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With the puck near Lindenwood’s offensive blue line, Kaitlin Finnegan sent a pass down the right side to Sydney Rarick on the goal line. Rarick quickly passed it out in front of the goal, where Olivia Grabianowski, with an outstretched stick, tapped the puck into the back of the net. It marked Lindenwood’s third unanswered goal of the third period, knotting the score at 4-4 with 3:04 left in regulation.

After a strong first two periods, all came crashing down in the third for Syracuse (3-10-2, 0-5-1 College Hockey America) as it tied 4-4 with Lindenwood (5-8-1, 2-3-1 CHA). Despite garnering its first CHA point of the year and breaking a six-game skid, the Orange still have not won a game in their last nine tries. Saturday afternoon, they were 20 minutes away from doing so.

“We got away from our game plan,” said Syracuse head coach Britni Smith said postgame. “We’ve been a team that hasn’t played with the lead a whole lot this season.”

Syracuse went on the power play just 33 seconds into the game when Lindenwood’s leading goal-scorer Morgan Neitzke got called for tripping.

With the man-up unit on the ice, Sarah Thompson almost flipped a puck from the front of the goal into the net, but Lindenwood’s Ava McIllmurray made a quick-reaction save. Lindenwood killed off the power play and then received one of its own when SU’s Erin Brousseau got called for tripping 3:08 into the period.

Though Syracuse killed it off and after going back to full strength, SU’s Heidi Knoll had a breakaway one-on-one, but McIllmurray once again made a stop.

Both teams had a very fast, physical start, but it was Syracuse who controlled offensively. The Orange had seven shots on goal before Lindenwood had one.

SU’s shots weren’t hitting the back of the net until Kate Holmes sent a slap shot from between the face-off circles flying toward the goal. In front of the net sat Haley Trudeau to deflect the shot past McIllmurray for a 1-0 Syracuse lead — its first lead of the weekend. As the end of the first period, Syracuse had four more shots on target than the Lions.

One day after Smith said that the second period had been the worst for her team all season long, the Orange outscored Lindenwood 2-1 in the second. But, it didn’t start off promising.

Three minutes into the second, a pass from Lindenwood’s Emma Hoen to the left goalpost caught Amelia Van Vliet off guard. Molly Henderson was there to tap it in and tie it at 1-1.

SU responded three minutes after the equalizer. Maya D’Arcy raced down the left side of the ice. As she approached the goal line, D’Arcy dumped off a pass to the top of the left offensive face-off zone. Knoll waited there and quickly fired the puck past the right side of McIllmurray into the goal.

“We changed our forecheck,” Holmes said. “So I think that really came up and gave us a lot more opportunities, just having two people hard down low and having that third person high in the zone to just get shots to the net.”

The Orange added in the second period when Tatum White received a short pass from Rachel Teslak at the top of the right offensive face-off zone, quickly slotting it into the left side of the net. Syracuse held a 3-1 lead through 40 minutes.

“We talked about playing clean in transition and playing with pace and I thought we did a good job with that in certain situations, especially the first two periods,” Smith said.

To start the third period, Holmes received a pass from Alexandria Weiss at the left goalpost. Holmes easily deflected it into the goal, giving SU a commanding 4-1 advantage.

But then, the “unfortunate penalties,” as Smith called them, started to add up.

Two minutes into the period, Syracuse’s Marielle McHale got called for tripping. Syracuse’s kill unit, which entered the weekend with the 11th-best kill percentage in the nation, didn’t allow a goal on Lindenwood’s power play.

Yet, less than 40 seconds after returning to even strength, Neitzke received a wide-open pass at the offensive blue line from Chloe Corbin. Neitzke skated forward, hesitated, then fired the puck past Van Vliet to make it 4-2.

“I think we jumped into the rush a few times and we should have stayed back and just keeping everyone in front of us,” Holmes said. “(Lindenwood) had a lot of breakaways that we should have avoided.”

Later in the period, Van Vliet got called for tripping. On the ensuing player-advantage, Sarah Davies scored with five minutes left in the third. Fifty-two seconds later, Trudeau also was deemed for tripping. Shortly after, Grabianowski tied the game at 4-4.

In the 3-on-3 overtime period, Syracuse’s Darci Johal had a breakaway but couldn’t find the back of the net and a weak Holmes shot to the right post bounced away from the goal. Neither team scored, as Syracuse mustered a tie with Lindenwood after being outscored 3-1 in the third period.

“We definitely were not winning our battles, especially on the blue lines and we knew what we had to do and we just weren’t weren’t executing it,” Knoll said.

Published on November 18, 2023 at 7:12 pm