No. 6/7 women’s hockey set for weekend series with UVM

Following Wednesday night’s 4-1 upset of No. 3/4 Quinnipiac University, the No. 6/7 Boston University women’s hockey team will try to translate its recent success to a two-game weekend series against the University of Vermont at Walter Brown Arena.

Despite a poor showing in the Hockey East standings, the Catamounts (10-14-1, 1-11 Hockey East) are 9-3-1 in out-of-conference play. But it’s not easy to diagnose the reasons for UVM’s struggles against its conference opponents.

Vermont may be hanging out in the basement of the WHEA standings, but it has the fourth best scoring offense (2.24 goals per game) and defense (3.0 gpg) in the conference. That’s not spectacular, but it’s not necessarily indicative of a bad team, as it occupied the same slots last year when it finished fourth in the conference.

The Catamounts have three players with at least 19 points overall, paced by seniors Amanda Pelkey and Brittany Zuback, who have 21 points each, but their leading scorer in Hockey East play (Zuback) has just eight points in 12 conference games. BU (15-5-2, 10-3 Hockey East) also has three players with at least 19 points but has five players with 10-plus points in-conference.

BU coach Brian Durocher said he could not pinpoint the reason for UVM’s conference struggle.

“All I can guess is multiple things have gone wrong when they’ve played in conference,” Durocher said. “They performed well last year … and they have a cast of characters who are all real solid players.

“Probably in league play, they haven’t got as good of goaltending, or they’ve taken too many penalties or kids have been snake bitten, ran into a hot goaltender on the opposite teams, but it’s something that’s really hard to explain. I’m sure it’s more than one thing going wrong, and they’re not discounting the league or looking at that as games they’re not competing for or want to succeed in.”

The Terriers have the second most prolific offense in the conference, and the next team is a full goal behind. There isn’t much difference in the spread of markers scored each period, but there is one regarding goals allowed. During Hockey East games, the Terriers have surrendered 25 third-period goals, which is 13 more than they’ve allowed in the opening frame and six more than in the second.

This may be good news for the Catamounts, who have scored 26 of their 56 goals in the final stanza. However, when BU traveled to Vermont Dec. 6, it was able to keep UVM off the score sheet all but once when forward Victoria Andreakos scored late in the second period to cut a then-2-0 Terrier lead in half.

The lone tally was also the product of a stalwart BU defense, which allowed just 15 shots on goal the entire game and blocked 13 others. The Terriers were perfect on the penalty kill that game as well, going 6-for-6 and allowing six shots over the course of the man advantages. In fact, junior wing Sarah Lefort benefitted from Vermont’s power play 2:55 into the third period, as she scored a shorthanded goal to extend BU’s lead to three.

Durocher said he hopes his team can execute both mentally and physically at a high level, like it did in Wednesday’s victory.

“It was a very thorough game, and a very intelligent game in that we had good line changes, we didn’t take a lot of penalties, we had a power play goal,” he said. “When it was time to forecheck aggressive, we did. When it was time to be backed off and keep them at bay, I think that was all done really, really well.

“Hopefully we can not only bring our energy and our compete on the weekend but also bring our smarts.”