Photo courtesy Quinnipiac Athletics
By Matt McAuliffe
When a team loses their leader, it can be difficult to communicate and the team’s chemistry can be off. In the middle of the second period, the Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey team lost their leader when captain Emma Woods went down after a collision with the boards. The Bobcats were leading 2-1 at that point, and the game ended in a 2-2 tie.
After Woods went down the chemistry seemed different, but assistant captain Meghan Turner had to make sure the team stayed on track and did not lose.
“Woods is a big part of our team she brings a lot into the locker room, just keeping positivity around, making sure nobody is distracted by the fact that she did go down,” assistant captain Meghan Turner said.
“We have a lot of depth in our lineup–I was so impressed with Randi Marcon’s line today, her Kenzie Lancaster, and Danielle Marmer did tremendous things for our hockey team, and they stepped up and were able to play roles that we needed them to play,” head coach Cass Turner said.
To say that Woods’ absence was the only reason the Bobcats weren’t able to hold onto the lead would be false. In the overtime period, freshman forward Kenzie Prater had an opportunity to capitalize on a penalty shot and was unable to do so. There were scoring chances that were missed, but overall the Bobcats banded together and played a strong third and overtime period.
Another player that stepped up and has now scored two goals in two games is Kate MacKenzie. She scored the first goal of the night for the Bobcats on the power play.
“Kate MacKenzie is having an outstanding freshman year, she has the ability to be able to possess the puck and shoot the puck in a way that we haven’t had a lot of defensemen that can do that in our program and she’s showing that in that spot on the power play,” Turner said.
“That’s normally my position, just being greedy around the net and try to bury those chances, if Prater hadn’t made that pass I wouldn’t off scored, and I am going to keep working in practice to get better,” freshman defensemen Kate MacKenzie said.
MacKenzie’s performance is not the only trend the Bobcats have had in the recent two games. A more negative trend has been the penalty kill. In the game against Princeton, the Bobcats penalty kill let up two goals, and in the game against Harvard they let up a goal with less than four minutes to play in the game.
“We made a mistake that turned into a goal, and that’s going to happen in hockey but for us we will look at all of things that we did on our penalty kill that were outstanding I think that is going to be really key for our team as we look forward,” Turner said.
Goaltending has always been a consistent success with Sydney Rossman in between the pipes, but in the game against Harvard she let two pucks by her and faced a total of 18 shots. For Rossman, this is a minor slip, and she has proven to always bounce back from minor slips, though it’s still a shocking result in this game.
The next game the Bobcats will play is Saturday against the Dartmouth Big Green at 4 p.m. Dartmouth is looking to improve to 2-7 in ECAC play, and Quinnipiac will be looking to improve to 8-3-2.
“Dartmouth comes out hard, they have a new coach this year, they are inspired with a new coach,” Turner said.
A win for the Bobcats would give them sole possession of third place in the ECAC standings.
