The women’s hockey team picked up a much-needed point on Friday as it tied Clarkson on the road in an overtime thriller.
Unfortunately, one point is all it would receive on the weekend, as St. Lawrence dropped a seven spot on Cornell and refused to allow a late comeback on Saturday.
[img_assist|nid=21131|title=Hold On|desc=Junior forward Brianne Schmidt (15) reaches for the puck during the women’s hockey team’s loss to Rensselaer on Jan. 27. The Red tied Clarkson, 1-1, and fell to St. Lawrence, 7-2, last weekend.|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=77]
Knowing it would be thoroughly tested in both contests, Cornell (3-20-2, 3-14-1 ECACHL) put forth a solid effort this weekend on the road against two disciplined teams. Having fallen, 5-1, to Clarkson (15-12-3, 7-9-2) earlier in the season, Cornell was determined to come out of Potsdam, N.Y. with at least a point.
After a scoreless first period, junior Brittany Forgues found the back of the net for the Red midway through the second period, with classmate Caeleigh Beerworth picking up the play’s lone assist. The goal was Forgues’ sixth goal of the season, while Beerworth’s assist tally increased to eight. Three minutes later, Golden Knights freshman Genevieve Lavoie tierd the score at 1 on the power play, picking up a rebound from a shot by junior Meghan Park. On that goal, Lavoie made history for the Golden Knights, scoring her 20th goal and her 30th point of the season. No Clarkson player had reached the 20-goal plateau in the last four years, and her 30th point made her only the third player in Clarkson history to reach that milestone.
Those two plays would prove to be all the teams could muster offensively, as the game ended in a 1-1. Clarkson outshot Cornell 23-11 for the game and senior co-captain Beth Baronick put forth another noteworthy effort in saving 22 of those 23 Clarkson shots.
“I thought we played pretty well throughout the game,” said head coach Doug Derraugh ’91. “Beth obviously played well again. I thought we gave up a couple chances early that we could have done a little better on, and then I thought we settled down after that and we played really solid hockey throughout the game. I was especially happy at the end of the game in the overtime. We killed off a penalty and we got some scoring chances that we could have maybe won the game. Overall, that was a good game for us.”
Clarkson had eight power play opportunities in the game, but only one led to a goal — in the second period. The power play Derraugh was referring to occurred at the 18:39 mark in the third period when senior Halina Kristalyn was called for tripping. The power play continued into the overtime and Cornell was able to successfully kill the penalty and prolong the game.
“It was great to see our team rally on that power play at the end of the game and overall, our penalty killing did a great job throughout that game,” Derraugh said.
Saturday, the Red traveled to Canton, N.Y., hoping to pull off an upset against St. Lawrence (22-6-2, 14-4-0), the fourth-ranked team in the ECACHL at the time. The Red got off to a very promising start in this game, scoring a goal within the first 30 seconds of the opening whistle. Beerworth scored the goal off assists from juniors Brianne Schmidt and Brittany Forgues. The Red would then take a 2-0 lead at the 13:47 mark of the first period off a power play goal from Schmidt. Kristalyn converted on the assist. For Beerworth and Schmidt, those goals were their fifth and seventh goals of the season, respectively.
After those two goals, the Saints got into a rhythm and never let up. They would ultimately run off seven straight goals, including one by junior Sabrina Harbec, the raining ECACHL Player of the Year. Sophomore Marianna Locke led the Saints with two goals in this game while senior Crystal Connors, junior Annie Guay and sophomores Lisa Batchelor and Carson Duggan also chipped in on the action with a goal apiece. For St. Lawrence, four of its seven goals came courtesy of Cornell penalties.
“Before the game, we talked about not getting into penalty trouble against St. Lawrence,” Derraugh said. “St. Lawrence has got probably the best special teams in our league. They are very good on penalty killing and on the power play. If you take as many penalties as we do, you’re bound to get burned at some point. We had a couple miscues on the penalty kill and as I said, if we are taking penalties against them, we’re going to be in trouble. … On the other hand, we did come out ready to play and we were ready right at the start. We just could not keep it going.”
Cornell came out of the gates ready to play spoiler against a St. Lawrence team that is looking to make a run at the ECACHL title. After the two goals, Cornell took some bad penalties and ultimately, St. Lawrence capitalized on them and gained some much needed momentum. Once Saints got rolling, there was no stopping them.
“Cornell clearly came ready to play today, as they took it to us in the first period,” said St. Lawrence head coach Paul Flanagan. “I thought our team showed some experience and did a nice job of re-grouping at the end of the period, coming out ready to play in the second.”
Derraugh feels the past two weekends have been shining points for the season.
“We’ve been playing better,” Derraugh said. “To look back at the last four games — beating Union, playing a great game against RPI, tying Clarkson and then getting off to a 2-0 lead against St. Lawrence — I thought up to that point, we had put together three and a half pretty good games. It was unfortunate that we could not continue that throughout the last two periods against St. Lawrence.”