Frustrating losses again marked the weekend for the women’s hockey team. The team is just a weekend match-up with Wayne State University away from the ECACHL games that will make or break their season. The team has learned an incredible amount about itself in these first few games and needs to take some of those lessons learned to heart before the core of its season is upon it and letting games slip away becomes habit.
Every time the Engineers left the ice, the game was in their control, the opportunity to win was well within reach, yet somehow they’ve managed to avoid a win in the books thus far.
Continuing the pattern, the team fell in a heart-breaking overtime loss to Boston University on Friday night and saw BU come away with the win again on Saturday.
Both goals in Friday’s 3-2 loss were netted by freshman Allysen Weidner. Her first collegiate goal was a breakaway in the middle of the second period; Ellen McNamara was given the assist.
Weidner’s second goal, on a power play, came off a pass from classmate Whitney Naslund during gritty play in front of the net late in the third.
“It was a rough start at the beginning, just trying to get my bearings out on the ice,” said Weidner of her collegiate experience, “but at North Dakota, I started to get more comfortable, and all of a sudden picked it up in Boston and scored two goals and got my confidence up a bit. Hopefully I can keep it up.”
Head Coach John Burke was impressed with the team’s play on Friday, saying, “We played exceptionally well, we just ran into a hot goaltender. We’re generating a lot of offense, creating a lot of good scoring chances, and their kid is just making some [great] saves.”
Explaining the deciding factors at this level of play, he said, “We’re making some mistakes out there and teams are capitalizing on our mistakes. And that’s such a fine line between winning and losing there.” He finished, “It was a game we thought we should have won, but we’ve got to tighten up a couple areas.”
“She’s starting to get really comfortable here, and she’s played well at North Dakota and then had a very solid weekend here against BU and scored a nice breakaway goal,” said Burke of Weidner’s weekend performance.
Weidner is now leading the freshmen in goals scored this season, and Burke knows why— “It takes each kid a different time to adjust to the college game and Allysen comes from a very solid program, has a very solid background, and is starting to feel comfortable with what we’re trying to do. She’s seeing the benefits of hard work.”
On Saturday, the 1-2 loss only added to the frustration from the previous game. The team’s lone goal came from another scoring leader, sophomore Jamie-Lynn Stewart. She opened the second period with a short-handed goal assisted by classmate Nicole McDonald and freshman Laura Gersten. “The defenseman on BU picked up the puck in the neutral zone and I pressured her and [hit] her stick, causing her to cough up the puck, giving me a breakaway, and I went in and shot the puck,” explained Stewart.
Sophomore Ashley Mahr was in net for both of the games, and, although she received losses, Burke wasn’t disappointed in her performance. “We got solid goaltending, and she gave us a chance to win both games and that’s what we’re looking for,” he said.
“Some lines are starting to click, and we’re real close to breaking out of this thing,” said Burke on the season so far. “We’re creating a lot of chances and the kids are playing really hard, and the one thing that amazes me is the resolve of the team because we had a heart-breaking game on Friday night.”
“We have a really hard working team,” believes Weidner. “Everyone wants to win, and losing five games in a row is tough for everybody but we have the skill and the work ethic so it’s just putting that into winning close games, like at Boston.”
She explains that the team has a lot going for them this season—“We’re really fast compared to other teams, we’re not as big as other teams—we have a few big D [defensive players]. We’re little and we’re fast and we out-skate a lot of teams and put a lot of pressure on them; it’s just the fact that we need to start putting the puck in the net more.”
“We’ve learned that we need to come to play every single game,” said Stewart, “that if we stand back on our heels that we will get creamed. We need to play hard every game which will get us ready for later on in the season when we play the important games.”
She continued, “We just need to work together and once we are able to click as a team things will start to unfold and we will starting getting some wins.”
The team faces Wanye State, another formidable opponent, in front of the home crowd and the Red Army up at the Houston Field House Friday at 7 pm and Saturday at 3 pm.
