BC’s star shines brighter
Final play captures essence of the day
By Al Daniel
In the midst of constantly emboldening her case for her distinction as the best goaltender in Providence College history, junior Genevieve Lacasse was unremittingly flustering Boston College’s best all-time scorer, Kelli Stack.
While Stack fired off eight fruitless regulation shots followed by two in overtime, many of them executed by way of looping down the lane and right in Lacasse’s face, PC’s Scarborough Save-ior set three new records.
Upon making her 32nd save of the day late in the second period, she surpassed Jana Bugden for most on the Friars’ all-time list with 2,556 in her career. Later on, in the third, she revised the record for most saves in a Hockey East tournament game (45), which had been set in the exact same crease by rival Florence Schelling of Northeastern some three-plus hours prior. And in the bonus round, Lacasse set a new personal bar with her 52nd stop of the day, exceeding the 51 she had stopped against these Eagles Jan. 21 and against Mercyhurst Nov. 21, 2008.
The symbolic storyline between the opposing yin-yang giants ultimately made Saturday’s Hockey East semifinal akin to an extra inning baseball contest. In order for the epic bout to churn into poetic perfection, it would either need to be decided directly by the home offensive ambassador or indirectly and in slightly less dramatic, abrupt fashion by the visiting defensive fortress.
As it happened, the former scenario prevailed. After an imperfect 10 tries, Stack gave her Eagles a 3-2 triumph with 11:57 gone in the first OT frame, snaking her way down the near alley and poking the puck between Lacasse’s boots.
“I just knew if they put a lot of shots on (Lacasse), eventually Stack was going to score a goal for us,” said BC’s own celestial goaltender Molly Schaus, Stack’s teammate for the last five years between four at The Heights and one on the 2010 U.S. Olympic team.
“You can’t hold her back the whole game,” Schaus continued. “You knew she would have the overtime winner.”
That notion was no more lost on the opposing bench. In regulation, Stack had factored in to freshman Taylor Wasylk’s equalizer with 5:58 to go, earning the second assist on a play that belonged much more to Melissa Bizzari, who lured Lacasse out of her crease and left a fugitive puck for Wasylk to bank home with surprise facility.
But other than that, Stack had been on the ice for only two other goals –a 5-on-3 conversion from PC defender Jen Friedman that drew a 1-1 knot at 9:36 of the third and an unlikely bad-angle wrapper by Abby Gauthier that pulled the Friars ahead at 11:14.
It was all good for an even plus/minus rating on the day. Wholly uncharacteristic of someone who entered the day with the second-best rating in the league (plus-25) behind only Friars’ senior pivot Alyse Ruff. (Both of them had accumulated a plus-1 by day’s end.)
“That’s the thing I noticed,” said PC head coach Bob Deraney, recalling the third intermission when he surveyed the scoresheet. “I said, ‘where was Stack?’ She was even, and that scared me. Sure enough, it came true.
“A world-class play by a world-class player,” he added. “I tip my hat to her. You can’t be ashamed when something like that happens to you. That’s what I told our players. She’s been doing that all year long to everybody she’s played against. That’s why she’s Player of the Year. We kept her in check most of the game.”
No one more so than Lacasse, who on three occasions in the first period alone, and once more in both the second and third, saw Stack dodging all of her praetorian guards and descending on her front porch with the puck. But on each of 11 regulation shot attempts, Stack was either denied upon pulling the trigger or fumbled at the last second and fired wide.
Then again, it wasn’t as if any other Eagles were cracking the code. Despite 37 SOG in the first 40 minutes, it remained a 0-0 deadlock until Bizzari beat Lacasse on a snapper from the near face-off circle with 6:35 gone in the third.
“Yeah, it’s very frustrating,” Stack said. “We like to try to come out and score in the first 10 minutes, and when that doesn’t happen, you know that anything can happen. Anything you throw on net might go in.
“Obviously, whenever you get 61 shots, you’re hoping to score more than three. But there’s nothing you can do about it. We just have to keep putting them on net and eventually they’re going to go in.”
Ahead in the shooting gallery, 50-21, through regulation, the tireless Eagles ran up an 11-8 lead in that category in the near-dozen minutes leading up to Stack’s strike. Two of those, along with another wide attempt, were off of her twig. But she was still 0-for-10 and 0-for-14 on the day when she hopped over the boards for another shift and went for an umpteenth try.
“I just wanted to try and score as quick as I could because I knew that we were getting pretty tired,” said Stack. “And then there was one defenseman to beat, so I just tried to get it on net and I figured, if I go five-hole, at least it has a chance of squeaking through. And sure enough, it did.”
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond The Dashers
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