Going into the third period Friday night, the No. 3 Boston University women’s hockey team was losing 1-0, an unusual situation for a team that has not been behind that late in a game since a loss to Boston College on Nov. 20.
But barely four minutes into the period, graduate student defenseman Catherine Ward tied the game to the roar of an abnormally active and large crowd, and a goal about seven minutes later changed the focus of the match and broke yet another BU record.
About halfway through the frame, senior captain Holly Lorms passed the puck to freshman forward Marie-Philip Poulin from behind the net. Poulin, who was skating down the ice, slapped a shot past University of Connecticut netminder Alexandra Garcia for the game-winning and record-breaking marker. The goal, Poulin’s 22nd tally of the season, broke Melissa Anderson’s single-season goal mark of 21 from last season.
Against University of Vermont on Jan. 16, Poulin broke another one of Anderson’s records. She scored three goals in the game to break Anderson’s single-season point record of 39. Poulin, who has 43 points, was easily able to surpass the former record.
Poulin hasn’t just been racking up her own honors, though. She has also helped the team to acquire its 100th win in program history, its most wins in a season (surpassing a record of 19 set in the 2006-07 season) and its longest winning streak, which sits at 13 games. She has done all of this while missing four games early in the season to participate in the Four Nations Cup for the Canadian National team.
Thus, it really should not have come as too much of a surprise that when Poulin was asked how it felt to break another record, she responded with a little bit of confusion.
“Which one?”
Poulin’s talent has been lighting up the Hockey East conference and all of Division I hockey for the entire season. The freshman is ranked fifth in the nation for scoring, second for shorthanded goals and fifth for power play goals.
In HE, she is number one in freshman scoring with a 1.64 points per game and second in overall scoring behind Kelli Stack of Boston College. Last week, she received the HE Rookie of the Week honors for the fifth time this season.
BU coach Brian Durocher had a lot to say about Poulin’s performance thus far.
“She plays with a great passion, but also has a great deal of fun out there all the time,” Durocher said. “That permeates around our team when they see someone of her ability enjoying herself and being very, very committed and very focused, but not taking herself too seriously that you can’t have a little fun out there, that you can’t pick on yourself once in a while.”
For Poulin and her teammates though, the records and milestones aren’t the most important thing. Winning their conference and continuing to play for a little while longer is.
“We played really well today and all year long I think we’ve been improving each day,” Poulin said. “Hopefully we’ll keep going to achieve our goal at the end of the year.”
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