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The Maine Black Bears women’s hockey team will have two big games this weekend on the road as they will take on the St. Lawrence Saints and the Cornell Big Red. Precious ECAC points will be up for grabs in these games as the Black Bears will fight to stay in the hunt for the playoffs.
Coach Rick Filighera knows that this weekend is important to his team. “It would be nice to get a couple of wins this weekend. It would take the pressure off of us a little bit,” he said. He thinks that three or four wins in the final six games is what Maine will need to get into the playoffs.
Maine’s first opponent on the weekend will be the St. Lawrence Saints. The Saints and the Black Bears already played once this season; a 6-1 St. Lawrence win on Nov. 18 at Alfond Arena. Though the score looks lopsided, the game was not that way at all. Filighera said that Maine controlled the play at times in the game, but had lots of bad luck.
“Two of them were good goals, two of them we had defensive breakdowns on and two of them were bad luck. They bounced off of our players in front of the net,” he said.
Three of St. Lawrence’s goals that game were scored on the power play. Freshman forward Gina Kingsbury had two of the Saints’ goals and fellow freshman defender Isabelle Chartrand had a goal and two assists.
And those are the two players who Filighera believes that Maine needs to contain. “We match up pretty great with them. But the difference is Gina Kingsbury and Isabelle Chartrand. We had trouble controlling them when they were here,” he said.
Despite Filighera’s raving about Kingsbury (10 goals, 8 assists, 18 points) and top of the list in scoring for the Saints. The leading point-getters are sophomore forwards Amanda Sargeant (15-15-30) and Shannon Smith (10-16-26). Senior Caroline Trudeau has 10 goals and 10 assists for 20 points.
Chartrand is the leader of the defense corps, along with junior Megan Mcguire (5-6-11). Freshman Rachel Barrie has seen most of the time in net for St. Lawrence. She has a 10-3-2 record with a 1.91 goals against average and a .931 save percentage. Caryn Ungewitter, a senior, played in net in the previous meeting. She has a record of 6-1-1, with a 2.36 goals against average and a .901 save percentage.
Filighera thinks that Maine will need to generate offense and play good defense to win. “They are very well coached. Paul Flanagan does a good job,” he said. “They work very hard, and we’ll have to work just as hard if we want to win.”
Maine has also played Cornell once this season. They played on Nov. 17 at Alfond where Maine came away with a 3-1 win on goals by Karen Droog, Jarin Sjogren and Raffi Wolf.
This game will be especially important because Maine is currently tied with Cornell in the ECAC as both teams try to make the playoffs. Filighera does not believe that beating Cornell will be an easy task. “We beat them earlier, but they are playing better now,” he said.
He hopes that Cornell having to take on New Hampshire the day before will hurt the Big Red, but he also acknowledged that having to play a tough St. Lawrence team the day before won’t help his team.
“They are also well coached. I think that we match up very well with Cornell. I think that if we play with the same passion that we did on Saturday (against Niagara last weekend) we’ll be okay,” he said.
Cornell hasn’t scored a lot this season. Up front, the leading scorers are senior Erica Olson (11-9-20), sophomore Lindsay Murao (8-11-19), and junior Jenel Bode (6-9-15). On the blueline, the key players are juniors Brooke Bestwick (4-10-14) and Sarah Olivier (5-9-14). Freshman Briana Jentner (8-4-12) can play both forward and defense. Jentner scored Cornell’s goal in the earlier meeting with Maine.
Sophomore Sanya Sandhal is Cornell’s starting goaltender. She has a record of 6-10-0 with a 3.42 goals against average and an .885 save percentage. She was pulled after one period of the game at Alfond because she gave up two breakaway goals.
Maine’s game at St. Lawrence will be at 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon at Appleton Arena and the Cornell game will be at 2 p.m. on Sunday at Lynah Rink.
