By Thomas Albanese, QBSN Staff Writer
The Quinnipiac women’s hockey team forces a winner-take-all game three after Amanda Colin scored the game-winning goal taking the 3-2 triple-overtime win.
After losing 1-0 in overtime against St. Lawrence in the first game, the Quinnipiac women’s hockey team needed to respond against the Saints to avoid elimination from the ECAC Quarterfinals.
This game lasted a total of three hours and 56 minutes as each team played a final total of just under 109 minutes of hockey, close to two regular scheduled games in this one match.
This was the second longest game in the program’s history, dating back to the 2010 ECAC Quarterfinals when it was involved in a five overtime periods against RPI that ended in a loss, eliminating them from the tournament. But this time the team played a long game and found itself on the winning side with the chance of playing one more game to advance to the Semifinals.
Quinnipiac began the game by controlling most of the offensive possessions in the opening period, outshooting the Saints 10-5. The Bobcats failed to put a single puck in the net in game one, but their first goal of the series came in the middle of the first period off the stick of senior forward, Kristen Eklund. The goal was Eklund’s first of the year.
St. Lawrence began the second period making shot after shot against Victoria Vigilanti, but she saved each one, earning 14 saves in the period alone.
Colin made it 2-0 in the second period with assists from Shelby Wignall and Kristen Tamberg.
The third period featured a strong defensive performance by both squads. With less than a minute left, it looked like that Quinnipiac was coasting to an easy 2-0 victory, but the Saints quickly changed that prediction.
St. Lawrence brought out an extra attacker onto the ice. The one-up advantage ended up working very well for the Saints as they would tie the game 2-2 with both goals scored with less than 35 seconds left on the clock.
Junior Rylee Smith scored both goals for the Saints off strong assists from her teammates. Her second goal of the game and thirteenth of the season came just in the nick of time as the puck went through Vigilanti with just two-tenths of a second left in the period, sending the game into overtime.
Quinnipiac and St. Lawrence were both held scoreless in the first twenty-minute overtime period. For the second time this evening, the Bobcats outshot the Saints, now 14-5, creating multiple chances in front of them to put the game-winning goal into the net past MacDonald, but she continued to play tough hockey against the Bobcat’s biggest offensive weapons.
The second overtime period featured the exact same story with no goals scored. St. Lawrence created more chances to score with 14 shots on net compared to Quinnipiac’s nine shots.
The game headed to the third twenty-minute span of extra time. With almost nine minutes gone in the period, Colin stole the puck from the Saints, skated down the ice, made a quick move to her left and scored the unassisted, game-winning goal for Quinnipiac.
Colin scored her third goal of the season, her teammates immediately jumped on her, as she gave the team another day of hockey to look forward to.
“They finished the game just enough. I mean, we had a lot of great opportunities in the game, we took it to them for the most part, but MacDonald continued to grab many saves,” head coach Rick Seeley said.
As Quinnipiac led the final shots on goal 60-59, that total showed how hard both Vigilanti and MacDonald had to work tonight. Both ladies finished the evening saving 57 shots each.
Seeley knows that his team has won a big game and he wants himself and the team to have a full night of rest because game three is coming up quickly in the road ahead of them.
“I want to see the same exact effort tomorrow. We have been pretty consistent for the past month and a half, so we just have to play the same way and hope that St. Lawrence ends up running out of gas,” said Seeley.
The Bobcats and the Saints will return to Highpoint Solutions Arena for the third and final time in this series tomorrow afternoon where the first puck will be dropped at 2 p.m.
