By Jason Mastrodonato, News Staff

In the middle of a 97-year-old ballpark lies an ice rink surrounded by a snow-covered field. With temperatures below freezing, Fenway Park isn’t accustomed to seeing competitive sports in the middle of a Boston winter.
But the park welcomed two top-10 women’s hockey programs ‘- the No. 8 Northeastern Huskies (13-5-2, 7-4-2-1) and the No. 3 New Hampshire Wildcats (13-2-4, 7-1-1-0) ‘- there last Friday in the Sun Life Frozen Fenway event. With a paid attendance of more than 38,000, the stage was much bigger than the Huskies were used to.
‘You forgot for a minute when you look down at the ice where you are and you look up and all of a sudden your breath is gone and you can’t believe it’s happening,’ interim co-head coach Linda Lundrigan said. ‘I think that feeling was there the entire time each one of us was on the ice.’
Northeastern held a 3-1 lead heading into the third period, but the Huskies were outshot 14-5 in the final 20 minutes as the Wildcats scored four third-period goals on their way to a 5-3 victory.
It was a day of firsts for women’s college hockey, including the first ever women’s collegiate hockey game played outdoors. Just 89 seconds after the drop of the puck, the event’s first goal was scored, a snipe from freshman forward Brittany Esposito. The goal was set up when senior forward and tri-captain Annie Hogan skated through three Wildcat defenders and laid off the puck.
Esposito, a native of Canada, is no stranger to playing hockey in freezing temperatures. As she recalled in a post-game press conference, she had played in much colder temperatures before. For Hogan, it was a bit different. A native of Medford, she wasn’t familiar with playing outdoors.
‘It’s so much fun out there,’ said Hogan, who added two assists during the game. ‘I was thinking, ‘It’s a good thing I didn’t have a rink in my backyard, because I never would have came in.” Just over two minutes after Esposito’s goal, freshman forward Casey Pickett stole the puck behind the Wildcat’s net and wrapped it around UNH goaltender Lindsey Minton to give the Huskies an early 2-0 lead.
The impact of the weather began to appear early in the first period, when UNH forward Kelly Patton lost the puck in the snow on a breakaway chance. During the TV intermissions, the maintenance crew shovelled mounds of snow off the ice, but they couldn’t shovel fast enough to keep up with the pace it was falling.
‘Towards the end [of the period], you could tell the ice was really chippy and at the end of the periods, it was really hard to make a pass and hold onto the puck,’ Esposito said.
But as the snow kept falling, the Wildcats offense, leading Hockey East with a 3.44 goals per game average, started to show up. They struck back with a goal early in the first period, but sophomore goalie Florence Schelling silenced the high-powered offense through the first 40 minutes.
The Hockey East leader in save percentage (.949) had arrived by plane the day before, coming from Germany where she had been practicing for the Vancouver Olympics. She’ll be representing Switzerland along with junior defender and tri-captain Julia Marty. Schelling hadn’t seen action for Northeastern since early December, but interim co-head coach Lauren McAuliffe said the only thing that was different with Schelling had been that she wasn’t wearing any makeup, a rare occurrence for the goaltender.
Early in the second period, forward Julie Allen skated out of the penalty box at an ideal time for the Wildcats, collecting the puck around the blue line with no one but Schelling standing between her and the net. Schelling turned her away and stopped 18 of 19 UNH shots in the first two periods. Esposito scored again in the second during a Huskies power play, earning her sixth goal of the season to put her team up 3-1. Northeastern hadn’t beaten UNH in the last 25 meetings between the teams, dating back to 2002. The Huskies held a 28-74-7 all-time record against the Wildcats, but in the 110th meeting, it appeared that Northeastern would finally end the streak.
Just more than a minute into the third, Allen snuck one by Schelling on a second effort, trimming the Huskies’ lead to one. The Wildcats kept pounding away at Schelling, and added three more goals in the period. The near-perfect beginning to a historic event had crashed into a late-game breakdown for the Huskies.
‘That third period we played a little afraid to lose,’ said Lundrigan. ‘We couldn’t battle back once they got the momentum. But we talked to the girls about not forgetting that they were given an opportunity that no one can ever take away from them, regardless of the result, and I think they appreciate that. We’re proud of what we did for women’s hockey today.’
The Huskies had to have a short memory as the team returned return to Matthews Arena for a crucial Hockey East game against Boston College Monday. Down 4-3 heading into the third period, they weren’t going to make the same mistake twice. The coaches rallied the Huskies before the period began, explaining that they weren’t playing poorly, but they weren’t playing smartly. They left the locker room for the girls to talk it over, and they responded quickly.
The Huskies spent more than seven minutes on the power play in the third period, and took full advantage of their chances, scoring four goals including three on the power play to complete the come-from-behind victory and earn a first-place spot in Hockey East. Hogan and junior forward Lori Antflick each scored twice for the Huskies.
‘We’re a completely different team than we were last year and a lot of teams are underrating us,’ said senior forward and tri-captain Kristi Kehoe, who added a goal and two assists in the game. ‘We were able to come back and put it together in the third period and a lot of teams aren’t used to seeing us doing that. We know we can do it and we’re just making it happen.’
Northeastern returns to the ice Friday in Maine at 7 p.m.