Photo courtesy Quinnipiac Athletics
By Kirby Paulson
The Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey team (6-4-1, 2-2-0 ECAC) was shut out for the second time this season when the St. Lawrence Saints (9-0-1, 4-0-0 ECAC) defeated it by a score of 1-0 on Saturday afternoon.
Even with the loss, Goaltender Sydney Rossman was solid in the crease as she turned away 15 of the 16 shots she faced. This was an important game for the senior goalie, as she had given up three goals to Clarkson before getting pulled for freshman Abbie Ives in the third period the night before.
“Obviously yesterday wasn’t exactly how I wanted it to go, but I had to get over it pretty quickly and come back because I knew if I was still thinking about it I wasn’t going to give my team a chance to win,” Rossman said.
Quinnipiac head coach Cassandra Turner had a feeling that her goaltender would be successful in her second game of a series in which she had struggled in the contest before.
“I knew Syd would play that way today, it’s who she is,” Turner said. “I think this is who we judge her on; you know this is consistently how she plays how she played today.”
St. Lawrence opened the scoring gates just under five minutes into the opening frame. Brooke Webster took a swing at a loose puck in the slot sending it past Rossman’s blocker and into the back of the net. Rossman never looked back after the goal though, shutting the Saints out for the remainder of the contest.
However, this lone point would go down on the scoresheet as the game-winner for St. Lawrence as the Bobcats were unable to get on the scoreboard. Quinnipiac forward T.T. Cianfarano acknowledged the improvement from yesterday’s game but spoke of an inability to capitalize when discussing the lack of successful scoring.
“I just think, I mean obviously we had a better game than yesterday; our chances today were obviously getting pucks into the goalie’s feet but we just couldn’t capitalize,” Cianfarano said. “I think we just gotta focus more on this week coming up during practice, just kinda getting shots and getting those rebounds; I think we’re just letting them sit there a little bit longer than we should’ve.”
Neither team was given the opportunity of a power play as there wasn’t a single penalty called throughout the contest. Turner mentioned the importance of even strength point generation and touched on what needs to be improved going forward.
“I think we need to generate more five-on-five offense, it’s the bottom line,” Turner said. “We haven’t generated a lot this year and there’s reasons why; there’s things that need to happen and people who need to find better lanes to shoot and opportunities to shoot and better details around the net.”
Quinnipiac will face its next challenge when the team travels north of Hamden to Dartmouth and Harvard next weekend.
