‘ By Annie Maroon
The Boston University women’s hockey team opened its 2010 schedule with a 4-1 win over Yale University on Friday and a 5-5 tie with Brown University on Sunday.
Senior forward Melissa Anderson took over this weekend, tallying six points in two games. On Friday against Yale (4-10-3), Anderson opened the scoring for BU (8-6-8) on its first power play of the game, converting on a feed from her linemate, senior Laurel Koller. Koller had a career-high three assists in the game.
Anderson scored her game-winning, second goal of the night midway through the second period. Just five minutes later she led a rush that resulted in junior forward Jillian Kirchner’s insurance tally.
Yale freshman forward Alyssa Zupon scored her first career goal to bring the Bulldogs within two early in the third, but senior goaltender Melissa Haber stopped 11 third-period shots to secure the Terrier victory. Freshman forward Jill Cardella recorded her 10th goal of the season, on a feed from Koller, to make the final score 4-1.
Although the Terriers had only three power play opportunities during Friday’s game, they made the most of them by scoring on their first two. According to BU coach Brian Durocher, this could have been due to the fact that the team has completely restructured its power play over the last month.
‘It can backfire when you put something new in place if you don’t get to practice it enough, but we actually made significant changes there and got pretty nice results,’ Durocher said. ‘We felt kind of stale in the other setup. This setup allows us to get four people closer to the net, and as a result, we picked up more rebounds and moved the puck pretty well.
‘Even on plays when we didn’t score, I think we had good puck possession.’
The Terriers went a respectable 1-for-3 on the power play on Sunday against Brown (2-10-4), but the real story of the game was the back-and-forth ‘- both teams held two-goal leads at one point during the game, but at the end of regulation the score remained knotted at five apiece.
After a relatively uneventful first period, Brown sophomore defenseman Jacquie Pierri put the Bears on the scoreboard two minutes into the second. The Terriers answered with a flurry of goals from Anderson and junior forwards Lauren Cherewyk and Holly Lorms to take a 3-1 lead in the span of just ten minutes.
Senior Sasha Van Muyen pulled the Bears within one with a late tally in the second. With momentum swinging their way, the Bulldogs put home three unanswered goals in the first five minutes of the third period to take a 5-3 lead over a stunned Terrier team.
But Lorms, who also won 8-of-11 faceoffs for BU, scored her second goal of the game at 6:34 in the third to bring the Terriers back within one. Less than four minutes later, Anderson tied the score at five to force overtime.
Despite scoring 10 goals combined over three periods of play, the Terriers and Bulldogs just couldn’t find the back of the net in OT. In fact, they could barely find the goal at all ‘- Brown did not register a shot in the extra frame, and BU only managed one.
The tie was the Terriers’ eighth of the season, a program record. While this may not be the record any team wants to break, Durocher still found the positives.
‘We’ve played 22 games and only lost six times,’ he said. ‘You always want to close the deal, but [in the Brown game] for us to give up four straight goals and come back, that ended up being a decent tie. I’d certainly love to have three or four or five of those ties be wins, but we try to look at the positive and keep working from there.’
Another positive for the Terriers was Anderson’s elevated play in the absence of sophomore forward Jenelle Kohanchuk, who spent the weekend playing for the Canadian National Under-22 team in the MLP Nations Cup Tournament. Kohanchuk was the Terriers’ scoring leader until Anderson took the reigns over the weekend.
‘It was fantastic to have [Anderson] continue on a steady pace,’ Durocher said. ‘She’s been very consistent throughout her career. With a player like Jenelle out you need other people to step forward, and Holly Lorms getting another couple goals was also good for us. We’re aided by Melissa’s efforts, and it was a great weekend for her.’
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