Sunday afternoon at Matthews the Northeastern Huskies and the Cornell Big Red
played to a 3-3 overtime draw.  It was a long, tedious affair.  In the end,
sharing the points seemed proper.
 
As the game started, NU came out and put on some pressure.  Emily Pemrick
(Hilary Witt, Stephanie Acres) scored on the power play.  Pemrick received a
good setup, twisted and fired in her backhander.  Neither team was playing
great as it appeared they were respecting each other too much.  However, as
the first ended, the Huskies were in control of the match.
 
The second was a slow dodgy period.  Northeastern took a series of silly
penalties that eventually led to Cornell's Erin Schmalz (Patricia Kemp, Alison
Stewart) scoring a 5 on 3 power play goal.  NU was not skating, and Big Red
was slowing the game done as much as possible.
 
At the beginning of the final interval, Janna Dewar (Danielle Bilodeau) gave
CU a 1-2 lead.  Dewar went straight in and her try squeezed under the goalie's
pads.  A few minutes later the Huskies tied the match when Sarah Smythe
(Jennifer Santerre, Keri-Anne Allan) collected a wonderful feed from behind
the net by Santerre, and drilled her chance.  The climate of the contest
remained hesitant.  Stewart (Schmalz, Kemp) put the Big Red ahead when she
roofed her chance right in front of goal.  It looked like Cornell would pull
off the major upset, but in the final minutes, Jennie Setaro's (Kathryn Waldo)
power play point slapper found net to knot the match at three.
 
In overtime, both teams went for it.  It was easily the fastest hockey of the
afternoon.  The teams took turns going fairly close, but at the buzzer the
event remained a draw.  I doubt either team was thrilled with their
performance.
 
Cornell did anything it could to put NU off their game.  It was not
interesting stuff to watch.  Basically Big Red used the same two or three
plays all game.  I suppose they got the result they wanted.  The only CU
player who moved well throughout the contest was Morag McPherson.  Her quick
fore-checking style suited the game plan.  Overall, I was looking forward to
seeing Cornell and I was left disappointed.
 
Northeastern did not skate.  They had the game in their pockets, and if they
had picked up the tempo in the second, they could have done anything.  Instead
they let themselves get sucked into foolish shorthanded situations.  On the
positive side, fresher Erika Silva displayed a quick glove in goal.  The blue
line pair of Jaime Totten and Setaro at times looked great.  Their speed can
allow them to make breakup plays with ease.  Up front, Hilary Witt made some
fine rushes.  However, without their speed and passing, the Huskies looked
ordinary.
 
 
 _____________
/
 good shooting
 hungerf
_____________/
 
HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey;  send information to
[log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.