Syracuse earned plenty of power-play opportunities but, at first, struggled to convert them.

After failing to capitalize on the first three power-play opportunities, Syracuse found the back of the net on two of its next three, propelling the Orange to a 2-1 exhibition win over the University of Ottawa on Sunday afternoon in Tennity Ice Pavilion.

“We just started working on our power play a few days ago,” junior defender Allie Munroe said, “so it was just trial and error to finally get one through.”

Ottawa goalie Maude Levesque-Ryan stonewalled both of Syracuse’s shots on its first power play and, later in the period, the Orange took three more shots, one on goal, and none found their way into the net. Early in the second period, they came up empty with three shots on another power play.

Soon after Ottawa scored its only goal of the game, also a power play goal, with 4:17 to go in the second period, the Orange quickly found itself with another extra-player opportunity of its own.

“As the game went on,” SU head coach Paul Flanagan said, “that practice started to pay off and early in the game started it to pay up, because we had some good looks as the game went on with the power play.”

The Orange made the most of that chance as Munroe put a rocket past Levesque-Ryan to tie the game at one. With 12:34 left in the game, Syracuse found itself with yet another power play. Five Syracuse slap shots were consecutively blocked or went wide. Finally, escaping to the middle of the zone, Victoria Klimek found the top right corner of the net to give SU a 2-1 edge. It’s a work in progress, Klimek said, but that each shift brought the team closer to where it wanted to be.

“I think when you get different people killing,” Flanagan added, “our kids just react a little bit better. When we do this in practice, our killers already know what the power play is going to do.”

Published on September 24, 2017 at 9:16 pm

Contact Brandon: bross02@syr.edu