Stacking Up and Sticking Out
BC’s top gun makes good in a league of her own
By Al Daniel
Legacy-wise, Kelli Stack will profit from secessionism.
Were it not for Joe Bertagna and Co.’s initiative to flood the Women’s Hockey East pond in 2002, the Boston College forward would still be thrashing with underdog valor just to have her name penned in the exclusive ECAC Women’s Hockey record book. The current edition of the senior circuit’s tome lists as few as three and no more than 16 individuals per leaderboard –whether that be for goals, assists, or points, in a single-season or in one’s career, within conference boundaries or overall.
Odds are Stack’s lone hope of any mention would have been a share of recognition along the ground floor of the single-season goals’ list, where five past ECACers are tied for 11th place with 26 strikes in conference games.
She would, regardless of league, still have her regal position in the Eagles’ vault. She had already secured the team record for single-season and career assists before her Olympic sabbatical last season and is now five notches away from surpassing Erin Magee for a program-best 199 career points. But with an ECAC, rather than a Hockey East, emblem in the upper left hand corner of her jersey, she would have little or no room to radiate among the best to have come through her league.
Instead, Stack is gradually laying claim to one WHEA scoring record after another. The Hockey East media guide does not bother to track its players’ production in interleague games. But the 2011-12 almanac is already assured of penning her in as the conference’s most prolific all-time point-getter and goal-scorer. By the time the ice chips have settled on the 2010-11 playoff race Feb. 20, that collection will likely have expanded to include single-season goals and career assists.
As per the unwritten rule of record-breakage, the discrepancies between then and now will arm everyone with asterisks. On the one hand, Stack will fall a tad short of equating the output of all of those ECAC sizzlers from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. And in some cases, she has been allotted a longer league game schedule than her predecessors.
On the other hand, who is to say that, amongst contemporary players, she could not have been an ECAC Player of the Year –a laurel has already earned twice in Hockey East? And in her league, she has been tasked with solving a stable of world-class goaltenders (e.g. Florence Schelling of Northeastern and Genevieve Lacasse of Providence) in an inherently obsessive-defensive era.
Come what may, for BC head coach Katie King –a Brown alumna who, as a senior in 1996-97, stamped 31 goals and 53 points within the Bears’ ECAC slate- there is no cause to size up disparate eras or environs. The skipper just knows she has an appreciable and enviable offensive sparkplug at her disposal.
“It’s a new league, so it’s a little bit different in that sense, but I still think she’s one of the best college hockey players that you’ll see,” said King.
“Anybody’s who’s able to watch her should come out and watch her. I don’t care if it was now or 10 years ago. She’d be doing the same thing. That’s the type of player she is. She’s a special kid, special player who finds a way to make things happen.”
Sharing her wealth
On Nov. 3, when junior Mary Restuccia struck on a power play at 0:26 of the second period at Northeastern, granting Stack an assist, the Eagles’ otherworldly sizzler surpassed New Hampshire alumna Jennifer Hitchcock with her 109th career point in conference games.
With an unassisted, equalizing strike late in the first period of a 3-1 win over Providence last Friday, Stack one-upped Hitchcock yet again –this time for the most career goals in the Hockey East regular season. She has since slugged in three more biscuits to up her career bushel to 65 and her 2010-11 season total to 19.
Three more red lights and Stack will surmount former schoolmate Allie Thunstrom’s record of 21 single-season conference goals set when the two wingers were icebreaking freshmen at Chestnut Hill in 2006-07.
The bars for single-season assists and points –respectively belonging to ex-UNH Wildcats’ Lindsay Hansen (23 in 2003-04) and Sadie-Wright Ward (39)- are likely safe. But Stack needs only three more helpers to dislodge Hansen from the career assists’ throne. To date, she has set up 61 Eagles’ goals in 78 league games with six contests yet to come.
“She’s just a great all-around hockey player, finds a way to put pucks in and to make nice plays to help her teammates put pucks in,” said King.
Stack’s generous assistance in fostering the Eagles’ youth movement has been self-evident in both her junior and senior campaigns. In 2008-09, she fostered the freshman duo of Restuccia, getting in on 17 of her 29 scoring plays, and Danielle Welch –whom she helped to 15 out of 23 points, including each of her first eight.
This year, Restuccia is a distant second on BC’s scoring chart with 25 points after a mild downturn as a sophomore last season. Out of her team-leading 18 assists, four have amounted to goals by Stack while another three have been shared with Stack.
The No. 3 producer, freshman Taylor Wasylk, had 19 points on the year through the end of January. In one fashion or another, Stack collaborated with her on 11 of those scoring plays. Similarly, out of her first 15 career points, Melissa Bizzari owes a portion of five to her teamwork with Stack.
Which, naturally, is what matters most from any BC Superfans’ standpoint –and which, incidentally, may set Stack’s value apart from all of those bygone Granite State Goddesses. Whereas Hansen, Hitchcock, and Wright-Ward fed off each other and/or others on a perennial national heavyweight, Stack all but singlehandedly sways the fortunes of the mighty Eagles simply by putting her blade on the ice or taking it off.
Dependable difference-maker
Since Stack enrolled in the autumn of 2006, BC is 76-35-18 when she has dressed, outscoring the opposition, 406-247. She has had a hand in nearly half of those goals (194).
Conversely, in her absence, BC has gone 8-19-10, losing those 37 tests by a cumulative count of 103-68 and being shut out eight times. During Stack’s one-game leave for the Four Nations Cup her junior year, the Eagles were blanked, 4-0, by Dartmouth Nov. 5. And on New Year’s Eve this season, while Stack was wrapping up her weeklong stay at USA Hockey’s Holiday Camp with four of her understudies, BC endured a 3-0 lashing via Princeton.
When Stack is available, BC has been blanked only thrice, including two encounters this year with stingy Boston University rookie stopper Kerrin Sperry. Those are the only two times Stack has been barred from the scoresheet this season.
Aside from the Princeton drawback and those two vain Dog fights, the Eagles are 16-2-4 when Stack has contributed. And she has had a hand in nine game-winning goals along with two unassisted equalizers in a 2-2 tie with Vermont Nov. 7. In four Hockey East games, BC has won after surrendering the first goal. And all four times, Stack scored or set up the strike that drew the 1-1 knot and effectively turned the tide.
No telling where the Eagles would be without her, although last season’s heavy-going 8-17-10 run is a credible indicator. All the more reason why Stack’s coach is pleased to see her VIP rewarded by the history books.
“I’m impressed with those records,” said King. “I didn’t even know that she had those, so that’s pretty cool for her and it’s well-deserved.”
Granted, Stack’s long-term grip on each record is in question. Next season, rising BU senior Jenn Wakefield will be within striking distance on every scoring scroll. She currently holds a career log of 50-32-82 in merely 48 games with as many as 27 yet to come.
And there is no telling what another Terrier, Canadian Olympic hero Marie-Philip Poulin, will do with her three remaining years in the Hub. (Although Poulin, who has appeared in 11 WHEA games to date and pitched in 10 goals and 18 points, will likely fall shy of Stack’s freshman bar of 21 helpers and 34 points.)
But for now, Stack has her all-time throne in the New England Eight, something that most likely would have been out of her realm in today’s ECAC.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
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