The Boston University women’s hockey team made a valiant four-goal comeback against rival Northeastern University, but fell in a shootout 2-0 in a shootout, to lose 5-4 in the opening round of the 32nd Women’s Beanpot.
Each goaltender stood strong in the first round of the shootout. Then, freshman forward Rachel Llanes beat freshman goalie Alissa Fromkin stick-side to give the Huskies the lead. After Northeastern junior goalie Leah Sulyma denied senior forward Laura Koller, Northeastern junior Alyssa Wohlfeiler clinched the win by beating Fromkin low glove-side.
Down by four goals early in the second period, it looked as if Beanpot history was bound to repeat itself for BU (10-8-10, 6-6-4-2 Hockey East). Last season the Terriers were demolished in the first round of the Beanpot by an 8-0 score at the hands of the Harvard University Crimson.
Turnovers in the Terriers’ defensive zone led to two unassisted first-period goals for the Huskies (16-5-5, 8-4-4-3). Northeastern grabbed the early lead at 2:56, when a BU turnover in front of the net was collected by freshman Kelly Wallace, whose wrist shot trickled through the five-hole of senior goalie Melissa Haber.
Less than eight minutes later, the Huskies padded their lead when Llanes gathered the puck in the offensive zone and backhanded it past Haber. A scrum in front of net at 16:14 resulted in senior captain Annie Hogan scoring the third goal for Northeastern, which took a three-goal lead into the locker room.
With the Terriers floundering, BU coach Brian Durocher replaced Haber the freshman, Fromkin.
‘[Haber] might not have had her A game in that first period, but I think we just have to change momentum,’ Durocher said. ‘You have to throw some different faces in there. You have to give the people something to grab onto, and we are hoping that here comes a new goalie that’s going to shut the door and help us climb back up the mountain.’
Initially, the change in net didn’t make much difference, as the Huskies lit the lamp again thanks to a one-timer from freshman Brittany Esposito. Down by four with half the game to go, BU junior forward Jillian Kirchner was whistled with a five-minute major and a game misconduct for hitting from behind. But the Fromkin and the Terriers responded well to the adversity and withstood the man advantage with no harm done.
‘It was do or die,’ senior forward Melissa Anderson said. ‘We needed to kill that off and we wanted to win it. It had to start with killing off those five minutes. If we killed that off, we would have regained all that momentum, and we did. We went at them.’
BU got on the board a little more than a minute after killing the major penalty.
From behind the net, Koller sent a pass to Lorms in front of the net, whose shot snuck past Sulyma.
Although the third period has been the Achilles’ heel for the Terriers this season, last night was a different story. In a span of less than a minute, BU tallied two goals to lower the deficit to a single score. A shot by Anderson near the center of the blue line resulted in a scrum in front of the net, where junior Lauren Cherewyk poked in the loose puck. Lorms got her second goal of the night when a pass from freshman forward Jill Cardella found the Brookfield, Wis. native wide open in front of Sulyma.
The Terriers completed the comeback at the 10:38 mark of the third period. After a feed from Cardella and Cherewyk, Anderson, who leads BU in points, beat Sulyma high stick-side to tie the game at four apiece.
After the Terriers tied the game, Fromkin made key saves in both the third period and overtime to force the game into a shootout.
‘Alyssa [Fromkin] played fantastic, she made some huge saves in that third period when we had gotten very excited, and we had gotten very emotional,’ Durocher said. ‘We had closed the gap to 4-2, then it was 4-3 and it hung there for a little while. She made a couple stops and gave us a chance to tie the game at four, and even after that, there were some great chances for Northeastern. She rose to the test with a lot of composure.’
