Syracuse Women’s Ice Hockey rolled 4-0 by Penn State

The Syracuse women’s ice hockey team could not top their Friday night performance and fell 4-0 to No. 4 Penn State Saturday during the final game of a two-day home series with the Nittany Lions.

What started as a strong performance from both teams eventually ended differently.

As the puck fell for the opening faceoff, Emma Gnade won it and the Orange started their attack. Soon after, Syracuse lost the puck and at 2:32, Penn State had their first shot of the game, blocked by goalie Ava Drabyk. 

The first power play of the game came quickly, it was for Syracuse and started at 4:33 with the Orange winning the faceoff. Almost a minute later, Syracuse had their chance with a shot that was missed. Syracuse did not lose any time and restarted their play which gave them, seconds later a second shot that was too wide and missed the goal by a lot. Penn State then held the puck for twenty seconds and the power play was over.

The Nittany Lions did not lose time and dominated the next two minutes of play totaling five shots. At 9:58, Penn State got their first power play of the game after Syracuse defensive player Celia Wiegand got two minutes out for body checking. With nine seconds left for Wiegand’s penalty, Penn State scored their first goal off of a rebound from a previous shot and an assist from Taya MacDonald and Megan Hosman, and the shot by left-wing forward Nicole Hall.

With one more power-play and a total of 13 shots against only three more from Penn State, Syracuse dominated the last half of the first period, but could not capitalize the chances it got.

The second period started with a lot of action as Penn State scored their second goal of the match with 32 seconds of play. The goal, scored by Sofia Ismael with an assist from Danica Maynard, was shot from the right wing through the side of Drabyk.

Soon after the Nittany Lions doubled their lead, the Orange had a shot that ended up going too far right by defender Maryn Broderick. After a few minutes of balanced play, with both teams attacking and defending well, Syracuse snagged one more chance of decreasing the score gap, but couldn’t convert. With a double-team defense that worked, the Orange had the puck and Jackson Kinsler took the shot.

Penalties played a big part in how the second period looked. Penn State had three penalties and Syracuse two. In all the power plays that happened, Syracuse having one more than Penn State, neither team could convert the chances it got into actual goals. And, even though the Orange outshot the Nittany Lions in this phase of the game, the latter controlled the entire time, and the Orange had trouble defending.

Fast forward to the last period, and Penn State doubled its prior lead with back-to-back goals scored by Hall and Mikah Keller with a margin of three minutes in between them. Syracuse kept fighting and regained some momentum that it had lost after the first period, but the 7 shots on goal it had in this last stretch weren’t well used.

Unlike the game Friday, in which Penn State outshot Syracuse 44-28, this time was the other way around: the Orange outshot the Nittany Lions 30-21. In a press conference after the game, head coach Brian Idalski, who has occupied this position since July this year, made comments comparing Saturday’s game with the one on Friday.

“Overall, I actually think we were better today than yesterday,” Idalski said. “I thought first period went well, being down 1-0, not a big deal. The second one, a little unfortunate but we had a much better second period than yesterday. And third we got lost there, fell into some bad habits.”

With the loss, the Orange now have a 4-2 (2-2) record while the Nittany Lions improve to 3-3 (3-1).

Syracuse plays next on Friday in the opening game of a series at Robert Morris.