasse withstood eight unanswered shots in the first six minutes until Christie Jensen went off for interference and Nelson deleted a 2-1 lead on her team’s only power play connection of the day.

 

Ultimately, neither side could quite polish off the W within the standard 60 minutes or in the nailbiting overtime that saw two registered shots at each net. And so, everyone was left, at best, in Tevye mode.

 

In PC’s case, on the one hand, handfuls of scorers pounced at the right moments and Lacasse –with three instances of help from the pipe- kept everything afloat. On the other hand, they didn’t do enough to get what they really needed.

 

On the other hand, one more slip or one less heroic feat would have spelled a crushing catastrophe.

 

On the other hand, for a program of their ambitions, they’ve simply had more than their share of this for one season. As you may recall from the license plate of a fictitious local Minnesotan, Gordon Bombay, the Friars are at a point where the mantra should be, “Just win.”

 

They showed yesterday that they have all the particles. Now they need to finish the product.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

On Hockey: PC Women's Program Faces Old Tasks In New Year

Pardon the umpteenth rerun of this Friar Puck edition of “Same Auld Lang Syne,” but the calendar Zamboni has just completed its latest big shift and left a sheet for the PC women’s hockey team not unlike what this collegiate generation is accustomed to.

 

Yet again, at 5-7-7 overall, Providence has to make up a little ground that it spilled in Part I of its campaign. More than anything, the Friars need to extract something tangible –and plenty of it- from the remainder of the interleague schedule so they can hustle through the Hockey East pennant race with less excess desperation and not feel like they have to depend on that unreliable automatic bid.

 

And the first two weekends of the second semester will be immensely critical in terms of sprucing up their national viability. Quite ironically, for tomorrow and Sunday, they are on the program’s first business trip to Minnesota since its last and lone NCAA tournament appearance in 2005. They shall lock twigs with St. Cloud State and Minnesota State-Mankato in the Husky-hosted Easton Holiday Showcase, gunning for their first win over a WCHA tenant in four years and eight tries (0-7-1).

 

Upon returning home, they will gear up for a two-night visit from a roundly braced Cornell team, which leaped somewhat out of the left corner and comfortably perched itself in the polls for the last six weeks of activity and shows little sign of recession any time in the near future.

 

The Friars are currently a discomfiting 1-4-3 in their nonconference slate. Versus nationally ranked opponents, they are 2-5-3, and where everything stands now, that is only good enough for a solitary honorable mention vote beneath the USCHO Top 10 board.

 

With all that in mind, and with one other interleague date at No. 5 Harvard coming near the end of this month, PC will need to derive something out of these next two weeks similar to what they cultivated back in the first two weeks of October, but preferably with a few more layers of tangible success.

 

If that happens, a surefire byproduct will be added –but preferably moderate- conviction for when the focus shifts solely to the turbulent Hockey East stretch drive. If not, only the hockey gods know what’s next.

 

In any case, recall the irreproachable launch this team had to their 2009-10 season, starting on a winning note for the first time in five years and going 3-1-1 with the lone loss requiring overtime to complete.

 

As far as schedule strength is concerned, the first two weeks of January pan out vaguely similar to the start of October. Like the Friars, the SCSU Huskies and MSU Mavericks are both thawing back out after a three-week respite from game action. And performance-wise, PC stands at least one notch above this weekend’s competition in every realm from records to offense to defense to goaltending to discipline to special teams.

 

Not unlike Dan Lichterman’s pupils from Maine, whom PC swept on opening weekend, both of the Minnesotan adversaries might be capable of pulling a surprise stinger here and there. And they might bank on a little conference quarterfinal playoff action in two months. But nothing more than that is likely.

 

Beyond a productive packet of seniors –Holly Roberts, Meghan Pezon, Caitlin Hogan, Felicia Nelson, and Danielle Hirsch- St. Cloud doesn’t have any double-digit point-getters. In fact, nobody else on the relatively young roster has any more than five points to their credit, and the five aforementioned have accounted for 43 out of the team’s 46 goals.

 

Translation: not a lot of depth in the 8-10-2 Huskies. And similarly, the 4-8-4 Mavericks are a little more balanced across their line charts, but the cumulative wealth is even slimmer with no reckonable producers beyond Ashley Young (13 points), Emmi Lahtonen (12), and Lauren Smith (12). Worse still, they brandish a tandem of goaltenders, Alli Altmann and Paige Thunder, each with a sub-.900 save percentage.

 

Naturally, none of the said data automatically amounts to PC’s first winning streak since -guess when- the opening Maine series. But it would be advisable to pounce and start snowballing some confidence, for two dates with a certified ECAC power will be lying in wait afterward, as was the case circa October 9. Last time around, after bumping the Black Bears, it was a soul-sharpening excursion to Clarkson and St. Lawrence, both of whom the Friars never trailed by more than a goal for 60 minutes and loose change.

 

Of course, the then and now also have their distinct differences. Head coach Bob Deraney figures to field a fuller, healthier roster than he had in October, thus shortness of stamina need not be any more of an excuse than letting a hypothetical hot start get to everyone’s head.

 

Been there, learned that, right?

 

Furthermore, there is a team identity somewhere beneath a pile of snow that has already been partially cleared by the furious forking of Nicole Anderson, Ashley Cottrell, and Laura Veharanta.

 

Assuming the elements of their chemistry have not wilted from inactivity, they might, as both a full-time even-strength trinity and power play unit, be a slightly earlier second coming of the PRO Line (Mari Pehkonen, Alyse Ruff, and Jean O’Neill, for any rookie readers) from two years back. Or they might be redeployed to help some of their mates rekindle their own torches.

 

The reliable Anderson-Cottrell-Veharanta combo is not a bad start, not unlike a few statistically and spiritually invigorating weeks’ worth of game action. But in both cases, the Friars’ 2010 resolution must be to build on what they have and never leave the foundation unattended. Like one’s house plant, it will either flourish through daily watering or wither through inconsistent care.

 

This has the deceptive look of a do-over, but it’s more of another make-up cramming session. Best-case scenario, PC learns from its past and doesn’t let the issue get any tougher. After all, the 18 veterans have confronted this issue before.

 

Again: been there, learned that.

 

Al Daniel can be reached at hockeyscribe@hotmail.com

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press