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The University of Maine women’s hockey team hosted a two-game series against Niagara University last weekend at the Alfond Arena, shutting out the Purple Eagles on Saturday afternoon and drawing in overtime on Sunday afternoon.
On Saturday, the Black Bears netted two goals in the first period and added another in the third to blank Niagara 3-0. Junior goalie Brittany Ott tallied her first independent shutout of the 2011-12 season.
On Sunday, UMaine scored three goals again, but not until the final period. A game-tying goal from Purple Eagles freshman forward Kalli Funk with 14 seconds remaining and a scoreless overtime period resulted in the 3-3 tie.
The Black Bears improve their overall record to 7-5-2. Niagara falls to 6-6-3.
Despite the lossless weekend, head coach Maria Lewis believes there is still room for improvement.
“We need to put together a full weekend,” she said. “[On Saturday], we played well … came out hard and kind of trailed off a little bit … but we were able to maintain the shutout. [On Sunday], we got off to a slow start.”
Freshman forward Tori Pasquariello added her second, third and fourth goals of the season over the course of the weekend series — one on Saturday and two back-to-back on Sunday. She has now scored four times for the Black Bears in their last three games.
Lewis is convinced the sky is the limit for Pasquariello as long as she continues to work hard and follow coaches’ directions.
“She’s just starting to figure out what it is we expect from her and what her role is,” Lewis said. “She’s putting the puck in the net and we’ll expect more of that in the future. It’s nice to have another player on the roster contributing in the points department.”
In Saturday’s game, Pasquariello started things off for UMaine after scoring within the first 2 minutes with assists from sophomore forward Missy Denk and senior defenseman Ashley Norum. Junior forward Brittany Dougherty netted an unassisted, shorthanded goal just 6 minutes later for her eighth of the season.
The Black Bears sealed their win with a third goal just 32 seconds into the final period from senior forward Myriam Croussette, who is now tied for the team lead in goals with nine. Dougherty and senior defenseman Melissa Gagnon assisted Croussette’s third-period goal.
In Sunday’s game, junior goalie Kylie Smith got her third start of the season. UMaine found themselves down 2-0 at the beginning of the game’s final period after Niagara scored both power-play and shorthanded goals in the first and second periods, respectively. But a late third-period rally put the Black Bears back into the game.
Six minutes into the third period, Dougherty finally put UMaine on the scoreboard, finding the 5-hole on Niagara sophomore goalie Sarah Moses to cut the Purple Eagles’ lead in half. Croussette and freshman defender Brittney Huneke assisted her goal.
With less than 5 minutes remaining in regulation, Pasquariello continued her dominant weekend, tying the game with a goal set up by senior defenseman Ashley Norum. After dishing out a vicious hit at mid-ice 3 minutes later, Pasquariello netted her second of the game to put the Black Bears ahead.
Unfortunately UMaine could not hold on to their one-goal lead, and after Funk’s clutch goal and a scoreless period of overtime, both teams settled for the tie.
Despite winning only one of the two games, UMaine outshot the Purple Eagles 68-43 throughout the series.
According to Lewis, there were a lot of adjustments in the lineup for Sunday’s game.
“Credit to them to be able to play through that,” Lewis said. “But we’ve got to find a way not to put ourselves down.”
This weekend, the Black Bears will host the Bears of Brown University for a two-game weekend series on Friday night at 7 and Saturday afternoon at 3.
Coach Lewis said the team will have to stick to the game plan and continue to do little things well in order to find victory against the 2-2-3 Bears.
“We need to continue to work on our defensive zone coverage and adjust to and fix the things that slipped through our fingers this weekend,” she said. “Brown is similar to what we were last year in terms of getting a new staff … I think they’ve got some players that are pretty good and we’ll have to make sure that we take care of the little things on our end to have success against [them].”
