By Kathryn Uggerholt, News Correspondent
Much like its previous game against Boston College, the women’s hockey team played a penalty-filled second period in which it took three penalties. But the Huskies escaped unscathed, and killed the penalties without surrendering a goal.
Junior goaltender Florence Schelling led the way as the Huskies defeated the Yale University Bulldogs 4-0 Saturday at Matthews Arena, recording 34 saves and her first shutout of the season. The win boosted the team to 7-2-2 on the season, and 1-1-1 in Hockey East play.
The squad sits fourth out of eight in the conference. Last season, the squad was 9-2 after the first 11 games of the season.
Of the 17 shots in the second period, Yale had seven shots on goal during its power play opportunities in the second stanza, but Schelling stopped them all.
“I tried to never lose sight of the puck, which is the hardest part, especially in PK [penalty kills] where I have a lot of traffic in front of me,” Schelling said.
She said she was also pleased with the way her team killed off the penalties.
“Everyone knew their role in the PK,” she said. “Everyone knew what they were supposed to do and I thought that was really good. We didn’t have that in previous games.”
Head coach Dave Flint said in order to get better at killing penalties, the team needs repetition, but Flint said he prefers if the repetition came in practice instead of games.
“We’ve been taking a lot more penalties this year than usual so we’ve had to kill off a lot so we’re getting pretty good at it,” head coach Dave Flint said after practice Monday night. “You do something enough, you get better at it. Unfortunately it’s not the way I want us to get better at it but we’ve kind of had to.”
Sophomore forward Casey Pickett paced the offense for the Huskies and scored two goals.
The Huskies set the tone early in the game when Pickett scored a power-play goal on Yale goaltender Genny Ladiges (29 saves) 3:30 into the game. Senior forward Lori Antflick and junior defenseman Stephanie Gavronsky assisted the play.
Sophomore forward Brittany Esposito lit the lamp again about a minute and a half later, after receiving a pass from senior forward Alyssa Wohlfeiler.
The Huskies stepped it up again in the third period and Pickett scored her second goal of the game, and Antflick provided the assist again.
Later in the period, sophomore defenseman Lindsay Domass notched her first goal of the season with two minutes left in the game.
Flint said he thought his team played well, sans the middle period, but was glad to see Schelling play as well as she did.
“We’re a young team,” he said. “We make some mistakes defensively but it’s good to know that we have a solid goalie back there.”
The Huskies head to Orono, Maine, to take on the Black Bears tonight at 7 p.m.
