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Women’s hockey team wins two at Boston College

By Matthew Hritz

Posted on Monday, November 17th, 2003, 12:00 am

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The University of Maine women’s ice hockey team concluded its six-game road trip with flying colors this weekend as they swept the Boston College Eagles. Not only did the Black Bears earn two Hockey East victories but they also achieved two milestones. Senior forward Karen Droog accumulated her 100th career point and head coach Rick Filighera earned his 100th career victory.

“I would give that back in a heartbeat,” Filighera said. “I don’t do it for winning and losing; I do it because I want to give and it feels good to win a 100 games because you know that can never be taken away from me, but at the same time there were a lot of people that were part of that. All the guys who were assistant coaches with me over the years and all the players. You don’t win unless you have players. That is what it takes to win 100 games. I am grateful I got the opportunity to coach at the collegiate level and have an opportunity to win 100 games.”

In Saturday afternoon action, freshman forward Kate Sunstrum scored the first goal of the game just 3:26 into the first period with assists from Droog and sophomore defenseman Vicky Johnstone. The assist marked the 100th career point for Droog.

Freshman defenseman Kelly Law made it a 2-0 lead for the Black Bears when she scored her second goal of the season at 8:15 with a power play goal. Senior forward Meagan Aarts and Droog assisted on the goal for the Black Bears.

Boston College scored its only goal of the game at the last second of the first period when junior Kerri Sanders scored on a power play goal from senior forward Alaina Clark at 19:59.

Senior defenseman Naomi Smethurst scored her first goal of the season unassisted at 16:07 of the third period to give the Black Bears a 3-1 victory.

UMaine outshot Boston College 31-18 in the game. Smart made 17 saves for the Black Bears and improved to 3-5-2 on the season. Freshman goaltender Christine Moynihan stopped 28 shots for the Eagles.

In Friday night’s action, Sunstrum got the Black Bears on the board first scoring on a power play goal, her third of the season. The goal came at the 6:05 mark of the first period with an assist from Droog.

At 12:16 of the second period, junior defenseman put the Black Bears up 2-0 when she scored another power play goal for UMaine. Droog added another assist with the goal.

Just three minutes later in the period, Boston College cut the lead to 2-1 when sophomore forward Sarah Courtney scored on the rebound of a Nancy Gillis shot.

Freshman forward Sonia Corriveau gave the Black Bears a two-goal lead once again less than two minutes into the third period when she scored on a slap shot from the blue line.

Courtney added her second goal for the Eagles at 16:12 of the period, as that would be all the scoring in the game.

Senior goaltender Lara Smart made 20 saves while Lisa Davis stopped 14 shots for Boston College.

“What I like is we killed penalties and we scored two power play goals which were two of our objectives going that we needed to get better in those two areas,” Filighera said. “I also liked that we didn’t bring our A game. We felt it was their C game and we still found a way to win.”

The Black Bears will return home next weekend with much more confidence from the two victories this weekend, as they will host the defending Hockey East champions, the Providence College Friars (2-2-2), at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Alfond Arena.

“It’s confidence because you now look at the results [and] we’re in first place because we have four points,” Filighera said. “Now it’s a battle that we got to try to keep that position. The only way to keep it is we got Providence coming in which is a tough team for us…at least we are going in with some confidence the way we’ve been playing.”