Backcheck
The Providence College Friars, repetitive also-rans in one of the game’s most traditional rivalries ever since Wildcat Blue became the new Friar Black at the pinnacle of Hockey East, did more than secure a long-craved season series victory over New Hampshire this weekend.
First, in case their 4-1 victory at the Whittemore Center six weeks prior was only good enough to send observers into “omg” mode on their smartphones, they must have sent all of the electrochatters into upgraded “OMG” mode with a 3-2 win at the same sight last Saturday. As such, the host Wildcats had started a first-time (albeit carry-over) home losing streak.
Then, with a mathematically and sequentially similar 3-2 upshot back at Schneider Arena on Sunday, PC had completed the first three-game regular season sweep between the two teams since New Hampshire pulled it off in 2005-06. Furthermore, they managed to go through nine cumulative periods without so much as trailing the Cats for a single nanosecond.
And for the trivia buffs, head coach Bob Deraney notched his 200th career victory behind the Friars’ bench, a feat which counterpart Brian McCloskey might have reached a tad sooner if not delayed by the December 5 revolution.
To be fair, when the ice chips settle, there is no real cause for consternation amongst UNH buffs. After all, their team is still an irreproachable 13-4-4 overall, and their long-jealous rivals are responsible for 75 percent of those losses. And granted, the Wildcat power play is still tops in the nation despite an ongoing slide that has seen them go 4-for-25 in their last seven games after previously converting 21 of 62 chances in their first 14 ventures. But the stingy penalty killing brigades from Providence and Northeastern have played a large role in that drop-off.
Additionally, junior Kayley Herman –even with her first two Ls of the season falling upon her over the weekend- remains the most frequent winner among all Hockey East stoppers and is still second to NU’s Florence Schelling in both the goals-against average and save percentage department. She certainly helped her cause in the latter category during Sunday’s middle frame, where the Friars followed up on a light first period sprinkle of five shots with six registered stabs in the first three minutes of the second, ultimately landing 20 in all before intermission. Herman withstood the first 16 shots while teammate Kelly Paton briefly regained her groove to pull a 1-1 knot on a power play.
But for everything there was to say about the Wildcats this past weekend, there was at least a tad more to note about the Friars, who are now 6-0-2 overall since they converted their negative energy at Lake Whittemore in December. Beforehand, in wake of a wrenching 4-1 home loss to Wisconsin post-Thanksgiving, they were bogged into a 1-6-5 slump, during which they had been confined to a single goal on six occasions. In the eight games since then, they have never scored less than two per night.
The white-hot starting forward line of freshmen Jess Cohen and juniors Jean O’Neill and Alyse Ruff spelled the entire difference on Saturday. Cohen scored the first goal to extend her point streak to five games, Ruff notched a playmaker hat trick, and O’Neill charged up a helper and two firsthand strikes, including a retrospectively dire empty netter that spawned a 3-1 lead 12 seconds before UNH at least sawed that lead in half.
But on Sunday, Cohen was unavailable for action due to undisclosed matters. In her place stepped senior grinder Arianna Rigano, who would put PC ahead, 2-1, at 12:15 of the second to renew a lead previously spawned by Ruff (assist to O’Neill) early in the first.
Less than five minutes after Rigano’s goal, the eventual decider was inserted by sophomore defender Jennifer Friedman, who by the day shows a stronger penchant for performing in January. Last season, six of her eight total points were picked up over nine games in that month. This year, she already has already has five points in her last six games.
***
There would be no directional digression for either party concerned in Connecticut’s two-day stay at Vermont’s Gutterson Fieldhouse. The Huskies laid out their third and fourth consecutive wins by a cumulative count of 9-2, simultaneously cutting off an ever-so-brief glimmer of glory for the Catamounts, who in Saturday’s 5-1 upshot endured their widest margin of defeat in 11 games and by Sunday’s buzzer span extended their cold streak to 1-10-1.
Within 15 seconds of stamping an early 1-0 lead at 3:05 of Saturday’s first period –a superficially sound way to follow up on their blood-stopping win over Wayne State the week prior- Vermont let Kelly Horan draw a quick 1-1 knot. Within another 18 ticks, Maggie Walsh put the Catamounts on the penalty kill and nothing was the same afterward.
Although the Huskies could only muster one power play shot on their first whirl, and even though there was a general calm in both zones after the initial two-way tempest, Michelle Binning ultimately broke the silence with 9:39 gone, granting her team a 2-1 edge on UConn’s fourth shot of the day.
Later, after Cristen Allen morphed that difference to 3-1 with 6:08 gone in the middle frame, the Huskies went more than eight minutes without another test of Olychuk, in part because they went on three unanswered penalty kills. But in that time, Alex Garcia repelled all five unanswered shots from the Vermont strike force.
And lo and behold, 56 seconds after Maude Blain’s jailbreak at 13:19, the Connecticut power play gave their seemingly clueless Catamount counterparts a 101 lesson when Walsh went off yet again. A swarm consisting of five shot attempts, four of them on net, culminated in Monique Weber augmenting her team’s lead to 4-1.
Likewise, in the third, UConn would not test Olychuk again after Jennifer Chaisson buried one with still a good 10:12 to spare. Yet the Catamounts could only scrape out three more stabs at Garcia, all of which she handled.
The same bunch of suspects –Binning, Chaisson, Hollstein, Weber- duplicated their efforts on Sunday while the Huskies all kept Garcia reasonably unpestered as they paced themselves to a 4-1 triumph. Vermont, whose power play was an insufficient 1-for-7 on the day, had one stretch in each period spanning at least eight minutes where they did not rack up a single SOG.
***
Last Friday saw another archetypical 2009-10 Northeastern effort in the Huskies’ 3-1 repression of Maine. There was a relatively gentle, yet effective and balanced outpouring of offense, with 16 out of 18 skaters taking no fewer shots than one and no fewer than three, 13 players adding to their plus/minus rating, and nine individuals notching a point –no more, no less.
Add that to Monday’s fervent and explosive rally against Boston College –a 7-4 upshot after initially trailing, 4-3, at the second intermission- and NU has already exceeded its 12 wins from last season. The previous four times Northeastern exceeded six goals in a single game had all been in exhibitions. In that sense, Monday was the program’s best offensive outpouring since it lashed Wayne State, 8-2, on January 27, 2002.
From the Black Bears’ perspective, perhaps they were a tad rusty, what with being the last team on the WHEA coast to resume regular season play, or maybe they are already running out of gas in the playoff race. Either way, they simply didn’t do themselves any much-needed favors to make more headway in the standings.
Maine thrust each of the first four shots of the game in a matter of five minutes, added another three shots all in one fleeting rush shortly after the halfway mark of the period. But they would not test a characteristically composed Florence Schelling again until after the Huskies had sculpted a 2-0 lead in the first 8:15 of the middle frame. And if the oft-reliable post didn’t have goaltender Brittany Ott’s back on two other occasions, the Bears might have had a 4-0 deficit glowering down at them.
Maine similarly commenced the third period without discharging a single attempted shot until Brittany Dougherty inserted a power play goal with 7:49; but again, their stabs afterward were distributed too sparsely.
***
No breaks for Boston College over the past week, which saw Katie King’s pupils settle for a 0-2-1 transcript in a matter of five days. On Friday, sophomore backup Kiera Kingston submitted a career-best 40-save effort, 19 of those stops coming in the third period, but still could not rely on her teammates to rinse out the residual vinegar from Monday’s fall-from-ahead, 7-4 loss at Northeastern.
With the 4-0 loss to St. Lawrence Friday, which spoiled the encouragement from a 3-3 tie the preceding evening, BC remains winless in the New Year at 0-2-2 and is now four wins below the .500 barrier, 1-4-5 in interleague action, and an iffy 4-6-6 at Conte Forum with only two home games left. (To that point, hard as it is to digest, they have not been much more encouraging on the road, where they are 1-2-3 and have a whopping nine dates still to come).
Cradling a 1-0 lead at intermission, the visiting Saints owned Friday’s third period shooting gallery, 22-7, three of those BC bids coming within the final 2:30 of action on a much-too-late power play. The final shot count was 44-16, easily the most lopsided shooting gallery this season against the offensively-challenged Eagles, who have outshot the opposition a mere six times out of 23 total games.
All week, the Eagles gave away far more power plays than they earned for themselves, ultimately going 0-for-8 in a span of three games while the opposition went 5-for-20. Northeastern’s power play brigade was particularly indulgent on Monday, capitalizing thrice in the third period as they morphed a 4-3 deficit into a 7-4 triumph.
Of the few positive specimens, apart from Kingston, the second line of Caitlin Walsh, Mary Restuccia, and Ashley Motherwell collaborated on two late third period goals to delete a 3-1 deficit en route to Thursday’s tie. Walsh set up Restuccia’s equalizer with a mere 55 seconds to spare in regulation and only 27 ticks after she had been released from the penalty box.
But seeing as the Eagles are still averaging fewer than two goals per game, still rank last in the league under the power play heading, and would be near the bottom in this week’s virtual power rankings, there’s simply going to need to be more of that Thursday third.
Forecheck
Both of the Commonwealth clubs are in the midst of trying to stabilize themselves, and there would be no better-tasting medicine than to get that going with a win over the arch-rival. Someone will gladly claim that prescription sometime around 9:00 Tuesday night after the final regular season clash between BC and BU at Walter Brown Arena.
The following night, another head-to-head finale with its own tray of intrigue will take to the Whittemore Center, where New Hampshire, on the one hand, will try to restore the dignity it has lost at the hands of Providence. But they figure to face a rabid pack of Hub Huskies who have already lost twice to the Wildcats and could really use this final opportunity to prove a) they are no fluke and b) they are ready to surpass anybody.
Weekly scoreboard
Monday, January 11
Northeastern 7, Boston College 4
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbc_noe1.j11
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011110aaa.html
http://gonu.com/whockey/2010/wh10-20.shtml
Thursday, January 14
Boston College 3, St. Lawrence 3
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbc_stl1.j14
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011410aaa.html
Friday, January 15
St. Lawrence 4, Boston College 0
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wbc_stl1.j15
http://bceagles.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011510aaa.html
Northeastern 3, Maine 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wmnenoe1.j15
http://goblackbears.cstv.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011510aaa.html
http://gonu.com/whockey/2010/wh10-21.shtml
Saturday, January 16
Providence 3, New Hampshire 2
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wprvunh1.j16
http://unhwildcats.com/sports/wice/2009-10/releases/20100116pgjkrp
http://www.friars.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011610aaa.html
Connecticut 5, Vermont 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wconver1.j16
http://www.uconnhuskies.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011610aaa.html
http://www.uvm.edu/~sportspr/womens_hockey/?Page=News&storyID=15797
Sunday, January 17
Connecticut 4, Vermont 1
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wconver1.j17
http://www.uconnhuskies.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011710aab.html
http://www.uvm.edu/~sportspr/womens_hockey/?Page=News&storyID=15802
Providence 3, New Hampshire 2
http://www.collegehockeystats.net/0910/boxes/wprvunh1.j17
http://www.friars.com/sports/w-hockey/recaps/011710aaa.html
http://www.unhwildcats.com/sports/wice/2009-10/releases/201001177us3l
Upcoming schedule
Tuesday, January 19
Boston College at Boston University, 7:00 pm
Wednesday, January 20
Northeastern at New Hampshire, 7:00 pm
Friday, January 22
Maine at Connecticut, 7:00 pm
Boston University at Vermont, 7:00 pm
Saturday, January 23
Boston College at Providence, 2:00 pm
Boston University at Vermont, 4:00 pm
Maine at Connecticut, 4:00 pm
Northeastern at Niagara, 7:00 pm
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