Post-season connoisseurs outlast beginners
By Al Daniel
Reality was held up for two whole periods, gridlocked by traffic before both nets and clouded by tempestuous trades of momentum.
But it gradually began to assert its presence in the wee phases of the closing frame after Maine center Dominique Goutsis decked Providence attacker Abby Gauthier and paid through a two-minute bodychecking penalty.
Up to that point, with 1:40 gone, the contesting teams were deadlocked 1-1 on the strength of a power play goal apiece. And while the Friars didn’t convert their fourth opportunity, they were creating a rapid imbalance in ice shavings between the two zones unseen in the first 40 minutes.
“If you look at it, (Maine head coach Maria Lewis) was really only using one line and I thought it was just a matter of time,” said Providence head coach Bob Deraney.
“I think they just ran out of gas and we were able to capitalize because we used almost everyone on our bench.”
After Goutsis’ jailbreak, the cyclone simply continued on Black Bear property. And within 30 seconds, Friars’ defender Rebecca Morse let a floater loose from the straightaway point and over the blocker of goaltender Brittany Ott at 4:10.
From there, Providence paced itself to 5-2 win in the Hockey East quarterfinal before its home masses and a generous contingent of visiting Black Bear buffs at Schneider Arena. The victory makes the Friars the only team in the league’s nine-year history to advance to every WHEA semifinal while the Mainers accept the half-full cup from a year of doubtless improvement that at least culminated in their first postseason twirl since 2006.
“I think our inexperience got the best of us,” said Lewis. “Our kids really had trouble relaxing, just finding their groove. We were doing a lot of the little bad habits that we did earlier in the year. A lot of that has to do with inexperience in the playoffs.”
None of that was so plain in the opening frame, when the teams exchanged early power plays and both Ott and PC’s Genevieve Lacasse –former Little Caesar’s U19 creasemates- withstood their share of protracted flurries.
Upon drawing the third penalty of the period on PC’s Alyse Ruff, the Bears struck first with 2:35 left till intermission. Junior captain Dawn Sullivan hopped out of the far corner and smuggled her sixth power play conversion of the season through Lacasse’s five-hole.
But on their second chance, the Providence power play brigade would retort. None other than Lacasse catapulted the puck to forward Kate Bacon amidst a regroup in neutral ice. With her turbine blades in motion, Bacon strolled back into the visitor’s zone, where she left a drop pass for Laura Veharanta to snap over Ott’s trapper at 4:59 of the second period for the equalizer.
“We really had to battle to get to this point and it just makes you stronger,” said Deraney. “We played a terrific Maine team that took three out of four points from BC and then split with BU last week. We knew that if we were to get through them, we would have to earn it, and there’s no doubt that we earned it and Maine made us a better team.”
Leading the shooting gallery at intermission by six tallies (25-19), the Friars doubled that gap to 12 with a 10-4 run within the first 14:18 of the third. Two of those bids, one from the aforementioned Morse and another from Veharanta, tuned the mesh to grant the first multi-goal edge of the day.
Maine’s perseverance continued to flicker, though. Within 31 seconds of Veharanta’s second strike, on a delayed hooking call to the Friars’ Ashley Cottrell, Myriam Crousette roofed Chloe Tinkler’s rebound from the near circle-top to saw the deficit in half.
But another 30 seconds afterward, Brittany Dougherty squandered her team’s second wind along with their power play. Found guilty of interference behind the play, she went off to set up an 89-second 4-on-4 segment and watched helplessly as Gauthier buried Jean O’Neill’s rebound within the far post, making it 4-2 with 4:29 to spare.
At that point, Deraney utilized his timeout, a move he admits he thought of making about 73 seconds prior.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “When we made it 3-1, I should have called a timeout, but I learned from my mistake. I called it just to settle down and not allow us to get carried away.”
Nothing of the sort would happen. In a rare lull of relative placidity, neither team registered another shot on goal for the next two-and-a-half minutes. And while Maine did receive one more invitation to bite back when Jessie Vella was flagged for a delay of game with 1:57 remaining, Lacasse and her praetorian guards were poised.
The Black Bears thrust six vain power play shots at Lacasse before the Friars broke out and Corinne Buie bagged a shorthanded empty netter with 4.6 seconds remaining.
“We had an opportunity to crawl back into the game and kind of shot ourselves in the foot,” said Lewis. “But at the end of the day, we needed to play better throughout the whole 60 minutes.”
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
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