After 244 days, women’s hockey returned to Lynah Rink hoping to pick up right where it left off last season. Instead, the Red came out flat and made multiple mistakes, allowing Union to pull off an impressive upset and defeat Cornell 3-2.
The afternoon started with a brief pregame ceremony celebrating the two new banners hanging in the rafters of Lynah — Ivy League champions and NCAA tournament — Athletics Director Nicki Moore tapped on the glass behind the bench to give some words of encouragement to head coach Doug Derraugh ’91.
The Red opened up ECAC play with an all-upperclassmen top forward lineup — junior Georgia Schiff, junior Mckenna Van Gelder and senior Kaitlin Jockims — and an all-Dwyer defensive pair. This top line came out firing, controlling the first few minutes of play before sophomore goaltender Annelies Bergmann was forced to make her first save of the afternoon.
With both teams aggressively forechecking, a quick pace of play took hold as the first period unfolded. During the back-and-forth play, Bergmann made a series of solid saves including a kick-save to stop a Union 3-on-2 chance five minutes into the game.
Almost halfway through the period, sophomore forward Delaney Fleming was whistled for hooking, giving Union its first skater advantage of the game. The Red’s penalty kill, which ranked eighth in the nation a season ago, continued to impress, shutting down the Union attack. However, the Red could not stay out of the penalty box, and about five minutes later, an interference penalty from senior defender Ashley Messier gave Union another power play.
“I don’t think we were terrible defensively. I thought that we made a few unforced errors. … And [we] shot ourselves basically in the foot,” Derraugh said. “I didn’t think it was anything that they were necessarily doing that was causing us trouble.”
Though the Red killed that penalty as well, the Garnet Chargers had the momentum and capitalized, scoring the first goal of the game with three minutes to go in the period. The goal came off a stolen Cornell pass, which ricocheted off the boards behind the goal right to a Union skater. Perhaps the bounce was hockey karma for a similar goal scored by Cornell against Quinnipiac in overtime of the ECAC quarterfinals last spring.
“We made an errant pass and gave them the first one,” Derraugh said.
After going down 1-0 in the first period, the Red got off to a rough start in the second. Less than a minute in, a deflected shot floated above the lunge of Bergmann and into the back of the net to double the Cornell deficit.
The goal came off what Derraugh described as “a pop fly in the air.”
Cornell responded and began to find its offensive footing. About halfway through the period, the Red had a series of shots stopped by Union goaltender Sophie Matsoukas in quick succession. This pressure paid off, as the Garnet Chargers’ defense left senior forward Katie Chan unmarked in front of the net. An impressive pass from Messier got the puck to the stick of Chan who pushed it by Matsoukas to halve Union’s lead.
“It seemed like we didn’t have an aggressive mindset until we were down, and then we started to play our game,” Derraugh said.
Unfortunately for Cornell, mistakes continued. Just a minute after Chan’s goal, a low-angle shot from Union’s Jill Willis was mostly stopped by Bergmann. However, Bergmann struggled to control the puck, and it deflected off her stick and into the net. The mistake was uncharacteristic of Bergmann, who was named second team All-Ivy and ECAC Hockey All-Rookie last season. Immediately after the goal, junior defender Alyssa Regalado went over to Bergmann in net to presumably give her words of encouragement.
Cornell was able to get a goal back before the second intermission, thanks to an incredible individual effort by Fleming in her Lynah Rink debut. After running into the referee and losing her defender, the Cornell forward powered through the neutral zone and wristed a shot by the Union netminder.
In the third, Cornell dominated play in search of an equalizing goal that did not come. The Red had opportunities, ringing the goal post twice in a single power play, but could not find the back of the net. After Matsoukas stopped everything Cornell could throw at her, the Union bench sprinted onto the ice to mob its goaltender as time expired.
The loss was surprising for Cornell, considering the Red had not lost to Union in 38 games and had just defeated No.12 Penn State the weekend prior.
“We need to have a better start. We need to have that aggressive mindset that we had in the second and third going into the start of the game,” Derraugh said.
The Red will try to salvage its weekend with a win tomorrow against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Puck drop is set for 3 p.m., and the game will be streamed live on ESPN+.