The No. 5 Boston University women’s hockey team has proven that it can win by three, four or five goals, but up until last weekend, it hadn’t proven that it could win the close one.
In its tightest pair of games so far, BU (6-1-0) picked up its fifth and sixth wins this weekend, defeating St. Lawrence University 2-1 and Clarkson University 3-2.
Friday’s contest against the Saints (1-4-1) was characterized by what seemed like an endless parade of Terriers to the penalty box, starting with junior forward Jenn Wakefield’s slashing call three minutes into the first period. BU spent 18 minutes of the game short-handed on nine penalties, compared to St. Lawrence’s five.
“I only worry about the ones I think we should be accountable for, and there were maybe three of them there,” said BU coach Brian Durocher. “Fifty, sixty, seventy feet from our net, we don’t want to be taking hooking penalties. We don’t want to be taking liberties with physical play when we should be angling people, and that cropped up a couple times tonight.”
Despite playing short-handed for nearly a third of the game, BU got on the board first, midway through the first period, when freshman forward Marie-Philip Poulin found freshman forward Louise Warren with a backhand pass in front of the net. Warren’s one-timer took a few bounces off Saints goalie Maxie Weisz, but ended up in the net for her second tally of the year.
With freshman defenseman Kaleigh Fratkin in the box for checking three minutes into the third period, Wakefield took a pass from senior forward Jillian Kirchner and found herself on a breakaway with only Weisz ahead of her. She faked shooting low and then beat Weisz with a high shot that knocked the water bottle off the top of the net to give the Terriers a 2-0 lead.
The goal, Wakefield’s eighth of the year, seemed like the natural result of the pressure BU had been putting on the Saints while short-handed. The Terriers’ penalty kill success rate is 95.1 percent, the best in Hockey East, and part of that success may come from the fact that rather than sitting back and playing defensively, the team has been aggressive while short-handed, forcing opponents to spend their power-play time regrouping in their own zones.
“I think we have a lot of talent on our team and sometimes people relax on the power play, so it’s to our advantage and we can capitalize,” Wakefield said.
BU had a chance to go up 3-0 with a five-on-three power play late in the third, but errant passes and bouncing pucks prevented it from increasing its lead. When junior defenseman Tara Watchorn went to the box with less than three minutes left to play, the Saints pulled Weisz for an extra attacker and scored to make it 2-1 just eight seconds into the power play. That, however, would be the only time they would beat Sperry.
“I had a real flashback to two or three years ago when we were up 2-0 against them with three minutes left and they got two goals to tie it, so fortunately we kept the second one out tonight,” Durocher said.
A sluggish start on Saturday against Clarkson (1-6-1) found the Terriers down 1-0 at the end of the first period on a goal by forward Gabrielle Kosziwka. But after putting up just eight shots in the first period, BU came back with a combined 43 in the second and third frames.
“I was pretty disappointed with the first period because not only did we get three penalties but we really weren’t competing offensively,” Durocher said. “We were stopping just over the goal line. We let them keep the puck alive on the first goal in a situation where I think if we had any determination, we would have shut them down. So we kind of let them know that that wasn’t good enough after the first period, and from there they pretty much took charge.”
Watchorn knocked in a rebound early in the second to tie the score at 1-1, and sophomore forward Taylor Holze scored her first goal of the year to give BU the 2-1 lead.
Less than a minute into the third period, Poulin was hauled down to the ice by Clarkson defenseman Katelyn Ptolemy, who was sent off for holding. On the ensuing power play, Poulin knocked a Wakefield rebound past Clarkson goalie Lauren Dahm for her team-leading ninth goal of the year and the eventual game-winner.
The final shot differential was 51-17 in favor of the Terriers despite their slow start. Sperry made 15 saves in her fourth victory.
“I actually didn’t realize we had that many shots, but I guess if we can put that many shots on the goalie every game, there’s no reason we can’t win,” Watchorn said.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
