The Boston University women’s hockey team heads into winter break on a positive note after splitting a weekend series against No. 2 University of Minnesota at Walter Brown Arena.
The Golden Gophers (15-3-2) showed that their ranking is well-deserved in a 5-1 win over the Terriers (12-7-1, 7-6 Hockey East) on Friday night, but BU responded with a thrilling 6-5 overtime victory on Saturday.
Minnesota started the game aggressively, and jumped out to an early 3-0 lead through the first eight minutes.
During the second period, the Golden Gophers spent a majority of the time on the Terriers’ end of the ice. However, BU’s defense toughened, especially on Minnesota’s power play where senior Victoria Hanson was a stalwart in net.
“They didn’t stop getting shots,” said BU head coach Brian Durocher of the Gophers. “Victoria made some good saves and our kids maybe fought a little harder defending-wise. Still, I give [Minnesota] a lot of credit.”
The Golden Gophers looked clean and confident on the ice throughout the game.
They would make increase their lead to four before a shot from graduate student forward Mary Parker at the 11:07 mark in the third period slipped between Golden Gopher goaltender Sidney Peters and the post to put the Terriers on the board at 4-1.
Before the final buzzer, Minnesota defender Lee Stecklein netted the fifth and final goal in the eventual 5-1 triumph.
Saturday saw a more competitive affair as the Terriers kept pace with the Golden Gophers and finished off the weekend strong thanks to the stick of forward Natalie Flynn.
The senior co-captain said that Saturday’s win game exhibited how hard her team works day in and day out.
“Coming back off a loss yesterday, I think we showed a lot of perseverance and just character of what kind of team we are and what kind of team we can be,” Flynn said.
Just as Minnesota had done on Friday, the Terriers put up two quick goals in the first frame. Junior forward Victoria Bach netted her 12th goal of the season less than two minutes into the contest and freshman defender Abby Cook followed suit just over five minutes later.
The Gophers handled being down by a few far better than the Terriers, though, and answered with two power-play goals just over 30 seconds apart from forward Sarah Potomak and senior Kate Schipper, respectively.
Junior Kelly Pannek assisted on both goals to give her 40 points on the season, which ranks best in the country.
The teams went into the second period knotted at two, but ex-Gopher Nina Rodgers gave BU the lead again on the junior forward’s fifth goal of the year.
Fifty seconds later, Flynn tallied her first of the game to put the Terriers up 4-2.
With two minutes remaining in the second period, senior forward Samantha Sutherland broke a four-match goal drought with a power-play score to give BU the 5-3 advantage.
“I’m just so proud of our team,” Sutherland said. “The first game was pretty rough. We definitely played well but this game was our best game everybody’s played all season.”
The Terriers couldn’t hold that lead, though.
For most of the third period, the Terriers seemed to control the ice, but Minnesota fired off two more goals, sending the game to overtime.
Flynn sealed the impressive win with her second goal of the game at the 1:40 mark in overtime off a pass from freshman forward Natasza Tarnowski.
Tarnowski, Flynn and freshman forward Deziray De Sousa combined for five points on the night.
“I give a ton of credit to what was our third line today,” Durocher said. “They played together as a unit. They really rallied around each other. Not high-profile players, but they got offense and more importantly they probably got more than 10 blocked shots between them.”
