The women’s ice hockey team held its own against eighth-ranked University of Connecticut for the first 60 minutes of play last Wednesday, and outplayed the visitors for much of the game; however, the Halloween night contest would be no treat for the Engineers as they lost in sudden death overtime 3-2. UConn barely escaped an upset while RPI suffered a tough overtime loss, breaking its six game undefeated streak as the visiting Huskies increased theirs to a nation-best eight games.
Saturday afternoon, the team returned to the Houston Field House for another game against visiting Huskies in non-conference action. The Engineers took down Northeastern University 4-0 in a shutout win, improving the Engineers’ record to 6-2-1; the visitors’ dropped to 0-6-1.
“It would’ve been great to come out with a win against the eighth-ranked team in the nation,” said senior Kelly Barbera of Wednesday’s game. “Losing in overtime was a hard hit to take, especially since we had so many great scoring opportunities, but it makes us realize how hard we have to work in games and the constant mental and physical readiness we need throughout the entire game; great teams can capitalize on even the smallest mistake made.”
“UConn is a good team; all around I feel like we outplayed them. We have a really good team this year,” said senior Brooke Thompson. “It is exciting to take them to overtime, but a loss is a loss, and especially in overtime it is pretty disappointing.”
Although both teams had 11 shots on net in the first period Wednesday evening, neither team lit the lamp until the second, when junior Nicole McDonald scored her fourth goal of the season at 8:23 and RPI took the lead. UConn answered quickly, as junior Nicole Tritter netted one less than a minute later, at 9:18 into the period. The Huskies pulled ahead in the third with a short-handed goal, but sophomore Laura Gersten scored with under four minutes left in regulation.
Just 1:46 into the overtime, UConn’s sophomore Dominique Thibault, who had scored in the third, put a wrist shot past junior Ashley Mayr to take the win.
Although RPI not only outplayed but outshot the visitors 35-26, it was unable to take home the victory. Mayr made 23 stops for the team as the goaltending again was a strong point for the Engineers.
“During the game versus UConn we got away from the ‘little things’ which led to scoring opportunities for them that they capitalized on,” said Barbera. “Learning from that, we all focused on doing our own jobs and it definitely showed on the ice as we kept Northeastern’s quality scoring chances to a minimum.”
The following Saturday, the Engineers were led by Gersten, who scored at 13:07 on Northeastern’s goalie Leah Sulyma. Weidner found the puck and passed it to Gersten out in front of the goal who then sent a rocket to the net. “Gersten has been coming close to scoring many times in previous games and finally got her first and second goal of the season this past week,” said Barbera. “She got the game-tying goal vs. UConn and then one against Northeastern, both awesome goals, which is great for her and obviously us!”
Just under five minutes later, RPI pushed its lead to two when junior forward Mel Guillemette caught a pass from classmate Jamie-Lynn Stewart before shooting from the far point for her fifth of the season.
Weidner added a pair of insurance goals, where the first at 2:10 into the second frame, she was assisted by sophomore Whitney Naslund and classmate Allison Wright. Weidner scored her second of the day at 7:52 to put RPI up 4-0 over the Northeastern Huskies.
Sonja van der Bliek had 26 saves in net for the Engineers as she improved to 4-0-0. “Both goaltenders—Ashley [Mayr] and Sonja [van der Bliek]—once again come to mind,” said Thompson about strong players this week. “They have been playing very solid and keeping us in games.”
Some things are already improved from last season, “Everyone is really communicating on the ice,” said Barbera of one improvement.
The team continues to improve, gaining experience and learning from the games. “We still need to improve our defensive zone play,” said Thompson.
“We definitely will continue to work on playing a full 60 minutes of hockey, physically as well as mentally,” said Barbera. “We need to keep our focus throughout the entire game to beat the Top 10 teams such as UConn.”
RPI makes the trip to the north country this weekend with games against ECAC rivals Clarkson University and St. Lawrence University. “We will play to win and play for points in the league,” said Thompson. “We all expect to uphold our goals as a team, and improving upon last year is one of them, and that is what I think we hope to accomplish this weekend.”
“Certainly our goal is to leave the north country with as many points as possible,” said Barbera. “We need to beat Clarkson to put ourselves in a good position for playoffs and we definitely need to focus on playing our systems and have composure in our defensive end and also work hard to generate offense in order to beat St. Lawrence.”
“We have a great momentum this year” said Thompson. “We started off on the right foot and I hope we can continue to play well all season.”
